Silvia Pro X: Variable Soft Infusion

What is Variable Soft Infusion? 

It sounds a bit like pre-infusion, and in practice it’s quite similar! Both involve starting to brew your espresso with less than full pressure. While pre-infusion brewing utilizes about 30% of your pump's pressure, Variable Soft Infusion only utilizes line pressure, and it's just like it sounds: a very soft infusion of hot water from the coffee boiler onto your espresso puck. 

This function is programable on the Silvia Pro X, meaning your machine will do the same thing every time, once you set it. 

What does Variable Soft Infusion do?

We like to think of this process like blooming a pour over. It allows you to slowly and gently saturate your espresso puck instead of introducing water at full pressure. While using Variable Soft Infusion, we’ve noticed two major benefits: improved taste experience and a reduction in channeling.  

Taste: We think the Silvia Pro X pulls a great shot with or without Variable Soft Infusion, and have found that we can get just a bit more out of each coffee we try when we dial in using the Variable Soft Infusion feature. The specific flavors vary from coffee to coffee, but generally, we experience a more balanced and flavorful cup.  

Reduction in Channeling: When the pressure increases after your programmed Variable Soft Infusion, it saturates your puck of coffee more evenly, which can result in quicker and more uniform extraction. This also helps reduce channeling, which is when water finds a path of low resistance and flows through it, avoiding nearby grounds. 

How do you program Variable Soft Infusion? 

Variable Soft Infusion is setting F.08 in the Functions Menu.

1. To get to the Functions Menu, press and hold the plus and minus buttons until the display says T2.
2. Then navigate to F.08 by using the + or - buttons.
3. Once you see F.08, confirm by pressing the brew button.
4. From here, you can activate the Variable Soft Infusion function by adding how many seconds you want the feature to be active.
5. Press the brew button again to confirm your selection.  
     

After setting Variable Soft Infusion, it’s important to purge the group at full pressure. To do this, hold down the brew button for just over a second. The display will say F and it will stop automatically. This ensures that the brew group is fully saturated for the best results.  
  

If you have a Silvia Pro X at home, try out Variable Soft Infusion and let us know what you experience!