Make your home espresso maker last

There's one thing you can do that will extend the life of your home espresso machine, and that is always use distilled water.

All tap water contains dissolved lime to a greater or lesser extent. "Hard water" is the term used to describe water on the high end of mineral content. The harder your water, the more lime in the water.

Even "soft water" has some mineral content. When heated, lime solidifies as "scale" on contact surfaces. If you boil water in a kettle at home, you will no doubt have already noticed this buildup on the sides and bottom of the kettle.

This same buildup of scale happens inside the plumbing of your espresso machine. It might be "out of sight", but it won't be "out of mind" for long if you don't take action to either remove it after it's accumulated, or take steps to prevent it happening at all in the first place.

Just think of those narrow plumbing tubes inside your machine as your arteries, and the lime content in the water as bad cholesterol in your blood. Overtime, the arteries of your beloved espresso machine become blocked, its blood pressure rises, and before you know it your machine is in bad shape and setup for a "heart attack".

It is recommended that you regularly "descale" your machine with a product such as Cleancaf. By regularly, that means at minimum once a month, and more depending on how frequently you are using your machine. It's a time-consuming process, and never completely removes all the lime buildup.

An even easier and more effective method is to avoid the buildup of scale in the first place. The only way to do that is to use distilled water. Yes, it adds to your cost, but it will honestly extend the life of your machine by years, and save you valuable time by not having to do the regular descaling. The more expensive your machine, the more using distlilled water makes sense.

You could of course buy distilled water, but a cheaper option is to make your own at home. I personally use one of these Countertop Water Distillers which I have had for about 5 years now, and it's still going strong.

Anyhow, give it some serious consideration. There's nothing like preserving the life of your espresso machine, while at the same time eliminating an extra cleaning duty from your weekend list of chores.

Inexpensive PID Controlled Espresso Machine in the Works

I wasn't aware of kickstarter.com until I saw an article about a couple of coffee-loving engineering types who are planning to go into production soon with an inexpensive espresso maker for the home with full-on PID. (If you read my review of the Breville Dual Boiler BES900XL the other day, you'll remember that PID controllers are devices that constantly measure a set value for something, and make adjustments up and down to maintain that set value. An easy example to understand is the PID controller in your car that gives you "cruise control". You set the speed, and the PID controller maintains it by constantly making minor adjustments to the speed of the car up an down around the speed you set.

In espresso machines, PID controllers monitor and control both pressure and temperature during the extraction of the espresso shot. Temperature around 200F and pressure of around 9 bars is ideal for making a perfect espresso shot.

Most cheaper domestic espresso machines don't have PID controllers, which start to show up in machines abover $700. Machines without PID controllers can definitely make great espresso shots - I know because all my espresso machines until my recent purchase of the Breville Dual Boiler did not have PID controllers - but it's harder work and requires more skill and attention to detail.

Anyhow, these two geeky, coffee-loving engineering types took their idea to kickstarter.com to raise the funds they needed for their project, and raised a phenominal $US369,569 in support after initially setting their goal as just $20,000! I read that it was the 6th most-successful launch on kickstarter to date. Their intention is to be able to offer their machines at around $400 in the U.S. retail market spring/summer 2012!

Check out the project here and note that they regularly post updates if you wish to keep up with progress.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-controlled-espresso-machine

Related pages:
How to make espresso at home
How to steam milk for your espresso coffee drinks
How to make a latte
How to make a flat-white