Posted Mon Dec 17, 2012, 11:57am Subject: Silvia newb question
My silvia just arrived today. :) I tested it all out making sure everything works. My only concern is after I pull a shot or steam do I have to manually pull water into the boiler each time or does the pump do this for me?
In addition to what Helen said above, it's usually a good idea to run the pump after steaming milk--there's no auto-fill function like the CC1 or Silvano. This just makes sure there is enough moisture in the boiler to avoid overheating (also, if you're steaming a second time, this restores the steam; if you're pulling shots after steaming, this will cool off the boiler a bit, shortening the time it takes for the temperature to get back in "espresso" range).
You don't need to worry about it when you're pulling shots because the pump provides flow/pressure through the boiler to the coffee puck, so the boiler is (more or less) always filled.
I hope that's relevant to the question!
~Nick
There's a big difference between drinking coffee to wake up and waking up to drink coffee.
I think Nick touched on the answer. The boiler fill on the Sylvia is manual.
When pulling a shot, the pump pushes water through the boiler so you are OK.
When steaming, the steam will lower the water level in the boiler so you MUST refill the boiler after each time you use the steam function. This is easy to do. Just turn the pump on with the wand open and when water comes out of the wand and not steam, the boiler is full. The pump switch is the same one you use to get hot water from the boiler. If you use the brew switch then you will get water out of the group head, and I am guessing that you don't want that.
In real life, my name is Wayne P.
Feed the newbs, starve the trolls and above all enjoy what you drink!
After owning my silvia for 5 years i never once manually refilled the boiler with the steam wand. I only found out this tid bit of info after 5 years of owning it.:)(Silvia manual sucks.) Still. Its been about 7 years now and machine is running strong although i do not own it anymore. Probably a good idea to do it but i never did. Since i would always steam first then pull my shot. Boiler always filled and would be ready for my next session.
How did you cool the boiler from steam to brew temp? Was it by "flushing" through the brew group then waiting for the temp to rise or did you wait forever for it to cool on it's own in it's own gosh darn time?
If you "flushed" to cool, then you simply filled the boiler using the brew group method though you never knew that was what you were doing.
In real life, my name is Wayne P.
Feed the newbs, starve the trolls and above all enjoy what you drink!
I echo Nick's comments. When I had my Silvias, I always refilled the boiler after steaming. I opened the steam/water valve and then hit the dispense water switch until water flowed out into a waiting Pyrex pitcher. Sometimes I would leave the machine on all day, and in those cases, I'd run water through the wand every few hours, just to make sure the boiler never ran dry.
Here is my new setup. :) The grinder is an OE Kyocera PFP and it does work for espresso. :) Also arrived yesterday. The only downfall is there is next to no stepping in the espresso range so I will be modding it with a lock nut to make it stepless.
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