Minore IV (brewtus) steam wand

ACog

Hi All,

Had my Expobar Minore for a few weeks now and feel I'm confident with pulling awesome shots on it. All in all, I'm absolutely thrilled with it. Some of the shots I've drank have easily been as good as any I've ever had anywhere.

While my milk steaming is good, I can't say the steam wand has me won over. Perhaps it's because I'm used to a 5 hole steam tip on a 12 litre boiler, but the Minore's seems a little weak and the steam quite wet. The result is milk that looks good, but the mouthfeel is a bit watery, presumably from wet steam.

I'm not all that fussed about wether the wand is no-burn or not, I'd prefer top quality dry steam. Does anyone know if the wand from a Nuova Simonelli or Rancillio or pick another brand will be a simple swap-in-swap-out?

Also, has anyone adjusted the pstat for the steam boiler on a Minore?

-ACog

Koffee_Kosmo

You could adjust the boiler water level "lower" by a couple of millimeters This should give you some extra space on top of the boiler and hopefully dry steam KK  

Kelsey

Yep, this is exactly what both Chris at Bezzera and the manual for my BZ tell me to do too. Turn on the steam switch, then open the steam wand tap for 5-10 seconds. Water streams out but quickly becomes steam. Turn off the tap and wait for the boiler light to go out. Once it does you're good to go. Apparently this allows the steam to expand in the boiler by bleeding off the excess. By doing this my steam is dry and petty massive. Sprayed it all over the kitchen this morning.

ACog

KK, good call on the water level, I hadn't considered that. My reasoning for the wet steam was the silicon tube was condensing the steam on its way down the wand. Kelsey, I do bleed off the water and have been letting it run longer than I'm used to. It helps somewhat, but the steam is certainly much wetter than I'm used to even after running for a good 10 seconds. -ACog

Kelsey

Fair enough! I'm still coming to grips with my steam wand, it's definitely one of the most challenging parts of this whole adventure.