Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Cleaning out grinder in Solis 5000

Okay, so i enjoy a good cup of espresso or coffee. Our Solis 5000 needs its grinder cleaned about once a year or it takes longer and longer to complete the grind. Here's what i do. There are two screws that hold the coffee hopper on, a philips in back and a Torx 15 in the front. Make note of where the grind dial is (12 in this case) as you'll need to set it back there when you put the hopper back on.
This is what you'll see.
Remove the flexible rubber bean guide and make note of where the red index mark is on the outer retaining ring. Three o'clock in this case. Now, rotate the outer ring until it's a little past the twelve o'clock position. This frees the inner part. You'll now see this.
Clean all the old grinds out; i use a dustbuster. Now you'll have this.
Reassemble by putting the inner part back in, rotating the outer dial to where it was before, replacing the flexible bean guide, and then the hopper with the grind dial set to where it was before. You should be good for another year or so.

As always, do this at your own risk, and take pictures at each step so you know where things started.

I also run about two cups of vinegar from the water reservoir out the steam wand via opening the steam valve that produces hot water.  This in addition to Solistabs of course.  Both of these enhance the espresso...

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Bodum Santos/Pebo


I have a stovetop Bodum Santos (now Pebo) and like it. Its tons of fun at parties. Its best to use a course grind, and importantly to allow the brewing to take one minute. That is, after the water is in the top, turn down the heat but don't turn it off until the top has churned for a minute. This helps a lot when the coffee is "vacuumed" back down. Otherwise, the filter clogs easily. I do wish Bodum would come back out with their electric version, especially the smaller of the two versions...

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

An interesting coffee maker


I like coffee, good coffee that is. For ~$30 it's very hard to beat the Aeropress from Aerobie http://www.aerobie.com/Products/aeropress.htm Looks weird maybe, but makes great tasting coffee with little fuss or mess. Also good for camping...