Author: Admin

Mobile coffee espresso machine care in the cold

I spent a long time searching for a guide or at least a thread on the best way to look after your coffee machine in the cold weather and I could not really find anything so I decided to write a short blog on how I look after my machine year after year in the cold months. 

First of all I check the weather apps and see when the temperature will drop below 4 degrees Celsius. Water can freeze and expand in temperatures below 2-3 degrees so it is best to be prepared prior to this. 

I bought a tubular heater that is low consumption from toolstation for about £10. I also bought a timer switch which was about £3. When the temperature starts to drop below 4 degrees, I set the timer to come on until the next day. I just run an extension lead to the plug socket. I also use a digital thermometer to text the temperature and like today (minus 1 with snow) it kept the ambient temperature around 8 degrees. 

The other thing I do is wrap the machine in a blanket and open up the steam wand valve and the lid to the water tank. This lets the air flow through and escape without expanding the pipes which could cause them to burst (remember there are some very tiny intricate pipes inside your machine). 

The last thing I make sure I do is keep both the leisure battery and main battery charged following a few days of really cold weather. 

I would also run the machine when the extremely cold weather has passed before doing  any events just incase you do notice a drop in pressure or detect a water leak so you can get this repaired prior to your event. If you have a water filter, make sure you drain that too as my first one split when I turned everything back on as it had expanded in the cold! 

I hope this is of some use. Perhaps there are other guides or threads and I just have not found them! If you guys do anything  different, please share your tips so the cold weather does not destroy our precious machines!  

Who hasn’t dreamed of owning their own business and being their own boss?
I have for a very long time and I’m going to share with you my brief story so far.

Australia and their coffee …
If you have ever travelled to Australia, you will already know their insatiable appetite for coffee and the exceedingly high expectations of their perfect morning jolt to go with it!
Whilst travelling, I got a job at a coffee and juice bar and got the full coffee experience complete with training. I rapidly developed my own idea of coffee perfection (and with it became a bit of a coffee snob!). I enjoyed the job so much, I knew this is what I wanted to do.
So I came back to England and trained as a teacher! Not quite following the dream, however, I didn’t have the money to open a shop and I didn’t just want to work for minimum wage serving coffee someone else’s way which I deem as sub standard (coffee snob alert).

Getting the idea rolling
A few years into teaching, an opportunity arose which meant I could lay the first stepping stone to my goal.
A friend was selling his coffee van, and when I saw it, I instantly fell in love and had a vision for this van’s future. I bought the van and decided to re-brand it with my own logo and personality. With my surname being Kingshott the task of coming up with the company name King Shots Coffee wasn’t an arduous, keep you up all night job, but I think its rather fitting!

There was a lot of things to do before getting to this stage: meetings, designers, ordering equipment, tasting coffee, stockists, insurances … the list goes on, ‘Can I not just go and make people delicious coffee yet?’ I kept asking myself.

Events
Once I had everything in place, I needed events. And my first event happened to be for Prue Leith. It was safe to say I was very nervous, as I would be serving coffee for the Great British Menu judge on my very first solo venture. This turned out to be a great success and had some amazing feedback from her guests and from Prue herself which meant a lot to me. I did over estimate how much milk I would use however, and ended up bringing home 80 pints of milk!

Since then I have been invited to serve coffee at the home rugby games for The All Golds rugby team, served coffee to a host of supporting parents and teachers at a few athletics events, RovinFest and a few other intimate events with more to look forward to.

If you liked reading about my journey so far, look out for my next blog instalment or in the mean time follow me on on my various social media platforms.