New machine €1000 budget

bergipau wrote: »

I’m in the very same situation. Ideally I’d love a dual boiler with PID, the silvia pro looks perfect but I can’t justify 1400.
The Oscar II looks good but it doesn’t have a PID, can anyone recommend a heat exchequer with PID?

https://www.homecoffeemachines.ie/collections/quickmill/products/quick-mill-silvano-04005

Quickmill Silvano. It has two thermoblocks, rather than boilers, a 600w one for the coffee and 1000w one for steam, and it has a PID and is €1000

I have a different machine from that manufacturer, a Pegasso, which is a very manual bean-to-cup machine with an excellent integrated flat-burr grinder; which I am very happy with.

I believe Quickmill were very early on the scene with domestic espresso machines and were pioneer users of thermoblocks. The main thing that attracted me to them was I noticed the longevity of their products, with functioning 60's and 70's era machines appearing on ebay.it and ebay.de fairly regularly.

The company motto actually seems to be more than just marketing propaganda:

The Company motto has therefore always been “Made to last for years”:

I also liked that they have quite a history in making coffee grinders, hence the 'mill' part, so that section of my machine isn't just an afterthought and it's by a company that knows how to make a coffee grinder.

wilsixon wrote: »

No sirai. From my understanding, that just adds reliability/longevity especially for those who leave the machine turned on all day. No improvement in performance/quality of shots. Correct?

I have mine set up so it automatically comes on half hour before my morning coffee. And can switch it on from anywhere with Google home. So I don't leave it on all day.

Did you get the sirai? Benefits?

Longevity and the ability to adjust steam pressure and brewing temp I think. But it's fairly minimal stuff so I didn't bother with it personally as I usually only have it on for a few hours during the morning as well.

Surely there is no difference in bean to cup and ready ground?

vinnie_cork wrote: »

Just put in a new kitchen & found an ex display Siemens built in one from a kitchen showroom in Wicklow (not the place I bought my kitchen from). It was never used. Bought for €500, retails at €2,400!
If you like coffee then Bean to cup all the time. But do shop about, can spot good buys.
Previously I had a Gaggia, it cost me about €700 to buy at the time and lasted me 8 years before dying... I drink. A lot of coffee (sometimes 8 a day) so definitely got my money’s worth.

Very near fit-out, looks great.

bilbot79 wrote: »

Surely there is no difference in bean to cup and ready ground?

Huge difference. We were nearly in a cold sweat at thought of running out of beans this week. Delivery came just in time.

"I got a lelit elizabeth [/QUOTE]"

Can you tell me the size of the hole in the top of the water tank on the Elizabeth, please? It's so I can check the size of filters that can be fitted.

mariopepper wrote: »

Now I am also reading its review. If you're interested - read more

I liked this part , it is gold :

The Jura 15284 coffee machine uses premium brewing techniques to create coffee for your brew. While most coffee machines use drip technology to brew their coffee, this one uses pressure techniques to get a more potent brew.

Don’t know about machine, review is hopeless though , hopefully they didn’t pay much for it.
ps. funny fact though,
Jura ,Siemens,Nivona, Mellita and many more coffee machines manufactured by same company , probably on a very same factory ,Eugster Frismag AG

selle italia wrote: »

Cheers for the heads up, ordered one today, good deal all round. Coming from a dedica with open portafilter and basket. For existing owners is it essential to do the cooling flush for 2/3 seconds. Also re maintenance is a back flush required, seems conflicting advice online and no blank basket included. I reckon the steaming of milk will be a steep learning curve with the amount of power it generates.

Yeah a quick flush after it's been heating up for a while is necessary. Would always recommend backflushing regardless of the machine, 3fe sell blank discs if you need em.

My understanding is obviously lacking - why would anyone need or want to modify a well made espresso machine, and am I interpreting it right that people want to reduce the pressure a machine can produce - if so - why?

Just wanted some opinions on these two, a sage bambino plus and seperate sage grinder or the Oscar 2 ?

Has anyone used either of these?

wilsixon wrote: »

The difference between an OK-ish coffee and a good coffee are all those small margins - and the pressure is actually a pretty big "small margin".

Your BS alarm might need some after-factory-modification - James Hoffman knows what he's on about (even if he does come across as a little pretentious!)

No, I'm fine thanks and my BS alarm has a lifetimes refinement and a great track record.

As one example: he stated that he didn't like a mechanical pre infusion because it would shatter the puck and cause channeling. He also pointed out that when you wet grounds, they swell and expand slightly, he also said too high a pressure would compress and compact the puck. The latter two, IMO, contradict the former I do not believe an inrush of pressure to a puck of wet coffee grounds is going to 'shatter' it nor will there be channeling. The pressure and swelling of the grounds will, I think, compact the puck as he mentioned later, correctly. You can't crack and form channels in a liquid, only a solid - and no, a coffee grounds water slurry doesn't constitute an Oobleck. A wetted puck under pressure with liquid is not a solid. I’d like to give James a bucket of wet, freshly mixed concrete, and a hammer, and see him attempt to propagate cracks through the mix from top to bottom.

I would strongly suspect channeling is purely a surface tension driven phenomenon wherein dry powders can repel water to certain degree - as anyone who's mixed cement and water would have observed - so parts of a puck remain dry for most of the shot with most of the flow taking a path of least resistance via the wetted channels. I'd bet that a well wetted puck can't channel, barring grossly coarse grounds and a poorly designed or blocked/malfunctioning shower plate.

He reminds me of HiFi audio geeks who believe in cables and wires having special audible properties never before identified, measured or commented on by materials scientists and electrical engineers. He's not quite into the territory of the man selling the green marker pen you colour the edge of your CDs with to audibly improve how the laser beam passes through it and who's detector is outputting a digital bitstream, but he's a cousin.

If he or anyone can point me to a proper paper based on experiments with 3D ultrasound images showing channeling in coffee mud, I'll happily eat my words, but given there seems to be only a single paper measuring and quantifying the actual processes that occur in a Mocha pot, explaining why to avoid, I'd have some doubt as to anyone having produced such a paper.

With my machine, assuming it's pressure guage is accurate, 9 bar would coincide with too coarse a grind and the extraction of a 9g shot would be over in seconds. I'd most commonly be doing shots at 12-14 bar. So basically the pressure is being determined by the grind setting and needs to be in that range to achieve a more reasonable flow rate.

zweton wrote: »

Just wanted some opinions on these two, a sage bambino plus and seperate sage grinder or the Oscar 2 ?

Has anyone used either of these? Are they two good options?

I have owned neither. I had a look at the Sage machines when I was last on the hunt.

For me personally. it would be no contest, in favour of the Oscar II. I'd buy a grinder from a company that makes grinders and has a track record doing it.

Having said that, It would also depend on the price of the Oscar 2. I'd hapily get another QuickMill, Lelit, or the like, if the price/quality seemed better at the time.

Even cheaper with a bank transfer.

That seems to be a bargain given it's $1,620-$1,925 in the US.

There will always be contrarians.