and suddenly, half-nuked water began to gush from the grouphead of our ancient lever espresso device, which, ever since the monumental refurb, had thus far continued to run with the alacrity of a spanked porker. no longer. to blame: a set of three obscenely worn gaskets around the spring-loaded piston that drives our antique shots of tiny italian spro.

thanks be to komos, there still exists in this country a be-all, end-all wizard of all things ancient and italian and lever-driven and espresso-related, the san francisco shop owner christopher cara. we just bet that if someone took pictures of the work space behind this man’s storefront and sent them to us, they’d be haphazard and dionysian and oily and artisan-like. just a hunch.

alas, cara has ceased to traffic in riviera grouphead gaskets, or the supplying manufacturer has. which left only a half-hour of genial commiserating talk and a free shipment, on a whim, of gaskets belonging to a different type of lever machine. “try them out,” says he. “if they don’t fit, never call me again!” or something to that effect.

and that is how this blog became a whittler, in the grand southern redneck whittling tradition: penknife in hand, evening lamps burning, pieces of whittled material flying all around the elbows. the inner surface of the gaskets fit perfectly on our piston, but the outer edges flared too far and failed to, ah, facilitate efficacious insertion.

but as you might imagine, suthin’-style whittling isn’t the best way to ensure a tight rubber seal:

and so, we turned to the fine norwegian art of rubber filing! donned a furry cap, grew a face full of morrissey hair and grabbed a cup of mellow glogg, hunkering over the offending projectile and swishing into the barren night …

we have no idea what we’re talking about. still, the result was not unserviceable!

our hack job reassembled, we discovered that the new and beefier gaskets now cause the piston to move up and down with all the dispatch of mellow glogg. which has, in turn, necessitated the double-pump brewing method, in which we yank on the crucial lever twice in the course of the a single espresso shot. turns out people have been doing this for many years — in the movies anyway. and that perhaps we are now operating our riviera treasure as it was initially intended.

but this seems like a WAY too fortunate turn of events for this lowly blog.

those are vintage fanboy legos, friends, depicting vintage espresso devices in a grainy, vintage-like photograph. any more obscure and inter-referential and you’d need the dewey decimal system and a mild hallucinogenic.

also, maybe some puppets.

* with the leaks in the watertank cap and steam knob sealed so amazingly well, the added pressure seems to create “burps” in the boiler’s initial warm-up. in other words, the pressure gauge will zoom to brewing pressure way before the water is actually that hot. a quick pull on the lever lets all the artificial pressure out, and the needle descends to the actual water temp proxy and continues heating. why?

**normal lever machine function, he says. only the brand-new pavonis have an automatic pressure release valve that operates during warm-up. on all rivieras, it’s simply necessary to open the steam knob a bit in order to release the excess pressure build-up that would prevent the water/steam from reaching an appropriate brew temperature. humph!

* what’s ideal shot volume?

**depends on your tastes. basically, you only have so much piston pressure to work with. so you adjust the grind and tamp until the espresso is brewing a celestially as possible. you could pull the lever twice (thereby double-extracting your shot) or hold down the lever in order to let more water into the grouphead before applying the brewing pressure. but those options, while creating a more voluminous shot, would have obvious effects on the desirability of the end palatability of said shot. so … if the optimal factors produce one-ounce or smaller shots, so be it. hand-cranked espresso is basically a matter of managing a series of limiting factors — that’s why you hand craft espresso, for the simplicity and satisfaction of mastering an extremely manual process.

* what the biggest key to pulling these shots?
* how hard do people tamp/how much do they dose on these things? (the inclusion of said balsawood tamper seems to indicate 30 lbs. of doward pressure is not warranted on this machine.)

**i’ve figured these out. you tamp however hard you need to tamp — much lighter, in the case of a lever machine. the biggest key to pulling shots is the management of said manual factors. it’s less complicated — and harder — than one might think.

* how low does the water have to go before the life of the heating element is endangered?

**until the water in the clear tube is one-quarter inch from the bottom. oops.

* should the machine automatically heat to a higher pressure when the water is low? in my case, the point at which the heater clicks off seems a direct correlary to the water level. the lower the water, the higher the needle goes before the heater light blinks out.

**repeated experimentation seems to indicate that when the water gets low, the heater pushes the boiler pressure a bit higher before clicking off, though this does not seem to have an effect on the brew temp of the water itself. so i’m not worried about it (except as it might indicate a tank low on water and thus a heating element in need of more cautious protection).

* the added pressure also appears to be clouding the inside of the pressure gauge. is there a fix?

**problem went away by itself.

i understand these matters much better, i find. the straggling addendum concerning inconsistent brew temp is also a constraint of hand-cranked brew. there are some ghetto ways to better ensure an optimal brew climate in the grouphead, but none official or advisably reliable. you chop wood by hand, you’re gonna get splinters. makes the superb shots all the more superlative. consistency, methinks, is becoming my primary aim.

p.s. yes, cara did refer to himself as an espresso santa claus today — the dude’s hours sound nice, but he’s a genial consultant at all hours. a handy brain to pick, that.

five shots in — five heavily gawked shots in — i have inconclusive conclusions:

* the grind must be much coarser for the riviera. seems to be a function of the piston’s punch, as it were. it only pushes so hard.
* the basket is SMALL. maybe a third the size of the isomac’s double basket. thus, the shots are very small — less than an ounce so far. is this reflective of an old italian bent to swilling the straight stuff? or snorting?
* there are no tampers for this thing. even the i-talians don’t make ‘em this small any more. my supplier sent a wooden one for free, but it must be filed down. and it has all the oomph of a kia sportage. so i used the lid to the salad dressing. creamy bacon ranch. just inverted the bottle and tamped away — much lighter than i ever have before. again, this would seem a matter of necessity, along with the grind.
* seems like i’ve heard before that the crema is not as thick — not nearly, in my case. could it be a function of the lesser brewing pressure? the coarser-by-necessity grind? the light tamp?
* like the isomac, it’s best to brew at the top of the boiler cycle. waiting until just before the heater kicks back on results in an uber-sour experience.
* knowing already that timing and lever feel (maybe scant dose size as well?) make this the hardest way to brew espresso, the primary trick appears to be how long you hold the lever at the bottom of the pull before letting up. my very first shot was steeped in water before i realized i wasn’t going to get a dribble until the lever started going up. later shots were way too small and quick because i didn’t hold the lever down enough for ample water to flow into the grouphead from the boiler.

questions for the san-fran oracle of all things riviera:

* with the leaks in the watertank cap and steam knob sealed so amazingly well, the added pressure seems to create “burps” in the boiler’s initial warm-up. in other words, the pressure gauge will zoom to brewing pressure way before the water is actually that hot. a quick pull on the lever lets all the artificial pressure out, and the needle descends to the actual water temp proxy and continues heating. why?
* the added pressure also appears to be clouding the inside of the pressure gauge. is there a fix?
* what’s ideal shot volume?
* what the biggest key to pulling these shots?
* how hard do people tamp/how much do they dose on these things? (the inclusion of said balsawood tamper seems to indicate 30 lbs. of doward pressure is not warranted on this machine.)
* how does one do routine maintenance if neither cleaning chemicals nor vinegar is appropriate for the machine’s passageways?
* how low does the water have to go before the life of the heating element is endangered?
* should the machine automatically heat to a higher pressure when the water is low? in my case, the point at which the heater clicks off seems a direct correlary to the water level. the lower the water, the higher the needle goes before the heater light blinks out.

addendum: mighta founda way to shoot some grainy mpeg4 video on my memory card. but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow (or later today, as the case seems to be). crashing now.

and it occured to me — when one is shopping alone, with a toddling dude in a buggy, one should unload one’s rustling gaggle of warm-tobacco-spittle-colored grocery bags first. see, i had been doing it all wrong — the human boy comes first, and all that … besides, if he’s securely lashed to the half-ton chunk of injection-molded safety plastic that we genteel-ly call a “car seat,” then he is infitessimally less likely to topple from the shopping cart while i’m unloading. right? the cart’s safety belt = a volkswagen thing equipped with a rope. the Graco Safety Chunk, meanwhile, = vise-like security tested to 9.2 on the richter scale.

but no. tie the boy in first, and you’re left dashing madly to the cart corral and back for fear those DSS officers dressed as pimply publix baggers are on the lookout for just such a fudging father. i’d been hurriedly teaching my 18-month-old to say, “my daddee is closer than you think.” somewhere between the half-gallon of half&half and the prize chunk of gruyere, it occured to me: onload the groceries first, and then take take the dude to the cart corral. stroll back hand-in-hand. sing nonchalantly about overzealous government agents. wink knowingly at the bagger. rinse. repeat.

yes, the riviera parts arrived. i beheld the cigar-sized length of double-spouted brass portafilter wonder and i swear the drool wrapped around my neck. a single strand of it. the new gaskets fit perfectly and solved all leaks, the old ones crumbled from their calcified perches obligingly, and the brew water flushed as clear as the cypriot’s teeth are white. a buddy was there, lured from his evening of textual pursuits for a spectator’s glimpse of italian-crafted burping espresso action. ground a basket full, locked and loaded, pulled the lever with a flourish, and…

the camera quit. “feh,” it said, and just started being juvenile and retromingent.

they weren’t much, but they were photos, or rather moving frames waiting to be culled for bloggy visual consummation. *sigh* camera won’t even read the ones i DID take. thus, tonight’s written dreck. it’s about as thin and transparent as my first shot, i know. BUT they got better! first shot was ridiculously bitter (partly because i had dully assumed the stuff would drip forth while the lever was in the down position). nope. the velocity of the pressurized grouphead water notwithstanding, it took the downward motion of the grouphead piston to force the water through. result: poo. second shot was sour, third was passable as bone soup.

the fourth, however, held forth with verve and body, as they say about my hair at the stone plaza barber shop. the fifth featured a crema with heft, and a taste to rival a stale blend. good! we’re getting there! more reflections in the next post.

this one has grown grey and strewn with overly aerated paragraph breaks. and here is its dribbling, overexposed finish.

measuring the water or timing the flush isn’t reliable, especially if you turn your machine off every day. the isomacs particularly can run very hot (meaning the temp takes longer to bring down, rebounds quicker and cycles through the “green zone” slower) or it can run somewhat cooler, within the first two hours of operation for example (meaning the group temp is slower to rebound and stays in the “green zone” for less time).

you listen first, getting a feel for when the hissing stops, plus a few seconds. eventually, you can watch as well, making it possible to flush precisely even with the grinder on. then you let the group temp rebound. this time can vary, based on (a) the kind of flavor profile you’re shooting for, and (b) the way the machine is behaving. making this a science just kills the finer points of nailing that superb pull. i’ll notice, for example, that while the machine is rebounding (for me, it’s typically two trips through the green light, then brew on the third) it may linger longer in the green zone. that tells me the machine is especially hot, allowing the heater to stay off for a longer period of time, and i’ll cut the rebound short by a few seconds before locking and pulling.

similarly, if i’m brewing a lot of shots and keeping the grouphead fairly cool with constant use, then my flushes are shorter and my rebound periods slightly longer. but the behavior of the boiler gauge, the sound of your flushes and of course the taste of your shots all help you get a feel for this. after awhile, it becomes unconscious. you can flush while grinding, then watch the green light cycles while tamping, then lock and pull a bit early or late, or even adjust the routine based on what kind of flavors you want out of a particular bean.

all this is a part of the e61 fun. stressing over flushes and rebound times only forces you into a set of rigid rules that should be flexible. my advice: taste a lot of espresso. get to know your machine. then tweak the factors based on your sensory feel and brewing whim. it takes time, but it’s not hard.

no reason to spend screedy breath over at CG without recouping a blogged two-fer! dan kehn, of course, owns the definitive HX-flush analysis, to which i have referred for grounding numerous times. the heat exchanger tuning chart, meanwhile, i found to be overkill.