About a year ago I bought a quickmill carola https://www.quickmill.it/en/products/lever-group/carola-mod-0960/.
In general it’s not a bad machine; I like the E61 system, I’m happy with the PID and it’s compact and looks ok. I absolutely hate the vibration pump, though. It takes 10-15 seconds from activating the pump to get to max pressure which is a significant of my shot time. I havn’t found a great way to deal with it and I’m close to get a different machine just because of the pump.
Does anyone have a vibration pump and is happy with it? Is there some technique you’re using with the E61 to get around it maybe?
A slow pressure ramp-up is probably good for your coffee (especially if it’s a lighter roast) because it’s effectively giving you pre-infusion.
I am not familiar with this particular machine, but is it possible that the delay is related to the machine performing a preinfusion?
Does it take that long with the backflush disc installed or just with coffee?
Maybe the pressure gauge is a little slow or laggy?
Could be, I’m using the built in one. However when I stop pumping and just hold the pressure, the gauge doesn’t move up anymore but almost immediatly a little down.
Does it keep dropping down, or just slightly?
You could try getting a portafilter gauge to see if it responds more quickly.
With coffe it took 25s, with the backflush disk it’s quicker but still takes a significant amount of time (11s). Sometimes its more, sometimes less, but always around that.
I found one video on youtube that shows similar behavior as what you are describing. Maybe that’s normal for this particular machine. Does it make good coffee despite the pressure taking some time to develop?
Ive had a few vibe pump machines in my time, and none of them have taken anywhere close to 10 seconds to reach pressure. Usually takes between 5 and 7.
Could be that you have a faulty pump. Was it always this slow?
I just tried again and it took 25 seconds (with coffee) to reach 9 bar. With the backflush disk it took 11s. It was always kinda slow but it might have gotten worse recently
I believe the BBE is a vibration pump, and it takes 2-4 seconds to reach pressure. The Mr. Coffee machine I had took a little bit longer, maybe 5ish seconds to reach pressure (though it didn’t have a pressure gauge, so I’m assuming pressure based on crema). You may want to contact their support and see if there’s anything they can do to help.
Edit: correct autocorrect
