DavecUK

I wouldn't have posted this is it wasn't?

Of course I can, I thought it was in the userguide I wrote, but I suspect you don't have that.

Yes

You have to take the top off....lots of screws and then you can see the reservoir. The wires at the bottom (for low water level electrical connection) have to be disconnected then the thing can be removed for cleaning. If I remember rightly you can do it without taking the body panel off. Getting the top back on can be a ballache as the body panel likes to pop out from one side as you get the other side in. Why fracino decided to make the internal reservoir essentially non removable without some machine disassembly is beyond me. The reservoir should be cleaned once per week, or at most once every 2 weeks. Often the white internal reservoir has stained nut brown due to never having been cleaned...it's absolutely disgusting

You talking about the machine or the person

Well I might pull my review for a while whilst I do more experimentation. Seems to be a lot of views out there and I want to test some stuff. Some think it should be set just to move the top of the coffee about, then tamp, others that you can tamp. I have a fair bit of old coffee I can grind just for experimentation.

Glad it's sorted, little bit of hassle, but now you will be able to enjoy the machine and really see what it is capable of....especially the steaming Plus the more you use the Minima, the more you will like it...it sort of grows on you.

Trouble is your Ispring isn't really going to help people with coffee machines in hard water areas....so totally unsuitable in the context of this thread,

If you mean to I do anything before plonking it on the coffee and turning it...no....unless I fecked up getting the coffee into the portafilter with a large ski jump to one side or something, then I might tap the basket on the edge a bit with my hand. If you mean, have I ever used such a device before...no, people who know me know I am not big on fancy accessories and it takes a while (and often a drop in price) for me to want to try something. I used to use an expensive stainless steel knock box draw until a mate bought me a cheap Grindenstien, I never looked back, cheap tamper until I got a Reg Barber as a prsent etc.. It's like this leveller/tamper thing...I didn't think it would work, but at the moment for this particular coffee....it seems to, even if I am turning it the wrong way, which I am not sure I am. The only nagging doubt in my mind is different coffees. I usually have 2 or 3 on the go and today will open another coffee I have. If they are different densities, then the height may have to be adjusted for each one....a ballache. Or alternatively, the dose adjusted for each one, less of a ballache...but begs some fundamental questions about dosing and baskets. In the old days I wouldn't bother weighing, coffee tasted good and I would dose by eye. This gave me a consistent puck and you can get big variations in puck depth if you grind the same weight for a coffee with lower/higher density. e.g. the Rawandan I roast will be significant;y less in the puck for the same weight of say a Peruvian. Basket fill affects grind fineness required to maintain shot times/weight, adding more coffee to get the same puck height, might mean having to grind that coffee coarser, whereas strict grinding by the same weight each time means grinding that denser coffee perhaps finer, because of a thinner puck. It's something that has bothered me for a while (years), but no one seems to talk about it? I'm not really explaining my concerns very well, I suppose because I don't have a firm view on what the answer is.

Just a quick question, I know it's obvious, but again perhaps not. When you say the boiler doesn't fill, I am assuming the pump is not running....is the pump running to fill the boiler and it's not filling, or is the pump not running and that's why it's not filling? Really unless you have a faulty brain box (doubtful) and there is not damage to the insulation grounding the wire somewhere, when you disconnected it from the probe, the pump should have run.

If water got in the control box, it might have caused the problem, even though they are fairly well sealed, that's against water ingress in normal use/failures...not during shipping if it was full of water in the tank. If I hear from ACS, I'll let you know if they have any sensible ideas tomorrow.

Nope, I'm out of suggestions, sounds as if that autofill has either never worked, or a fault developed during shipping. If disconnecting that wire didn't make it fill, then there is a fault that you are unlikely to be able to fix easily. Sorry about that. If you can hang on until tomorrow, I sent a message to the designer, but I am pretty sure he isn't going to come up with anything that you could do yourself. Sorry to say the obvious, but the internal tank is full of water isn't it, you would be shocked at how people have surprised me before?

I've found absolutely no need to tamp when it's set up correctly. I also agree it seems better when I rotate clockwise, which I did from the start.

Here is an interesting twist. After I posted on my review site, someone contacted me to say that I was turning it in the wrong direction. I was interested as I agree the coffee rakes look as if it should be turned anticlockwise, but that seems very unintuitive. Turning clockwise feels more natural and when I first used it I remember looking at the rakes and thinking about which way to turn it. I chose clockwise because I felt the gentle slopes would shift distribute and pack the coffee nicely leaving a nice polished and level coffee bed. It certainly worked well that way. I just tried turning antclockwise and 2 things happened. 1. The coffee bed was left with 3 little mounds, so I had to polish by finishing anti-clockwise. 2. The rakes trapped a little bit of coffee in each edge of the leveller, which I didn't like I also feel that racking across with a "hard" edge, rather than a soft slope, may not deliver the effect required. Yes it will physically rake a few mm of coffee around. Turning clockwise would seem to actually bear down on the coffee in a way that seems more likely to move the coffee under it in a more homogenous way but that's just my best guess. I then went in search of Videos for how to use these things and to me they appear to be turning it the same way as me. Sure some have 4 rakes instead of 3, but the principle is the same?

I would not have guessed that from your comments....