[post in English] Bezzera 3000AL Lever operated machine: volume is too low?

Hello,

I have recently bought a Bezzera 3000AL machine with a lever. The brewing head is made by Astoria, I believe.

The machine is working great, but I was expecting a single pull of the lever to yield a double shot: around 60ml. Mine only gives 30ml.

Does anybody know whether some of these machines were made for single shots only?

Thank you for looking at this!

 

AW: [post in English] Bezzera 3000AL Lever operated machine: volume is too low?

Thank you for these explanations. I have been playing with the fineness of the grind & the duration of preinfusion. And yes, my beans are always roasted no more than a day or two ago. (Absolutely amazing coffee roasted & sold by a German fellow in my town in Holland.) I can't achieve 20 seconds pre-infusion with no or hardly any drops. That would be way too fine & result in overextraction indeed. Usually the drops start falling after 5-10 seconds of pre-infusion & then I release the lever.

For a single (all I make as my machine yields no more than 3cl from the brewing head) I use 7 grams of coffee that (not counting pre-infusion) runs into the cup in 20-25 seconds after I let the lever come up. I adjusted the fineness of the grains to that. Is just about the same volume in the filter as I'd use with my old ECM Mechanika.

But my question is this: shouldn't the volume of the water inside the brewing head always be 6cl? (I.e. Enough for a double.) That way you pull a single shot @ 7 grams away after half of the brewing head's contents has passed through the coffee. The remaining 3cl then runs down the drain.

Mine will yield just 3cl. Then it stops. A "Fellini" should not normally be necessary, should it?

 

AW: [post in English] Bezzera 3000AL Lever operated machine: volume is too low?

Oh, ok. That makes sense then.

 

AW: [post in English] Bezzera 3000AL Lever operated machine: volume is too low?

Ok, it's been a while since this thread was active but I just came across it & wanted to give an update. I figured it out a while back.

Turns out my machine was very calcified. The copper tubes that form the thermosiphon system and the HX itself were filled to the brim with lime scales. Really, like a samba shaker. This machine was probably never cleaned in its life and did not drink filtered water while in service at the previous owner. The part of the brewing head between the cylinder and the body of the machine (the very small opening that feeds water to the cylinder) was also quite filled with scales and lime residue.

That caused the problem: not enough water flowed into the cylinder when raising the piston by pulling the lever. It could only trickle slowly into the cylinder. (The opening is about 1mm in diameter and would seem to assume that the flow of the thermosyphon system is not interrupted by about half a kilo of lime scales...)

I took most of the machine apart an cleaned every non-chromed metal part (almost all copper tubing and the HX inside the kettle) with aggressive acid: hydrochloric acid. I was a bit hesitant at first for fear of damage, but an experienced local espresso machine mechanic advised to use it because it quickly dissolves even the hardest scales. And it did. Oh boy... The chromed brewing head / cylinder I cleaned with a lighter type of acid (citric acid).

There was another defect: the piston rod wasn't straight anymore. That means the piston wouldn't move perfectly vertically through the cylinder. When moving back down after releasing the lever, it would get stuck near the bottom of the cylinder. That prevented it from pushing through the last bit of water. I ordered a new piston rod from Bezzera, which solved this problem.

After reassembly the machine worked perfectly and it still does. And yes, it does produce a perfect 60ml of fluid with a single pull of the lever: ideal for making 2 espressos using a double (14gram) filter.

I guess different people have different conceptions about "einwandsfrei" when advertising their machines. (But then again I am no native German speaker, so I may have missed a nuance there...)