When it rains it pours – well, okay when it steams it pour-overs.
When it rains it pours – well, okay when it steams it pour-overs.
I posted a while back about if large boilers risked stale water and if double boilers in particular are likely to have stale water in the brew boiler.
For a heat exchanger, the steam boiler is arguably even more likely to go stale. It does not matter much, because the brew water does not come out of the steam boiler, so it has fresh water, but if you want to use the hot water wand for tea or for an Americano or for example, to make brewed coffee then you do have an issue if this is truly a problem. Let me be the first to admit I do not know if it is a problem, but I do intend to test it.
Then again there is a good solution even if the water does get stale. Okay there are a few good solutions. One obvious one is to use your stove, but I want to ignore that one. You can also just flush a ton of water out, but that again is not the one I want to look at because for a big boiler that is too wasteful. This leaves us with the option of just steaming cool fresh water as if it were milk. I had tried it before on my previous machine and it took about a minute, but the squealing was so unbearable that I just could not take it even for that long (I have no idea why water sounded so different from milk). The higher power of my new T1, however, makes the sound just like steaming milk a gentle, enjoyable sound. So it is easy to get boiling water and it is fast, too, much faster than a stove or microwave. I will time it tomorrow. As an added bonus, you can use a large steaming pitcher for pour over and get a very precise pour emulating the pour over kettles.
Thus, it is a bit ironic that I upgrade to a machine that finally has a hot water wand and instead of having one new hot water delivery system I have two (plus, of course, the group).
At some point I want to try a pour over experiment to see if there is a better taste to steamed water than boiler water, but that will have to wait for another day.
I posted a while back about if large boilers risked stale water and if double boilers in particular are likely to have stale water in the brew boiler.
For a heat exchanger, the steam boiler is arguably even more likely to go stale. It does not matter much, because the brew water does not come out of the steam boiler, so it has fresh water, but if you want to use the hot water wand for tea or for an Americano or for example, to make brewed coffee then you do have an issue if this is truly a problem. Let me be the first to admit I do not know if it is a problem, but I do intend to test it.
Then again there is a good solution even if the water does get stale. Okay there are a few good solutions. One obvious one is to use your stove, but I want to ignore that one. You can also just flush a ton of water out, but that again is not the one I want to look at because for a big boiler that is too wasteful. This leaves us with the option of just steaming cool fresh water as if it were milk. I had tried it before on my previous machine and it took about a minute, but the squealing was so unbearable that I just could not take it even for that long (I have no idea why water sounded so different from milk). The higher power of my new T1, however, makes the sound just like steaming milk a gentle, enjoyable sound. So it is easy to get boiling water and it is fast, too, much faster than a stove or microwave. I will time it tomorrow. As an added bonus, you can use a large steaming pitcher for pour over and get a very precise pour emulating the pour over kettles.
Thus, it is a bit ironic that I upgrade to a machine that finally has a hot water wand and instead of having one new hot water delivery system I have two (plus, of course, the group).
At some point I want to try a pour over experiment to see if there is a better taste to steamed water than boiler water, but that will have to wait for another day.
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