We recently got the opportunity to have a little maintenance powow with our friends down at Synesso.   They produce the Synesso Cyncra espresso machine which we use at all or our cafes.  Victrola has always been about fine tuning every variable that could affect the quality of our coffee so this was a great opportunity to pick their brains and learn some new stuff.  The two guys I went with, Jeremy and Chuck, will be taking on maintenance for our two cafes.   Jeremy will be heading up maintenance at Victrola on 15th while Chuck is taking on Pike St.

The Cyncra was the obvious choice for us because it gives so much control over drink preparation. It’s revolutionary in it’s thermal stability.  It can maintain temperatures within +/- .5 ‘ F, yeah as in 1/2 of one degree!  We can adjust temperatures as well as steam pressure on the fly with a push of a button.  To say we love our machines is an understatement.  They’ve seemed to think of everything on this one.  It’s incorporated cool touch steam wands with insulation to keep yourself from getting burned and lever control on the steam wands which is a vast improvement over the knob. And they’re built like a tank!  So anyways, bottom line, it’s pretty awesome.

Scott (red beard) guided Jeremy, Chuck and I through some basic preventative maintenance (steam wand & expansion valve rebuilds) as well as some more involved fixes.  It was super informative!  Scott’s a great teacher and gave us an indepth walkthrough on how to perform a lot of the fixes outlined in the troubleshooting guide.  So hopefully this will help us do a lot more instore fixes and keep our machines running at top knotch.

Pictured: Scott, Jeremy, Chuck

So, of course, after a nice demonstration from the guys at the factory, what did we do when we got back?  Rip our machine apart!

Yeah, she aint too pretty underneath all that stainless steal

Skeletor!