Have had my Capresso C3000 for about 3 years or so now. Has been a great machine. Lately, the coffee keeps getting weaker and weaker and weaker. The puck is not really a puck anymore either, it's just sorta loose coffee grounds that dumps into the tray.
Is there a way to adjust or does anyone know what the problem might be????
I have a Capresso fo 7 years now, had few problems, but always solve them.
If youe machine does all the functions properly, but doesn't give you coffee, you should check if everytnhig goes into the grounds tray. If that's the case you may only have a broken "O ring" inside the pressing element. It makes the coffe, but throws it away instead of filling the cup. I had that problem, and it was the "O ring".
If the grounds dunped on the tray are dry, you're looosing the water in the back, probably on the relief valve.
Hope this helps!
Basing on personal experience (you can find more on Google probably), solutions are:
On percolated (filter) coffee machines:
Check water temp, if water temp is insufficient , most common is scale heating element , faulty element, faulty thermostat.
Check
if water is dripping right at the center of the filter, if it is
dripping on one side because the orifice is clogged, that can result in
weak coffee.
Coffee blend not well distributed on filter basket.
On Espresso machines:
Check water temp, same as filter coffee machines (thermostat element, scale on heating chamber).
Ensure that coffee is filled correctly in the filter cup (fill at level), and well pressed.
Ensure that the coffee mixture that you are using is not too coarse, buy the apposite one for espresso.
Ensure
that you are not leaving the machine brewing for a time that is too
long, and Italian coffee cup is very small, approximately one regular
shot.
On the hob moka pots (espresso, Moka and Bialetti type):
This
are the trickiest ones, you need art and practice to get a good
espresso with a Moka, but when you learn, the result is better than
what you may get with an home electrical espresso maker.
The frame
on the hob must be not too strong, and the mixture coarse but well
pressed, with water at level tag, or you will get a weak coffee.
On Mokas a good strategy is keeping hob at minimum, and turning up the flame at top when coffee starts coming out.
French and turkish cafetieres:
Ensure that you put enough coffee, water hot enough, and that you left the infusion enough time to get a strong coffee.
Note: insufficient pressure and clogged lines on electric machines never give you a weak coffee, exactly the opposite.
Not pressed mixture always gives weak coffee, but too much pressed mixture may give you coffee with bad taste.
I had a similar issue, the problems was with the grinder. It was grinding too little coffee because some parts of the grinder had moved
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I have the same problem and have been using two shots per cup with reduced water amount to compensate but it is still too weak. The pucks are about half the size they should be.
After HOURS of emails back and forth with Capresso - even their foreign division's top tech guru - I discovered they have no quantitative test for coffee grinder output. Not even initially and not when machines go back for repair (which mine has been twice to no avail on this problem).
They agreed to replace the grinder if I send it again for the flat fee repair (about $250 I think) but they could still not guarantee any specific grinder output as they have no way to measure it. (I suggested a relatively simple way to measure it with detailed calculations as to why it would work as I am a mechanical engineer and got no response from their worldwide service manager.)
I think 7 grams of ground coffee is considered a shot and it is supposed to be able to do a double or actually 17 grams they say but mine isn't half that.
I sent them photos of the puck made on max settings alongside one made with their ground coffee spoon but this seems a major oversight.
In fact the design in my opinion is flawed as the coffee output is assumed to be a function of grinding TIME but that does not consider the coarseness setting. the finer you set the grinder the longer it takes to grind a gram of coffee so in my case with the max grinding time set I still have to use a coarser grinder setting to even get the inadequate half size pucks. Finer should be stronger but with Capresso the finer grinder setting may reduce the coffee quantity enough to make it weaker rather than stronger.
Maybe a new grinder will do the trick but I will soon have more in repairs than a rebuilt machine would cost. This one was purchased new at Williams Sonoma and given to us by our daughter.
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