Mara X video tutorial by Lance Hedrick

Lance installed a flow control paddle from Lelit Bianca and you too can buy and install a flow control kit onto your Mara X if you wish.

So Mara X boosts a 1.8 liter stainless steel boiler and it’s really robust it’s quite thick about two millimeters with insulating jacket around.

What is so special about Mara X?

Lelit Mara X has TWO thermoprobes.

One thermoprobe is at the top of the steam boiler itself so this is the thermoprobe that kind of dictates the heating element.

Down at the bottom of the boiler another thermoprobe is located –  this is right at the entry into the brew tube of the water that has been siphoned out of the group head and this is a much more accurate way of understanding the temperature in the group head.

This is the most important feature of Mara x , home baristas.

bar.

But if you wanted more or less pressure this is what you would do –  you would turn this nut right here and so you would either compress this spring more which with higher compression you’ll get a higher  bar limit or you’ll loosen it for a lower bar limit.

This is the vibratory pump – very easy to replace if something goes on just like everything in the machine. It is pretty easy to take out the pump and replace the vibratory pump. I is not actually touching any of the metal or any other piece it’s connected by rubber right here so if it vibrates and makes those noises it’s actually not going to cause any rattling which is which is a nice feature a lot of times you see in machines they just kind of affix it to the bottom with screws – this they have it kind of free-floating on that rubber which is going to help absorb a lot of those vibrations and keep it relatively silent.

On Mara X there’s just one button / on – off/ on the front which is nice for simplicity.

When we look below – when we take this drip tray off we have two different switches that we can control

one is right here and there are three options so if you are in the center where it’s at zero then you are at kind of the base option the lowest temperature option.

If you flick it to the right like so you are at the medium setting then if you flick it to the left like so you’re at the high setting so these control your brew temperature- they  correspond with 92 94 and 96- degrees so dark roast medium roast light roast.

On the side over here we have another option we can either click it to zero or one.

Zero means it is in brew espresso mode and then clicking it to ONE would put it in steam mode.

 So if we put it in brew mode that means it’s going to focus on that bottom thermoprobe in order to maintain a specific degree going through.

Lance suggests to always have it in brew espresso mode. However keep in  mind that in this mode your steam force will decrease quite dramatically.  But even in this brew mode it is important to know that there is a 120 second super heating system that happens right when your shot is over so you can actuate it just by lifting the lever and shutting it back off it will turn on 120 seconds of superheating that boiler to give you nice steam so if even if it goes down to 0.5 bar within two minutes of turning it off even in brew mode you can get that steam pressure right back.