Coffee - do you and how do you consume it?

[ryanosaur]

Ha, well thats the thing with coffee, it's all what tastes good to you.
Reminds me of "the slayer shot" very short long pull... The coffee I prefer is lighter roast and definitely more fruit/bright notes. Are you brewing at 9 bar or less? Do you keep temp around 200?

you have my curiosity to play around a bit haha

I cannot confirm temp at the brew head, but I am a little over 9 bars.
My machine was supposed to be set lower but when I checked after several years was at 13. I adjusted that last winter when I upgraded my screen, basket and replaced the pump.
Sometimes I want to bump my pressure back up.

 

[KellenVancouver]

 

[Berwhale]

After 8 years of pretty heavy use, my Delonghi bean to cup machine getting a bit leaky. It still works, but it really needs to be dismantled and have several o-rings replaced. So i've decided to invest in a Breville The Barista Express Impress (which is sold under Sage brand in the UK - we associate the Breville brand with sandwich toasters). So now i'm waiting for Black Friday and have my fingers crossed that the Delonghi will last until then without blowing a gasket and forcing me to get the AeroPress out.

I do intend to service the Delonghi (whilst drinking a nice coffee) and I will then put it aside for when my daughter goes off to university.

 

[pseudoid]

So now i'm waiting for Black Friday

Would it be rude of me to suggest to you to up your game up a bit?
imo: DeLonghi used to be an all plastic-y brand sold in 'department stores' and we all know what happened to those stores. Maybe deLonghi was smart enough to go upscale but there are so many established/proven espresso machines that have been discussed in this ASR thread. Rancillios and up.

Tonight I needed to order some spare parts for my brand of espresso machine:

Can you do the same for a DeLonghi?

 

[Berwhale]

Would it be rude of me to suggest to you to up your game up a bit?
imo: DeLonghi used to be an all plastic-y brand sold in 'department stores' and we all know what happened to those stores. Maybe deLonghi was smart enough to go upscale but there are so many established/proven espresso machines that have been discussed in this ASR thread. Rancillios and up.

Tonight I needed to order some spare parts for my brand of espresso machine:
View attachment 323571
Can you do the same for a DeLonghi?

I think you may have misread my post. I am intending to replace the Delonghi with a Sage/Breville machine. I'm going to service the Delonghi in the hope that my daughter can get another couple of years use out of it - as you correctly state, it is made of plastic and although parts are cheap and readily available, something is going to break or wear out fairly soon that is not worth fixing. A maintenance kit with a complete set of new seals (30 o-rings!) was only £12.49, so I think it's worth a shot keeping it going for a couple of years.

 

[Count Arthur]

After 8 years of pretty heavy use, my Delonghi bean to cup machine getting a bit leaky. It still works, but it really needs to be dismantled and have several o-rings replaced. So i've decided to invest in a Breville The Barista Express Impress (which is sold under Sage brand in the UK - we associate the Breville brand with sandwich toasters). So now i'm waiting for Black Friday and have my fingers crossed that the Delonghi will last until then without blowing a gasket and forcing me to get the AeroPress out.

I do intend to service the Delonghi (whilst drinking a nice coffee) and I will then put it aside for when my daughter goes off to university.

I had a Delonghi bean to cup machine, like this:

It worked well for many years, but it too developed a slight leak. I opened it up a couple of times, once to un-jam the mechanism and to see if I could fix the leak, but I never managed to find where the water was coming from. In the end I placed it on a shallow tray and just mopped up the water from time to time.

A couple of years ago replaced it with a very manual Gaggia and a Niche grinder and I'm very happy with them.

 

[Berwhale]

I had a Delonghi bean to cup machine, like this:

View attachment 323640
It worked well for many years, but it too developed a slight leak. I opened it up a couple of times, once to un-jam the mechanism and to see if I could fix the leak, but I never managed to find where the water was coming from. In the end I placed it on a shallow tray and just mopped up the water from time to time.

A couple of years ago replaced it with a very manual Gaggia and a Niche grinder and I'm very happy with them.

Yes, that's the ESAM4200 that I have. I bought it for £230 in 2015 when I was commuting to The City (1:45 each way on the train and tube), so being able to make a 1/2 decent brew for the train was a priority.

I have looked into getting a Gaggia (probably a Classic Pro Evo 2023) and a decent grinder, but i'm not planning on making a hobby out of coffee at this point in my life. There are also other people in the house that want to make coffee. The Sage seems a reasonable compromise that should be a step up from the Delonghi without requiring me (or others) to learn a bunch of barista skills (but with some scope to do so if we want).

Thinking about how long i've had the ESAM4200 made me wonder how much coffee has been through it. Trigger Warning: Coffee snobs look away now

I generally buy 1KG (2.2lbs) bags of Lavazza beans from Amazon on Subscribe & Save - I started with Lavazza Rossa, progressed to Creme e Aroma and have settled on the Qualità Oro. There have also been various diversions to other beans such as Illy (very nice but a bit pricey) and I also buy decaf coffee for my wife (preferably Lavazza beans).

Anyway, back to Amazon. This morning, I worked out how to scrape my order history from Amazon's website using this handy little Chrome add-on. I pulled the resulting CSVs into Excel and filtered the data on 'coffee beans'. Here are the Amazon coffee purchases by weight since I bought the ESAM4200 in early November 2015...

Year	Coffee Purchased through Amazon (KG)
2015 (Nov-Dec)	3​
2016​	7​
2017​	6​
2018​	11​
2019​	11​
2020​	12​
2021​	13​
2022​	18​
2023 (Jan-Oct)	17​
Total:	98​

So that's 216lbs of coffee for our friends over the other side of the pond. I reckon that I have bought at least another 25KG outside of Amazon when I factor in decaff and other random bean purchases, so total coffee through the ESAM4200 is probably over 125KG/275lbs.

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this data, other than it's obvious that the cost of the coffee going through the machine is much greater than the cost of the machine. For example, 2022 coffee bean purchases through Amazon totalled £215 for 18KG.

 

[monkeyboy]

Does anyone have a Flair 58?...it's a bit expensive for what you get, but the minimalism is appealing...

Flair 58 First Look | Flair 58 Overview | Flair Espresso

The Flair 58 has focused on maximizing the workflow of manual, at-home espresso extractions. This is the Gold Standard from Flair Espresso.

flairespresso.com

 

[delta76]

Does anyone have a Flair 58?...it's a bit expensive for what you get, but the minimalism is appealing...

Flair 58 First Look | Flair 58 Overview | Flair Espresso

The Flair 58 has focused on maximizing the workflow of manual, at-home espresso extractions. This is the Gold Standard from Flair Espresso.

flairespresso.com

Have heard nothing but positive things about it. Within the limitations of a manual lever

 

[pseudoid]

I think you may have misread my post. I am intending to replace the Delonghi with a Sage/Breville machine.

Sorry, my bad.

I have ended up doing business with UK espressoshop.com.uk - multiple times - as they seem to have many OEM brands' parts.
They seem to have better prices than our US counterparts, even after VAT and S/H.

 

[palm]

Have heard nothing but positive things about it. Within the limitations of a manual lever

I have a Cafelat Robot since when it was out, and back then the Flair and other variants were asking too many steps for a morning routine. The robot is really easy and this new Flair seems quite close, except what happens at the top after pouring hot water.

 

[delta76]

I have a Cafelat Robot since when it was out, and back then the Flair and other variants were asking too many steps for a morning routine. The robot is really easy and this new Flair seems quite close, except what happens at the top after pouring hot water.

I really like James Hoffman style of review

. he answers those questions
- can it make great espressos (spoiler, yes. some even say it makes the best espressos they've ever had, but that's subjective of course)
- is the process enjoyable (yes, with some caveats/quirks)
- is the price justified
the title of the video is spot on (and another thing I like about James as well, he does not make clickbait title)
I don't think there is an overall better manual lever espresso machine than Flair 58. better in certain aspects, maybe. better overall, likely not.

 

[monkeyboy]

The 58 is on my xmass watch list...they have made some modifications to the device to improve workflow...

 

[pseudoid]

I enjoy the process of manual/lever machines, absent of any digital controls/aides/displays.

Although Hoffman-dude states the Flair58 pulls good-to-great shots, it seems like it is still in design/development stage.
Maybe Flair59[?] will be able to integrate its heater element, its controller and its power brick into its base, w/a built-in scale.
I am guessing that the user will never use that current gauge after familiarity with the proper lever pressure required.

But then again, Flair might as well offer a different model with a boiler in the rear and provide full control of thermal stability by adding H2O temp/psi gauges.
My 2cents!

 

[palm]

When I got the robot, I had a small flat for most part of the week and I didn’t want to have an espresso machine barely used, also for cleaning reasons, certainly not an automatic one. Maybe now with different circumstances I would make a different choice.
And of course it‘s fun to feel directly by the pressure you apply if the grind is too coarse or too fine.

 

[ryanosaur]

Oof. That Flair is not for me. No thank you.

 

[pseudoid]

Oof. That Flair is not for me. No thank you.

The choices that we make in life: I prefer Music over Flair, as well!
Price being no object, I suspect the Flair will beat a Starbucks barista+brew.

 

[suttondesign]

Does anyone have a Flair 58?...it's a bit expensive for what you get, but the minimalism is appealing...

Flair 58 First Look | Flair 58 Overview | Flair Espresso

The Flair 58 has focused on maximizing the workflow of manual, at-home espresso extractions. This is the Gold Standard from Flair Espresso.

flairespresso.com

bought one last year, gave up in frustration and sent it back. fussy to the nth.

 

[suttondesign]

My Izzo Alex Leva has yet another malfunction. Takes weeks and weeks to get service. So I am getting a La Marzocco Linea Mini because the sole espresso machine servicer in my area (Bellingham, WA) is a dealer who will regularly and timely service it. And the US distributor is nearby in Seattle with a warehouse full of parts. I love the big Izzo lever machine, but it just hasnt been reliable or easy to get serviced because so few servicers know what to make of them.

 

[KellenVancouver]