This post was originally posted on r/espresso in 2020. I’m manually moving my content here before probably nuking my reddit account. Fuck that little pigboy u/spez.
For years, I struggled with my espresso machine (Lelit PL41TEM) ever since I got a naked portafilter. I tried everything, and I thing I learned a lot and tremendously improved my skills doing so: Weighing coffee, weighing shots, timing pulls, WDT, stockfleth, nutating tamp, NSEW tamp, playing with dose, grind, temperature, bean freshness...
I had good shots, terrible shots, and once in a blue moon excellent shots. But I never achieved consistency. I always struggled with channeling, even with super fresh beans.
The single element that I couldn't control was the pressure. My machine was factory set at 13bars blind and I could only brew decent shots at 11 bars.
Thanks to this video featuring my exact machine and a few pushes from people here, I adjusted my OPV to 10 bars blind, 9 bars brewing. This has been a game changer. I still pull meh shots, but my constitency is now through the roof, and even "bad" shots are actually okay.
Have you used the Anna at any other pressure?
As lucky as I am with an Anna at right around 9bar, I’ve always kinda wanted to try to set it at 6bar to offset problems with channeling with lighter roasts.
Yes, I've reduced the pressure further down to 7/8 bars after replacing the pump before giving it to my father who is much less obsessed about puck prep tha me :D