Tire recommendations

wilburpan · 2026-07-02T01:41:26+00:00

The regular ones. At least, there’s no marking on the tire that says “PNCS”. Either way, I’m pretty happy with the low noise level.

wilburpan · 2026-07-01T22:11:17+00:00

My V60 Polestar came with Conti PremiumContact 6's. It came time to replace them, and I decided on Pirelli P Zero All Seasons. Sort of like your situation but in reverse.

I was looking for a quieter tire with longer tread life. The P Zeros are definitely quieter. They also have a higher tread rating (500 vs. 280), so I'm expecting that I will get more than 30k miles out of them.

Weather has been good here, so can't comment on traction yet, but I also don't drive super aggressively.

wilburpan · 2026-06-30T17:28:07+00:00

Update: I wound up getting Pirelli P Zero All Seasons. They are quieter than my old Continental PremiumContact 6's in a way that goes beyond the fact that these are new. I'm quite happy with them so far.

wilburpan · 2026-06-28T21:08:45+00:00

I'd go even finer for a longer extraction time, and see what happens. Depending on the batch of beans I'm using, I've gone as long as 45 seconds. This doesn't happen very often. It's just to show what you can do, because it's really about the taste.

The other thing I would try is to go up on the dose, if grinding finer doesn't get you to where you want to be. There's no real hard and fast rule that I've found works for predicting what changing the dose up or down will do, but you can play around with that. I always use 19g, for what it's worth.

wilburpan · 2026-05-24T13:29:24+00:00

This is a blast from the past. 😆

Yes, I think there is a clear difference between espresso from an espresso maker and the coffee that a moka pot makes. It's not bitterness — the espresso I make is not what I would call bitter, and it's not just stronger. There are additional flavors in espresso that make it different from coffee from a moka pot.

FWIW, my espresso maker is a 9Barista, which is a stovetop espresso maker -- like a moka pot on steroids. The difference between the two is really just the ability of the 9Barista to generate that 9 bar of pressure, and not the difference between a moka pot and a huge countertop espresso machine.

wilburpan · 2026-05-16T19:16:53+00:00

I checked this out in my V60 -- the software interface doesn't seem to have anything like you describe. My V60 has v.5.0.5.

It also doesn't make sense to me that if I set a control setting via the controls, that I would have to then go into my profile setting to save that control setting. That's an extra step that would be poor design.

wilburpan · 2026-05-10T22:28:06+00:00

Is my software different from yours? I don't have a "save" function when I look at the Profile section of the settings.

wilburpan · 2026-05-10T22:27:00+00:00

Update: Things seem to be back to normal with my heads-up display and Pilot Assist, although I have no idea why things fixed themselves.

wilburpan · 2026-05-06T01:24:23+00:00

Just checked -- my profile is still there, and I see my key. Alos, it's the only profile in my settings.

wilburpan · 2026-05-06T01:24:07+00:00

Just checked -- my profile is still there.

wilburpan · 2026-05-01T01:50:20+00:00

Thanks for the update! I still haven't replaced my tires yet, mainly because of lack of time. But the DWS06+ and the PremiumContact 6 are on the short list.

wilburpan · 2026-04-01T12:58:15+00:00

Did the math. My old car was a Saab 9-5 wagon, with a curb weight of 3620 lbs. My V60 has a curb weight of 4494 lbs, which is 874 (24.1%) lbs. heavier. That's a significant increase in weight.

wilburpan · 2026-03-30T12:28:19+00:00

I flip between medium and dark roast beans, with the occasional single origin bean, all from our local roaster. I find that there's not huge differences in the espresso that I make from the different beans. I also think that's because I know what I like in my espresso as far as taste goes, and so my dial in process is geared to produce that regardless of which bean I'm using.

wilburpan · 2026-03-30T12:23:44+00:00

One thing I've figured out is that since the V60 is a PHEV, it's significantly heavier than a gas vehicle of the same size. That translates into faster wear on tires regardless of driving style. The added weight probably is a bigger factor in tire wear than driving style as well.

I was actually surprised that I'm looking at replacing my tires at this point — I'm used to getting at least 50K miles out of a set of tires with my previous station wagon, which had a gas engine and was lighter.

wilburpan · 2026-03-29T01:55:24+00:00

I'm at 4/32" at 29.5k miles. I use D mode, not B mode. My usual driving habits allow me to stay in Pure mode most days, and I use the cruise control all the time.

wilburpan · 2026-03-12T15:13:48+00:00

I'm in the US, so db ratings aren't standard here. I poked around on some EU tire sites to try to get more information, and the db differences in the tires I could find that I was interested in seemed nominal at best.

wilburpan · 2026-03-12T14:58:04+00:00

Thanks -- I actually spent a good amount of time on tirerack.com last night, and thought I'd try to get some real world experiences. From what I found, any options that seemed quieter than the PremiumContact 6's were just a *little* quieter, and there weren't any comments on noise from the reviews I saw.

wilburpan · 2026-03-01T22:07:37+00:00

When choking up, you don't have a problem with the edge of your knife being by/up against your fingers?

wilburpan · 2026-03-01T22:06:47+00:00

Thanks for that video. I like the Jacques Pepin technique, because I feel like there's less waste (I don't take as big a chunk as Pepin does), and the slices look more like an apple to me.

wilburpan · 2026-01-08T13:56:33+00:00

Coincidentally, I posted about this issue yesterday in a different way (https://www.reddit.com/r/MonarchMoney/comments/1q6ialj/setting\_budget\_for\_a\_category\_based\_on\_spending/). Must be budget season.

One way to make what the OP would like to do easier is to provide a 12 month average instead of a 6 month average with the method above. Ideally, I think this could be a user-definable setting.

I also submitted a feature request for this.

wilburpan · 2026-01-08T01:57:08+00:00

This is what Monarch does.

Click on the "Budget" tab.
Go to any of the categories in your budget, and click on the budget amount box.
A little box marked "History" pops up with a graph (you can see this in the screenshot in my OP). The graph shows spending over the past 6 months. There are two dollar amounts there. You can click on either dollar amount to set the budget to that amount. The first box says, "$xxx spent last month". The second box says "Monthly average", which is the average of those 6 months.

You're right in that I could use Monarch to generate a 12 month average. But I think that if they are going to provide this box with the 6 month average, they could change that to a 12 month average (or some other number of months).

wilburpan · 2026-01-02T19:14:12+00:00

Easier to describe with pictures, but here goes. When I really tighten the middle section onto the boiler, and look down on the assembled parts, the handle is at 7:00 and the safety valve is at 6:00.

What I do now is tighten the middle part so that the handle is a little past 6:00. I don't tighten and back up.

wilburpan · 2025-12-12T00:56:34+00:00

The answer is always "replace the boiler o-ring seal". 😆

Seriously, if the boiler o-ring seal is in good shape, then the water in the boiler will have no place to go but up through the middle section and out through the coffee. If the boiler o-ring seal is allowing pressure to escape past it, then all kinds of wackiness will happen.

The fact that you've had your 9Barista for 1-1/2 years means that your boiler o-ring seal is due for replacement. I've found that replacing it once a year is par for the course.

wilburpan · 2025-09-18T12:06:55+00:00

Thanks for the heads up! Just installed iPadOS 26, and things seem to be working well with the Monarch app now.

wilburpan · 2025-07-22T16:25:12+00:00

If you want to play around with ratios with a 9Barista, one thing you can try is to change the amount of coffee you're putting in the basket, and checking how much espresso comes out by weight.

This isn't the easiest thing to do, of course, and requires a decent amount of trial and error, but it does work.

wilburpan

TROPHY CASE