Welcome to the CoffeeCrew forum for registered users. - feel free to make yourself at home. This forum is dedicated to coffee and espresso based issues.
Forum spammers, link referrers, link placement, scam artists, confidence artists, crooks and obvious commercial shilling is discouraged. Violation of this one simple rule will result in you and your immediate geographical region being banned from the site so do not post ads or links to your site here unless approved by me! Violators of this one simple rule will find their firm, employer, and your pitiful self invoiced $1000 per violation of this simple rule. Enjoy!
The coffeecrew guestbook and forum has been alive for more than 10 years! Please consider it your one-stop resource for finding out about all things coffee, espresso, specialty coffee and all associated gear and equipment.
We welcome long posts - there is no word limit in fact. Keep in mind that you can only type for 15 to 20 minutes in the forum-post submit window (session timeout)- so consider composing your posts or responses in a text editor - then cut and paste! Thank you and enjoy the forums!
|
|
|
CoffeeCrew.com Discussion Forum and Guestbook
|
|
|
|
colin
Admin
Admin
| Posts: 797 |  |
Karma: 21
|
Re:Disappointed with Francis Francis - 2006/04/03 10:44
I tend to agree - Although they have improved through the years (like the Pavoni which use to be a rust-bucket), the Francis-francis survived for years on looks alone - looks and no function.
The bits and pieces are too light in construction.
It needs a serious sized portafilter as well as other updates.
Of course - I have never actually used one.
I base this on touching the odd one and reading many reports on the weakness of the F-F.
Colin is the Senior editor and creator of the CoffeeCrew.Com Website |
|
|
| | Forum posting/replies are available to registered users. |
steinboy
Visitor
|
Re:Disappointed with Francis Francis - 2006/06/20 05:35
Hi X1-man I have an old style X1 and I can certainly relate to your frustrations. The thing is, this machine is not designed at all for ground coffee, it was an afterthought, and is now strongly discouraged by Francesco Illy himself. see http://www.amici.ch/downloads/argpulver.pdf. The problem is that the grouphead shape is designed to fit the curvature of the ESE pods instead of being flat. Therefore, you can forget about the normal procedure of tamping. the newer version has a special tamping insert which is meant to improve this. see the following review.http://www.coffeegeek.com/proreviews/firstlook/francisfrancisx1/details
I don't give up easily though, so I take it as a challange to see what I can coax from this machine. You are absolutely right about the importance of the grind, but whats also important is the amount (and of course the freshness and quality of the beans). For good crema, it is the size and compactness of the grounds in the portafilter that counts, but since we can't do a normal tamping procedure on the X1, I have resorted to tamping against the grouphead 'shower screen'. Espresso aficionados will cringe at this of course, but it is the only way I have found to get decent results with the grounds portafilter on the X1. The problem with this method is that coffee grounds will creep into the 'showerscreen' and that the grounds 'puck' will often stick in the grouphead. I am going to experiment with using a piece of filter paper inserted between the 'showerhead' and portafilter which should alleviate both problems. The steps I found to get 'decent' results is to first use the best quality freshest coffee beans you can get (preferably local fresh roasted) (and stick with one type until you have other variables sorted) and then get a good grinder which you can adjust properly. The goal with the grind is to get it fine enough to produce a slow steady dripping insead of a stream so that the total extraction time for a standard shot is around 25-30 seconds (according to the golden espresso rule). The grind will have the biggest affect on this extraction time, but the tamp will also affect it to some degree. Try to adjust the amount of grounds in the basket so that the portafilter just closes properly with just a little extra resistance. When you get it right you will see nice crema coloured drops after a few seconds. After the shot is finished, wait a few minutes before trying to remove the portafilter, then have a look the resulting grounds 'puck'. If everything went well (and the puck didn't stick to the grouphead) the puck should be solid and fairly dry with some small indentations from the water. Initially I judge a good shot by the thickness of the crema because usually the conditions for creating good crema also give the best flavour but not always. Experiment with one variable at a time and hopefully you can get some pretty decent results. Be warned though, once you start down this track of trying to perfect your shot on the X1, don't be too surprised if you find that your expectations soon outgrow the capabilites of this lovely 'looking' little machine. 
|
|
|
| | Forum posting/replies are available to registered users. |
steinboy
Visitor
|
Re:Disappointed with Francis Francis - 2006/06/20 09:32
oh, I just realised that you said you don't have a grinder and don't have time to grind our own coffee. Please then disregard what i said in the previous post. In that case however, you should simply use the Illy pods that the machine is designed for, and you will get a pretty good espresso. Don't waste your time with ground coffee in the X1 unless you are totally obsessed with getting a GREAT espresso and can't afford to upgrade (like me for example  )
|
|
|
| | Forum posting/replies are available to registered users. |
|
