Thread: Espresso Machine

Don,
I've had a capresso for five years. It make great coffee. I think it was about three hundredd when I bought it. I'll buy another when this craps out.

Martin

I'll vote Quickmill Anita, my wife and I love it Easy to use and make a great shot.

Hey.... nobody warned me about Coffee Porn! No fair!

An espresso machine primer.

Espresso machines can be broken down into several different categories. I find the easiest place to start is the boiler design. You have 4 types of primary boiler configurations. There is the thermoblock, what we call a steam toy like many of the Krups brands, a single boiler, heat exchanger and double boiler. Within those categories you have different grouphead and pump configurations to further separate them.

Let me start with the thermoblock design. In a word, junk. These are void of any temperature management that does not involve sacrificing white chickens to the espresso voodoo gods. Think of it as a zepak razor. It looks kind of like a razor but does not work. I find thermoblock machines to fall in this general classification. Some people like them; unfortunately they have never had a real good espresso. Please, don’t start here.

Next is the single boiler. These are pump driven (either vibratory or rotary) and use one boiler as the name implies. A single boiler machine makes a nice espresso purist machine. Most are temperature controlled with a pressurestat or thermostat but if you add a PID (digital fuzzy logic controlled thermostat) they really shine. You have the ability to precisely control the brew temperature. A few examples of this design would be the Rancilio Miss Silvia the Isomac Venus and the Quick Mill Alexia just to name a few. Most of these are available with a PID, and I highly recommend that option. It is worth the coin for the upgrade.

These machines are small, inexpensive, excellent entry level machines and easy to use (with the PID). On the down side, in order to steam with a single boiler, you must stop pulling shots, engage the ‘steam heat’ switch and wait for the machine to come to steam pressure. Then you can steam your milk for your drink. If you plan on entertaining and making several milk drinks, you will have to pull all the shots in succession. The shots will have to sit and die a slow death on your cabinet while the machine heats to steam pressure. The boilers on these tend to be small as well which means you are not going to steam much milk before it falls flat on it face.

Your primary user will be the espresso purist or someone that wants to pull one or two milk drinks at any one time. These are often upgraded within the first couple of years so they do show up on eBay and you watch close, you can get a good deal on one and save a couple hundred.

Ha ha, I'm glad I'm in with some other caffeine junkies.

Unlike some of you with the great home setups you've tortured us with, I could not afford two hobbies and therefore actually sold my Rancilio PID'd Silvia and Macap M4 Stepless grinder TO FUND MY STRAIGHT RAZOR HOBBY!

Yep, probably the only person on the planet that went from a great home setup back to using press pots and a crappo blade grinder.

I still roast my own beans so my coffee is still killer. Oh well, I'm happy with my decision.

My own piece of advice: If you're looking at the Rancilio Silvia, I would not even consider buying one unless you plan to modify it for stable temp control by using a PID kit. The easiest I found and used on mine was from PIDkits.com

Chris L

Moving up the food chain in boiler design, your next jump (and one of the most popular designs) is the heat exchanger.

The heat exchanger machine uses a large single boiler that is always running at above brew temperature (1.0-1.2 bar most of the time) but your brew water is supplied from a heat exchanger that runs through the steam boiler. These machines have the ability to steam milk and pull shots at the same time. Your brew temperature is controlled by a ‘cooling flush’. You engage the brew pump to flush out the superheated water in the heat exchanger. With practice, you can hit within a degree of your desired brew temperature. You can also adjust the temperature on the fly. If you change coffee blends two of three times a day, you simply vary the length of the flush, or the recovery after the flush but before you start the shot. It sounds complicated, but it is not.

Heat exchanger machines span from the small 1.5 liter boiler home machine to the 12+ liter multi group commercial machines. Let me take this opportunity to touch on boiler capacity. Simply put the bigger the boiler, the more steam you get as well as thermal stability. A big brass or stainless 6 liter boiler will resist changing temperature more than a 1.5 liter boiler. That is important because you are passing cold water through a heat exchanger to brew your espresso. That added mass USUALLY leads to a flatter brew temperature although there are many other factors that come into play. Things like the group design, size and length of the internal plumbing, heat exchanger orientation in the boiler, how much of the heat exchanger is exposed to water and steam, length of the heat exchanger cold water injector which controls the cold/hot water intermix in the HX (that is short for heat exchanger) tube, etc… that is beyond this post but if you hear someone talking about them you will at lest have an idea of what they are discussing.

Heat exchanger machines can be run all day with little effect on the machine. I run my machines 24/7 with the exception of the dog days of summer. I don’t want a 240F boiler pumping heat into my house when it is 95 outside. These machines also get large and require some dedicated space in the kitchen or wet bar. Power requirements should also be looked at. Most will run on a 110V 15 amp service but some do require a 20 amp service.

Heat exchangers get the lion’s share of the market and the available options are dizzying. Different group designs, pumps (vibratory or rotary), reservoir supplied, plumbed in, plumbed out, drip tray, the list goes on but those are the major points. I will touch on them in another post.

A sampling of heat exchangers would include the Quick Mill Andreja Premium the Elektra Sixties, model A3 and T1 I have the A3, the Vibiemme Domobar Super (I also have one of these), the Isomac Mondiale, Tea and Millennium (use to own a Millennium), to just name a few. There are a slew of them out there, some exceptional, some barely functional.

Most of these machine cross into what we label as ‘prosumer’ machines. They are above the quality of most ‘home’ machines but not at the level of the coffee shop professional machines although there are single group commercial machines out there (Elektra A3 being an example). They have higher power requirements, take at least a half hour to heat properly, an hour is even better. Many people never move beyond this style of machine although you can make vertical upgrades within the HX category.

You average HX machine user will be the more experienced home barista. You enjoy making several shots a day and enjoy the process of creating your drink. The user may do some entertaining or have multiple family members that drink coffee so pulling multiple shots and steaming milk for multiple drinks is a necessity and enjoys the turn it on and leave it on functionality.

Originally Posted by Padron

I'll vote Quickmill Anita, my wife and I love it Easy to use and make a great shot.

Hey, let's see some shots from that Anita and that nice Mazzer you have there.

Chris L

Double boilers

Double boiler machines use two different boilers. One is dedicated for steam, the other for your brew water. This design is gaining popularity in the market. The separate boilers allow you run your steam boiler at high pressure (1.2-1.4 bar) while maintaining a fixed brew temperature. Most commercial cafés in the US use this design.

The two boilers require two different heating elements, and as such they usually consume more power. They often need a 20 amp service or they have a boiler priority logic which gives the brew boiler priority for heating while pulling a shot. The steam boiler goes into low power so you do not blow your breaker. Those two boilers usually mean a larger footprint in the kitchen as well.

The brew boiler is often controlled by a PID and the steam boiler a pressurestat since the need for precise temperature stability is not required on a steam boiler. The PID allows you set the temperature and forget it, provided you always use the same blend. Unlike the heat exchanger machine, they double boiler requires a heating flush. Many of these machines get what we refer to as a ‘cold nose’ when they sit idle. The group head cools so a short flush is needed to bring the machine to full operating temperature. Once that flush is made, you don’t need to do another. That is why they are so popular in the US café market. You don’t need to teach a part time employee the nuances of a cooling flush. They just push a button once they have prepared the portafilter.

Double boiler machines also allow you to simultaneously steam milk and pull shots. Many of them are getting into the catering class of machine. A single group double boiler can pull shots as fast as you can work the machine (but so can HX machines). The prices also take a noted jump in this category. You are looking at the mid $2k range and up. The new LaMarzocco GS3 hit the US market a month ago, $7500. These are hard core machines and not often found in your casual users kitchen, due in part to the price point.

A few examples of the double boiler machine would be the La Marzocco Linea 1 group commercial, the new La Marzocco GS3 the La Spaziale mini Vivaldi II and the new (so new the first container of them from italy is still on the ocean) Vibiemme Domobar Super Double Boiler

Your double boiler user will usually be one that insists on exacting brew temperature control (sub one degree stability). A heavy espresso drinker, someone that does not mind leaving the machine on 24/7 and occasionally to regularly produces many back to back shots along with milk frothing.

Well, I am out of steam. I will continue the primer tomorrow but I will leave you with a bit of espresso porn. A double shot from a bottomless portafilter in an Elektra A3 espresso machine. The coffee was ground in a Mazzer Kony.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...22103277107107