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I ordered an espresso machine over the weekend while Briscoes had a 50% off sale. I've been waiting for The Bambino to have a decent discount and it finally did. No store in the Wellington region had any in stock, so I had to order it.
They use Aramex so the normal 3 days to 3 months delivery timeframe applies.
Your journey into nice coffee is underway, I don’t think you’ll regret getting a decent espresso machine.
One further step that really did give an improved flavour for us was getting a grinder. We bought a Breville Dose Control during a Briscoes sale. Our coffee maker is not Breville but the control over the grind size and duration makes it very easy and repeatable.
I look forward to reading any updates on this, time to start trying different coffees ☕️
It arrived! In fact it quite possibly had already arrived when I wrote the post that I was waiting, I was expecting some sort of delivery notification that I didn't get.
Now I've worked out I have no idea what I'm doing.
I use a double sized coffee thingy which holds about as many coffee grinds as I used in my aeropress, but the flavour is weak. The shot of coffee I get (without adding any extra water) is about the strength of a long black you'd get from a cafe.
From the instruction book I think this means the grind isn't fine enough? I think I'll need to do some experimenting.
I also had a go at frothing milk but also have no idea what I'm doing there. I think I need to go looking for a beginner guide.
Espresso does need a fine grind, the hot water is only there for around 15 seconds, and the fine grind is needed to give that a full flavour.
Can I suggest you get some espresso grind and work from there. Fill the head with the ground coffee and compress it quite firmly. After compress it’ll leave a small gap (few mm) at the top of the head. Use more coffee next time if the gap is too big. The double head will give 2 shots at a time. Either combine them into a single cup, or use 2 cups with one shot each.
I never use the milk frother, just splash a dash of oat milk onto the top.
The instructions that came with the machine warn about not using too fine of a grind, so I think I underground it. I've been grinding more and more and it's getting better but I think I need it much more ground up than the instructions implied. They did give guidance on how long it should take before the coffee starts coming through, which helps.
I will order some pre-ground espresso to see what its like, to get a better sense. I don't think I'm ready to spend $400 on a grinder yet 😆, I'll stick with the cheaper one I have and maybe treat myself when my birthday and a big sale coincide.
If the grind is too fine, the espresso machine won’t have enough pressure or time to force the hot water through. On my setup, I had to experiment to find the optimal grind to suit my machine.
Whatever you end up doing, it’ll taste much better than 99% of coffee shops.
Haha if I end up making a coffee that tastes better than cafe coffee I'll be very impressed!
Don’t underestimate your power as a barista!!
Haha I've had about 5 coffees this morning and they are getting better!
Instead of buying a normal router for $130 that does everything I need. I decided to browse trademe for 2nd hand stuff trying to get a better deal. Well now I have an old enterprise router with no wireless and a complicated setup and two things which I think are wireless APs but they need PoE so I have to buy a device that has PoE and after that I will have not saved any money and wasted several hours finding, picking up and installing all this stuff. I've also decided to run ethernet through the floor and upgrade my internet plan so I can actually feel the difference.
Massive waste of time and money but I've had fun doing it so its all worth it in the end.
Update: the router worked out of the box and the more I fiddled the worse things became and I eventually bricked the router. It's not responsive on the web port or the recovery SSH. I need a rj45 to USB rollover cable to see what's going on but they are like $45 bucks and I don't want to spend that.
My last resort of troubleshooting is to go to bed and hope it magically works tomorrow.
There might be a factory reset button somewhere on the device. Probably tiny and unlabelled.
I'm pretty surethats how I broke it. I factory reset it 9 times INA row then the factory reset button stopped working.
A reset sometimes needs the button held depressed for a while, 10-30 seconds.
Tangentially related: we've got an electric sit/stand desk that sometimes needs the controller resetting, but the only way to do so is to unplug it and wait for the capacitors to discharge, which takes at least 12 hours or so. I wonder if I can just add a push button and a resistor... 30 seconds is annoying, but would be a huge upgrade from can't-move-desk-until-tomorrow...
Crickey 12 hours, that’s interesting as residual current would normally be drawn after power removed. Depending on the voltage on the capacitor a resistor would discharge it. Make sure it’s not pulling too much discharge current if you try that.
Work needs done, I just want to nap. Oh well, more tea.
Managed to go to Pak n Save today. It was quite exciting because all the green veges were cheaper than they used to be so we got broccoli and cauliflower and leek. It's like the good old days!
Only one monarch caterpillar in the garden that I know of. But I did see a heap of Gypsy Moth caterpillars who were super cute, they sort of have a top knot effect and can walk really fast. I wish we could grow veges but unfortunately it's not an option. Still, there's tangelos and mandarins so am happy.
It's prime time for broccoli, cauli, winter veggies. One of my kids cites broccoli as their favourite food, which means all the broccoli jokes in kids movies aren't appreciated. But we eat more than our fair share of broccoli and cauliflower, and by extension cheese sauce.
Are you sure they actually just like cheese sauce, which happens to come with broccoli?
My eldest used to like broccoli, but now doesn't. We don't eat it with cheese sauce though!
Most of the time we don't have cheese sauce. Typically only when we have a roast, though occasionally at other times.
All the kids eat it covered in cheese sauce, but one loves broccoli regardless. They have been eating it since their first bites, where as the others have other preferences. The youngest loves bananas, and the middle child likes almost everything but never if it's actually what's for tea. Like hates weetbix for breakfast, but scoffs it down after school. Wants sausages for tea but then won't even try them when it's served. Fun times 😆
Good food is wasted on kids honestly, they always want the most basic tasting food. My favourite way for broccoli is to toss it in oil, salt, garlic powder and pepper then roast in a really hot oven or bbq so it gets a bit charred all over. Gets a really nice nutty flavour to it.
Currently the youngest just wants whatever we're eating. Sometimes she doesn't even know what it is and immediately wants it when she sees us eating it 😂
Oh I love roasted broccoli!
We just cook what we want, but serve the parts separately. So with say korma or butter chicken then the rice is separate and the kids can just eat rice if they want. With stir-fried noodles, serve some of the noodles and veggies separate so they can pick the bits they want to try. Burgers and tortillas work well too, as they just put on what they want.
Over time the kids have come to enjoy most of our regulars, but again, never all the kids for any particular food 😆
Just had a broccoli and cauli bake the other day, sooo good!
I'm with your kid on this one, broccoli is the best. As a kid I never understood why some kids don't like vegges!
We've been digging in to the cauli recently. Had a sticky ginger cauliflower dish yesterday and will be having a cauliflower parmigiana coming up some time this week. Yum yum!
Yum!
It's the first nice day for a bit, so I rode the push bike in to work today. Forgot how slippery everything is in the wet and had a brief lie-down in the mud, but still made pretty decent time. I'd call it a fairly decent start to the day.
Hope you're ok! I'm not brave enough to bike at road bike speeds, I'll definitely hurt myself.
I got a rollover cable and was able to actually see what was going on with the router i was troubleshooting. I spent 4 hours trying to get it working. Trying every recovery method and flashing new firmware and nothing worked. Turns out it was an issue with the internal storage being faulty and after swapping that out its all running smooth and I didnt waste $70 on a piece of junk. By running smooth I mean its booting and I can access the web UI and configure things. I still cant figure out how to get internet through it but thats a battle for tomorrow.
That clearly is a RTFM situation …
I read the manual and followed every single troubleshooting step ubiquity had on their website and none worked. I tried every variation of every step. Only 3rd party forums had helpful advice even if most of their links were dead.
I may have missed something because im kinda dumb but the manual was the first place I looked for solutions.
Did you get it working?
Yeah got it all working and now I'm gonna try sneakily drill a hole in the floor to run cable to my office. I'm sure the landlord won't notice.
That’s great news. Drilling a hole though? I fitted a Powerline adapter to get internet out to our sleepout. You won’t get full speed like you would with a cable, but no holes in floor needed. That said, for an office you probably need decent speed.
I have a powerline adapter but I find it has a lot of packet loss and my use case is gaming so I want as stable a connection as possible.