Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Flavia Hack




We've been fans of the Flavia for a number of years. Our first experience with Flavia was when we joined Dream Catcher Retreats (now Quintess) and all the homes were equipped with Flavia machines. These machines are great for making coffee, tea, or hot cocoa by the cup. A couple of years ago our friends the Bronders bought us a Flavia machine for our house. Now we can't live without it.

We recently moved to Incline Village and of course needed another Flavia machine. We ordered one online and it arrived this week. When reading the setup instructions, I learned a new trick. If you hold down the left and right buttons while turning on the power switch, the Flavia machine will dispense hot water until you release the buttons. Normally the Flavia won't dispense water unless a drink packet has been inserted. The drawback to this method, is that you have to continue to hold the buttons down until your cup is full. An alternative hack is to keep one of the used tea packets and simply reuse them. (Don't use a coffee packet, as they have a built in filter, the tea and cocoa packets are simply foil and have no integrated filter). The advantage of re-using a packet is that the machine automatically shuts off after dispensing one cup full of water. The disadvantage of the old packet method is that you have to have an old packet around.

As an aside, Quintess replaced all the Flavia machines with more serious espresso machines. I like the new machines at Quintess homes as well, but they don't make tea for the wife, nor cocoa for the kids. I'll just have to stick with my nouveau riche Flavia machines in our own homes and go upscale when staying at Quintess.