# Rancillio Silvia and Eureka Mignon



## Mickyj (Jul 8, 2016)

This is my first machine and grinder. It has been a learning curve over the last 16 months as to what the Silvia likes and doesn't.


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## Covveekid (Oct 29, 2017)

She is a bit fickle, but will give you some nice coffee.

I would recommend a naked portafilter to help the learning curve. Nothing beats seeing a perfect tiger striped stream flowing when you've got it all spot on!


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## Mickyj (Jul 8, 2016)

It's on my Christmas list. Thanks for the advice. I haven't ever got around to weighing ground coffee in against liquid out either.


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## chip_kara (Sep 25, 2017)

Mickyj said:


> It's on my Christmas list. Thanks for the advice. I haven't ever got around to weighing ground coffee in against liquid out either.


I think pretty much everyone on this forum would recommend getting scales as soon as possible! Great looking setup


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## Stanic (Dec 12, 2015)

a video of mine (before I sold her) with few tips that might be helpful


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## salty (Mar 7, 2017)

Stanic said:


>


Great video Stanic - very useful, thanks. I'm new to the whole espresso thing but noticed that you seem to have a pretty light tamping action, I'm guessing quite a bit less than the 30lbs of pressure I've seen banded about. Would you say that's the case? I'm currently grinding around 1+5 on the feld, which I think is on the coarser end of the espresso scale according to the mbk instructions but after a tamp a 14g dose is taking around 31 secs for 28g output. It tastes ok but does that sound like I'm overdoing the tamping? Wondering if I ground a bit finer and tamped a little less if I'd improve the shot.


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## Stanic (Dec 12, 2015)

Yup

Never mind the 30 lb or whatever exact number for tamping pressure..the goal is to compress the coffee in the basket until it won't compress anymore.

In the video I used the VST basket which requires a quite fine grinding and the finer you grind the lighter you have to tamp...but even with lighter tamp I felt that there is no more compression going on.

Very fine grinding is also beneficial with lighter roasts, it allows for easier extraction of the coffee oils.


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## salty (Mar 7, 2017)

Cheers Stanic! I'll experiment more tmw


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## Stanic (Dec 12, 2015)

And with the Feldgrind I used a setting of around 0.11, rather fine compared to 1.5


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## salty (Mar 7, 2017)

Stanic said:


> And with the Feldgrind I used a setting of around 0.11, rather fine compared to 1.5


That really is fine - definitely need to adapt my tamping. I was choking it yesterday at 1+3!


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## Stanic (Dec 12, 2015)

It depends a lot on the basket, so don't force anything. Also, as Peter Kilpatrick stated, every grinder they built is slightly different regarding grind setting, so the numbers aren't directly transferable.


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## salty (Mar 7, 2017)

Gonna tamp like a ninja tmw


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