Old Coffee Grounds

Portafilter with freshly ground Rio Espresso coffee.

I’m still carving my way through the free coffee I was gifted with the original purchase of the Isomac Tea. It’s by no means the greatest coffee I’ve ever had, but for the purposes of gaining something approaching basic barista skills, it serves me well.

Close up of the two Isomac Tea pressure gages.

Left measures boiler pressure, right, pump pressure. Ideal results seem to be achieved when the left gage hits ~1.5bar and the right ~9.5. As time goes on I find I use these to help pull a shot and guide pour timings and less on counting seconds.

Close up shot of the business end of the Isomac Tea.

The Tea features an E61 brew group, which is formed by both the disc-shaped head itself (where the portafilter is mounted) and the huge steel block that attaches it to the rest of the machine.

It also gets extremely hot. So hot in fact, that I’ve found I have to dump around two-thirds of an espresso shot through the head to cool it down, wait around half a minute or so for the temperature to bounce back and then I can pull a shot.

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