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Hi everyone, Long time listener, first time caller. I would need your help with the issue of struggling to get a decent crema on my espresso and it tastes under-extracted with different coffees of different roasting dates (fresh or 4 weeks). The technical details: Rancilio Silvia V3 (2009) Pressure at 10 bar, measured on group head Water temp 95-99 degrees measured on group immediately after heating element switches off (no PID, as the values show) IMS shower screen, old bulky screw VST 18g ridgeless basket IMS 12-18g ridge basket NS Mythos Plus (older model with the red mains switch) Brand new Eureka steel burrs (old burrs were a mismatched pair of badly worn TiN) Cleaned up, replaced stripped screws, installed new generation de-clumper (V-shape teeth) Seems to be grinding in good quality, no clumps Brewing details: depending on coffee profile 16/18g dose, 38/42g yield. Tried grind settings to achieve 20-35 second extractions, the result was the same regardless. Human factors: 5 years in specialty coffee shops as a barista, level tamping, no problems with channeling and extracting correctly. Tried distributing in different ways and I'm using Pergtamp (the Pullman one). Trying to figure out what could be wrong with the whole thing. Did anyone have similar issues, or could someone think of anything that might be off? Any help appreciated. I'm hoping it's something trivial, preferably human error from my side, because I would stop spending on spare parts for the moment purely based on the fact that I don't see the reward yet

Hi All I am new here and looking forward to future interactions. I had a quick question with my older version (V2 I think) of my Rancilio Silvia Coffee Machine. My shot extraction is under 10 secs and thus I am not getting a good crema anymore. This is including having primed it before, ensuring the water is hot. I also have a Rancilio Rocky Grinder with 30 settings (http://knowyourgrinder.com/rancilio-rocky-hsd-roc-sd-doserless-coffee-grinder-review/) Despite having gone down to as fine as Setting No. 1 on the grinder, it still extracts too quickly under 10 secs. Is my pressure to high? What is the ideal pressure setting in bar? Does my Portafilter basket need changing? Does the Over Pressure Valve need adjusting? (I know I may need to get a device to measure my pressure, any advice there?) Thanks for any good input and advice here to get her back to a proper brew again. Bernard

Not sure if this thread belongs here or in some other section (technical?) - I have never had this happen before, but the espresso shots I pulled this morning have heavy oil beads on them. I roasted the coffee myself, and I tend to do a dark roast (into second crack), and this batch was perhaps slightly darker than my usual, so there is a bit of surface oil (I was combating roasting in the cold weather by doing a larger batch of beans and it roasted much faster than usual, so rolled into second crack faster than expected). So the easy answer is that the surface oil from the beans ended up in the shot, but I have had oily beans before and never had an oily shot. The dark roast ground finer than the last beans I ran through the grinder (these shots were pulled before I bothered to adjust the grind), which also slowed down the shot (it was a pretty slow). So all of these factors presumably conspired to pull out a lot of oil. But I have never seen anything quite like this (huge beads of oil - pretty shocking). Anyone seen anything like this (photo from the latte I made - I should have dumped the shots since it is an awful latte!)

The espresso from my Classic seems either bitter or sour. I am adjusting the grind but can't seem to hit the sweet spot. I am grinding Rave Moka Java with my Mignon so should not be expecting too much bitterness. Any ideas? Very frustrating! :-)