Hey all
I rarely see much talk of pre infusion these days. What’s the current thinking - good, bad, indifferent?
Cheers
C
Hi
I use a PB linea . The pre- infusion is not enabled. From what I have read preinfusion should be done at a lower pressure, and then a ramp up would occur. But the PB linea preinfuses at the same pressure as it brews. Is there any benefit using this kind of preinfusion?
Thank you
And hoping on hearing from you soon
Regards
The Gonz
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It’s still a big case of ¯\ _ (ツ)_/¯
At lower pressures it’s not really necessary - and this is where a lot of people who talk about this stuff are brewing.
Hi, I’ve always been curious about how brewers determine their parameters for pre-infusion when they brew? For pre-infusion timing, and also how much volume of water? Is it in relation to the roast profile of the beans? What’s the science behind it?
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I believe the Linea PB does will preinfuse with lower pressure when activated in programming. My experience is that only the inlet and group solenoids/electrovalves are activated (not the pump). This allows for line pressure to be used as preinfusion water pressure. A large majority of line pressure on installs are significantly below pump operating pressure (close to half).
On non preinfusion machines (i.e. Linea and nearly all other espresso machines out there), you can actually install a manual preinfusion switch in which will allow you to control the power to the espresso pump motor independently from the inlet and brew electrovalves.
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I think it just depends on the style of shots you’d like and obviously the machines you’re working on. Most of the NS / VA machines have their SES system, and there is the Slayer approach to ‘pre-brew’ as well as the host of pressure profiling machines (who’s first stage is basically a pre infusion) and lever machines (with their natural pre infusion), so a lot of machines CAN take advantage of it. Now - wether or not cafes are ACTUALLY using it on those machines is largely up In the air by the sounds of it, but it does seem to me like a lot of people are still interested in its cause/effect and what it can mean (grinding finer, potentially more varying doses, etc).
Just to throw this out there:
Preinfusion pressure get’s a lot of airtime (probably because it’s easier to measure), but the attention should really be on flowrate. In my opinion, flowrate is the more relevant variable and potentially the more informative one too.
One advantage of this is that it’s easy for people to visualise a change in flowrate - it’s significantly harder to visualise a change in pressure.
Hey all,
Would pre-infusion affect the rate of extraction? my current assumption is that it would, but i don’t know why/if it would.
Thanks,
Nicolas