This is a relevant watch by James Hoffmann on how open source espresso machines kinda turned into Decent Espresso. (edit: ok, on rewatch i guess it wasn't open source, it was kickstarter, however philosophy was the similar - use off-the-shelf components and software)
For what it's worth, i've had a Decent DE1+ for about 2 years, and while it's very unlikely i'll change, i am excited to see what other options crop up in the coming years. for me personally, there is no competition, mainly from a quick-to-heat and pressure/flow profiling perspective, both of which are quite important to me.
my understanding is the hardware side for accurate flow-profiling really is quite hard with off-the-shelf components, so the open source espresso machine is unlikely to become a widely available commodity, unlike say 3d printers which can easily be homebrewed and work amazingly well.
The Decent machines sure are nice, and they definitely are pricey -- more than my admittedly absurd traditional machine, even -- but with so much "smarts" I just assume that they will eventually become a maintenance nightmare.
It's kind of a sad thing, but after 30 years in software I have come away with a strong bias that is best stated as "Stop putting software in things that don't need software." I'll cop to the fact that my R58 has a touchscreen controller hanging of the side, which is somewhat inelegant, but its job is limited and thus acceptable to me. (It keeps time, and has the machine ready for me in the two windows I know I like coffee while letting it sleep the rest of the time; it's also apparently the home of the smarts for the PID.)
There's a machine called the Meticulous which is launching a kickstarter soon which is attempting to somewhat do this. It's a lot simpler mechanically because it's just an automated lever machine (i.e. no pump).
The downside is no steam wand but tbh if I didn't already have a Decent DE1Pro I'd probably get a Meticulous or a Flair 58 and that new nanofoamer pro for milk.
This is neat, but I wish we’d move from retrofitting Gaggia Classics to something more modern. Decent Espresso showed us that boiler machines for home use are a dead end, because they have too much thermal mass for rapid switching between brewing and steaming.
This is why I initially considered buying a Gaggia and modding it, but ultimately got a Breville Infuser as it basically comes pre-modded and is thermocoil-based, so you can quickly switching to steaming. It’s not the fastest steaming in the world, but I think it’s actually good for beginners to learn how to steam on a slow machine.
> Decent Espresso showed us that boiler machines for home use are a dead end, because they have too much thermal mass for rapid switching between brewing and steaming.
I will hasard that most espresso machine owners are like me, just like espresso and never steam. I can count on one hand the number of time I used my Silvia steam wand in the past five years.
I think regular milk drinks are mostly an American thing.
I use the steam wand every single morning. It's a cappuccino to start the day, then regular espresso after that.
Cappuccinos are quite popular at breakfast in Italy, which is where espresso is from. I don't know what makes you think it has anything to do with America.
These 5k espresso machines (or a DYI project where you spend the equivalent in time) don't really make sense in a country where an average salary is 1.5k and the average coffee is 1.
Hello from Australia! Not only are most coffee orders with milk, Aussies drink a load of milk at home. Like I used to easily smash a litre of milk a day (cereal, coffee, tea, just drinking it from the fridge).
I now don’t drink milk at all and have black coffee at home and out and I am not the norm.
I would be very surprised if that was the case; you'd see much more machines out there that omit the steaming wand entirely.
While _I_ mostly drink espressos when making coffee for myself, I think overall I made more flat whites for my wife and any friends that come over, then I did shots just for myself on my machine.
If you have two machines with very similar price and quality, but one was espresso-only, and the other had a steamer, what do you think the people that only drink espressos would buy?
Zero marginal cost features have some very unusual economics.
I grew up in eastern europe and I've been drinking lattes since I was little. (though I didn't know they were called lattes until much later, milk was just part of coffee for me) My Silvia steams a few lattes every day. ymmv
Reading the rest of this thread it seems like I should look into moving to Australia for broader coffee compatibility with my peers.
This is a commonly held belief, I'm Italian and I would like to clarify a bit.
- I have worked at a bar (1) in Italy and more than 90% of the coffee drinks ordered during any given day were single shot espressos. Cappuccino orders however were not uncommon in the morning.
- Cappuccino was invented in Austria, however it was popularised in Italy and it still is very popular to this day. It is consumed only in the first half of the morning, for the rest of the day Italians prefer to drink exclusively espresso shots.
- The drink that is known in the Anglosphere as "latte" doesn't really exist in Italy except in some touristy areas, normally, if you ask for a "latte" in an Italian bar, they'll give you a glass of milk.
We have however two drinks that are similar to what you call "latte":
- Caffè latte, which is similar to the French café au lait but the coffee is made in a moka pot. This is usually consumed at home.
- In bars you can order a "latte macchiato" which is similar to what you call "latte" but the coffee is added at the end, on top of the milk, and it is much weaker than a latte (this is reflected by the name "latte macchiato" which means "stained milk" i.e. all milk with just a dash of coffee).
PS Latte macchiato is not to be confused with caffè macchiato which is what is known internationally simply as "macchiato" i.e. almost all coffee with just a dash of milk.
(1) An Italian "bar" roughly corresponds to what English speaking people refer to as "cafe" although it will also serve alcoholic drinks. Actual cafes are not popular in Italy and they are only found in touristy spots.
We (Americans) used to call it cafe latte in the early days when it was getting popular in the early 90s but we like to optimize and since latte wasn't taken yet, we just chopped off the cafe part. You can see Kramer order a cafe latte in seinfeld and most stores still have it written as cafe latte, especially hipster ones, but we just don't need to specify cafe to get the point across.
yes, that makes sense! But the American latte is a little bit different than our caffe latte / latte macchiato - for the reasons I mentioned above.
Personally, I actually prefer the American style latte to the Italian style latte macchiato! Italian Latte Macchiato is quite weak while Third Wave style Latte has more punch and you can taste the coffee more.
yes ristretto and lungo are fairly common, the ristretto is more common than the lungo in my experience.
The lungo is not to be confused with an Americano, it's just a slightly bigger espresso shot (I used to make a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio - in other words, I used a single shot portafilter but the amount of coffee coming out is like a double shot) - note that in Italy, shots are smaller than overseas because we mostly use single shot baskets (7-9 grams of ground coffee) whereas in "third wave coffee" the default is to use a double shot basket (around 18 gram of ground coffee). So the Italian lungo would be just as much liquid as you would get by ordering an espresso in USA or Australia (but much weaker due to being made with less ground coffee)
In case you're looking for advice: I went from being a daily HX machine (rocket) user to a Cafelat Robot at the beginning of the pandemic & haven't looked back. It has zero warm-up time and I make better espresso with it more consistently than I ever could with the e61.
I'm not sure I agree with you about 'most espresso machine owners', but if you do only care about the spro, I can highly recommend the manual approach.
> Decent Espresso showed us that boiler machines for home use are a dead end.
Do you mean single boiler machines? Many home machines have no problem switching because they just use two boilers, one for brewing and one for steaming.
Our machine has a 300ml boiler for brewing the shot, and a 1 liter boiler for the steam wand and hot water wand, and it's great.
I can pull shots quickly after turning the machine on because the 300ml boiler heats up fast. Steaming takes a few minutes to heat up, but once there it'll keep going for a long time, and I can keep pulling shots at the right temp in the mean time.
Way happier with the double boiler machine than I was with the single boiler we used to use. Much less planning required for my own use and I can actually serve several guests a nice espresso/latte/cappuccino from the machine in a reasonable time.
Jumping on the double-boiler fan train. My family likes lattes and I like espressos. I make them one at a time, and it's nice to go from pulling the shot, to steam, next shot & steam, etc.
I'll be doing this when I need to replace my machine, I went with the Breville Barista Pro which has been fantastic but whenever the families turn up I might end up making 6-8 coffees in a row. The double boiler would have saved me quite some time over the last few years.
Dual boiler machines have been a perfectly fine solution to this problem for a very, very long time.
Decent's offering is good but vastly overcomplicated for the majority of people who don't want a tablet on their coffee machine in their kitchen. I much prefer the tactile experience of using a traditional espresso machine.
> Dual boiler machines have been a perfectly fine solution to this problem for a very, very long time.
A fine, but expensive and mechanically complex solution. Dual boiler machines generally cost thousands even for small home machines. Commercial dual boiler machines will set you back at least $10-30k, easily.
Besides that, there's the warm up time. Often 30+ minutes on a commercial machine, then the electricity cost of keeping several litres of water and heavy blocks of metal at boiling point too.
It's high time espresso machines got a mechanicals simpler, cheaper, more environmentally friendly update. On the home front, Breville and Decent are doing this, while commercially I think some Ascaso machines use the same tech as Decent (not 100% sure on that though and when I reached out to them about it when considering one of their machines they just told me "work with your local dealer". There's exactly one Ascaso dealer in the country and they don't speak English so that wasn't much help).
Not to dismiss dual boilers or even good heat exchangers. Both of them are beautiful technological designs. But they basically haven't changed since the sixties.
> A fine, but expensive and mechanically complex solution
I'm not sure I agree that they're mechanically complex. They're engineering 101. A pump, a heater and a thermostat. They're rather mechanically simple.
> Dual boiler machines generally cost thousands even for small home machines.
The _cheapest_ Decent is $3500.
> Commercial dual boiler machines will set you back at least $10-30k, easily.
You don't need a $10k-$30k machine to get a competent dual boiler. If you look at something like a Lelit Bianca, a dual boiler with preinfusion and flow control while $500 cheaper than the cheapest Decent, you can pull your first shot in 10 minutes. A home brewer making espresso on a Bianca isn't going to notice the difference on a $10k or $30k machine because at that price point what you're paying for isn't the ability to pull a shot, it's the ability to pull thousands of them every day of the year.
> But they basically haven't changed since the sixties.
That's true but I argue they don't need to. We don't need to iterate on everything. Technology doesn't always make things better.
> You don't need a $10k-$30k machine to get a competent dual boiler
Commercially, you do (I own a small cafe chain so I can claim some knowledge here). The Lelit Bianca is a beautiful home machine but you can't use it commercially - first of all, due to safety certs (not sure about the Bianca specifically but most small home machines don't have commercial certs). But also because it just isn't built to handle a morning rush of customers. I don't think you could make more than 10 or so lattes in a row before it would lose steam.
> I'm not sure I agree that they're mechanically complex. They're engineering 101. A pump, a heater and a thermostat. They're rather mechanically simple
I think that list is missing a few of the components that make up an espresso machine :)
But nonetheless I agree, there are far more complex machines in regular use. My complaints are more about warm up time, hard limits on how many coffees you can serve in a row, and electricity use.
> That's true but I argue they don't need to. We don't need to iterate on everything. Technology doesn't always make things better.
I partially agree with this but again, from a commercial perspective I guess I have different goals. Actually at home I use a Flair 58 manual lever machine and a hand grinder. Beautifully simple and I could heat water using a wood fire and make it work.
But commercially, I want the tech I use to improve. I want better efficiency, better reliability, and lower energy use. I don't have the numbers for our yearly electric bill just from the coffee machine, but it's a lot and a good chunk of the day it just sits there reheating water over and over.
It's the same as saying you should never need to upgrade your work laptop. Wasn't the 720p screen you had in 2005 perfectly adequate? Why do you need more than 1gb RAM?
What? The Breville BES920 has been around for almost a decade, takes < 5 minutes to heat both boilers and regularly is for sale for < $1000 AUD (~$500 USD).
You could also use a single boiler (which are better at temperature regulation) for espresso pulls and a thermoblock for steam.
That said, boilers are pretty niche for home use. In order to maintain good thermal regulation you need a decent sized mass of water. That means a long time to preheat and a lot of wasted energy.
This isn't a dealbreaker for some, but for a casual consumer who pulls one or two shots per day, it's pretty lacking in convenience.
most of the bad stuff is interpersonal drama caused by the fact that John (Decent Owner) is fully committed to TCL for app and firmware development.
some prominent community members have rewritten a lot of the front end using python and JS.
when disagreements and call outs arose between this group and the owner, well, access to the company Basecamp is controlled by the owners. there are big personalities all around.
as somebody who enjoys a bit of the popcorn but is uninvested in the outcome, it's not a big deal as a consumer of the machine. if you want to hack on the software, his personality is probably going to affect you a little more.
of course, somebody else may step in to give a different historical account.
He abuses the idea of open source to get free work for his commercial product. They have invested near 0 dollars into development of the tablet application.
I'll admit to being a complete heathen and warming milk in the microwave and frothing it with a $10 hand wand before pouring it over my moka pot brewed expression, but I'm happy with my coffee.
We have a single boiler / dual circuit espresso machine [1], and I think it's a perfect home espresso machine. The only thing that annoys me about it is how loud the vibration pump is, I guess a rotary pump would be nicer.
It's mechanically extremely simple, there are no electronics that can fail, it takes 10 minutes to heat up, and I can pull shots and steam continuously without switching between the modes.
Granted, it doesn't have precise temperature or pressure control, so the only way to control the extraction process is by changing the amount of coffee, or how fine you grind it. If you want to do barista competitions, this is not the machine for you. But if you just want to enjoy good espressos and cappucinos at home, then tech from the 1960s is good enough.
Lelit is the counterpoint to that - I have a Lelit Elizabeth which, while expensive, is a fraction of what a Decent costs - So I’m not sure “don’t use boilers” pans out.
Yep, even the Lelit Bianca which is a dual-boiler and has both flow control and a pressure knob is still cheaper than the cheapest Decent despite the much more robust build.
Another vote for Lelit, I have an Anna PL41TEM with the PID controller, have made 2-3 perfect espressos every day, 7 days a week, since 2017 like clockwork.
That's >4,000 shots and counting... A very solid piece of kit.
Switching from brewing to steaming takes about 4 minutes on a single-boiler Rancilio, during which I can prepare the rest of the breakfast or empty the dishwasher. For home use, this is very practical. Besides, a single boiler means less work to descale the machine, and fewer components that can break.
I think this is an example of part of the future of manufacturing.
Some things will be built from COTS parts. Others will be built as custom one offs. Obviously there will be products made with a hybrid of methods of building things.
But increasing there will be an industry of people taking products and modding or rebuilding them. From people who upgrade cars, to modding watches for a unique look. Or taking a common product like an expresso maker and make it open like this, which could end up creating a market for COTS parts instead of modding old products.
As much as people are excited about 3D printing and high end technology for manufacturing, rebuilding and upgrading old junk has huge potential, as companies converting old cars into EVs have found.
I've been meaning to upgrade from a Breville Bambino, but key for me is a machine I can turn on and brew coffee right away on a whim (small footprint would also be nice), but I haven't found any options between the Brevilles and the Decent.
I have my Gaggia Classic connected to a smart plug. Okay, it’s not _instant_, but I can decide I want a coffee, turn on the machine from my phone and it’ll be heated by the time I go and make it.
I know this is how many people do it, it strikes me as surprising that you don't need this compromise at the very low end (Breville Bambino), nor at the high end (Decent), but there's nothing in between
>Decent Espresso showed us that boiler machines for home use are a dead end
I don't think this is true. I think what you may mean is that SINGLE boiler machines are not great for people who want to make drinks that involve steaming.
Many people make only espresso, and don't use milk at all. A single boiler is going to be fine for them.
Many people who like milk drinks use double-boiler machines, which work beautifully (e.g., my Rocket R58).
My Gaggia would be too slow for a commercial operation, but, if I flip the switch to steam right after the shot, by the time I go to the fridge and pour out 200 ml milk and walk back to the machine, it’s ready to steam.
And, you need to flip the switch back to coffee right after steaming and then run the brew switch to refill the boiler, which pulls the temp down.
I’d still like a PID control with a readout, though.
The hardest part of hardware is mass production and support. For a lot of things doing a good one-off is merely expensive and time-intensive, but great as a hobby. That's why a lot of DIY efforts are super impressive and have satisfying results, even if you could never scale and productize them.
Right, my theoretical one off hacked espresso machine might be perfect, but requires troubleshooting or programming skills or soldering to keep it working perfect - pretty much a no go for most consumers.
Wow, this is so unfair to them. I followed the project with intense interest from day 1, and "Feels like they more or less took the money and called it quits" is total BS.
To be clear, I think the original ZPM gang got in waaaay over their heads - one of the biggest problems is that the kickstarter was just far too successful: the ZPM team had to go from building a prototype to actually worrying about how they were going to manufacture these at a sizable scale. I think it's totally fair to say they handled things quite poorly as it became clear they were struggling, and if I were a backer left with very little to show for it I'd probably be mad, too, but to say "they more or less took the money and called it quits" is not, at all, what happened.
I added lots of features which didn't require high-end components... (e.g. dual PID, auto-fill, auto-cool-down, integrated scale, auto-brew, etc. etc.). With basic components, I was able to achieve a constant flow rate and pre-infusion.
I've been wanting an Espresso machine recently but it seems like they're a lot more expensive than I hoped for a decent one. I was spoiled by the one my Italian American parents had that was very nice but probably cost them a pretty penny to buy. It was a beautiful old metal machine with none of the digital bells and whistles that seem to plague the newer machines.
Sometimes I use my moka pot which isn't the same but still produces very nice coffee when used right.
Yeah, it's definitely not cheap to get into home espresso if you want any level of control and consistency to the process.
I got a Bambino Plus, which I'm generally happy with. There are some flaws, but for "only" $500 it's a pretty competitive machine for my use-case. Unfortunately that's where the costs begin, not end. Generally "necessary" upgrades include a non-pressurized filter basket ($20), a bottomless portafilter so you can observe your pulls and make adjustments ($50), and a coffee distributor which will help significantly with consistent pulls on a consumer-grade machine ($50). You'll also need a scale ($50).
And now you need an espresso-capable grinder. A lot of people use a Baratza Encore ($150), but the stepped grind-size adjustments can render it impossible to dial in correctly. For a continuous-adjustment grinder you're talking at least $500. There are very good hand grinders you could use instead for $100–$200, but grinding espresso shots by hand every time gets old fast.
All in all with taxes, you're talking a minimum of around $750 for a bare-bones setup that will have a lot of frustration and difficultly with consistency to about $1,250 for a more recommended setup that will have you repeatedly pulling decent shots.
Obviously I'm being a bit loose with the definition of "bare-bones", as plenty of people are happy with a Bambino ($350) and a cheap grinder ($50). But this is what I think would be the definition someone who prefers third-wave specialty coffee would use as a competitive alternative to going to their local coffee shop.
FWIW, I have a fancier machine, but don't have any of that optional equipment. I have a decent and consistent burr grinder, but other than that my optional equipment is the tamper and a toothpick for distribution. This is mostly because the biggest variable I seem to deal with is bean quality and age, and the only way I've really been able to get consistent results is purely by feel based on how the beans look in the filter basket after grinding and a quick stir with the toothpick. The result is that I generally get the shot spot-on about 9/10 times. As for the 10th, an iffy shot can be turned into a decent latte. ;)
In any case, I think all of the extra equipment definitely helps with consistency, but I think one can get good results with practice without all of the extras. At the very least, one could work their way up to that point.
Surely you have a scale :) And if you have a fancier machine, I'm guessing you have a non-pressurized filter basket as well. At that point you're (I think) only skipping the distributor and the bottomless portafilter.
Not sure what you need a scale for. Typically the grinder has a timer. If it's not enough coffee, you turn the timer a bit longer, if it's too much coffee, you turn it a bit shorter.
The extraction amount can be estimated by eye, or you can also just look at the color of the crema to determine when to stop extracting.
A scale is nice to follow instructions if you've never used an espresso machine before, but I don't think it is necessary. Or maybe my taste buds just aren't discerning enough :)
> A scale is nice to follow instructions if you've never used an espresso machine before, but I don't think it is necessary. Or maybe my taste buds just aren't discerning enough :)
I manage to get a very good shot 9 times out of 10 just by eyeballing things. A scale might help, but I feel like my biggest variable is the state of the beans I'm using. I'll generally grind older beans a little finer, and fresher beans a little less fine to get the nice "fluffy" output. Based on that, I'll level and tamp, and adjust tamp pressure with older beans needing a bit more pressure.
When pulling the shot, I also look at the flow and crema color to know when to stop.
I started with timers and scales and rarely got a good shot, thanks to the varying quality of my beans. Learning to read the beans and adjust accordingly is what worked for me. For those with better quality beans, scales and measures can definitely help create reliably reproducible results.
Espresso is a pursuit that rewards precision. Eyeballing your shots and trusting the timer are things that will produce wild variance in experience.
Shot scales are tremendous assets. It's a category of thing I didn't even know existed before I got my machine. A pal sent me one as a "welcome to the crazy coffee club" gift, and if it broke tomorrow I'd order a replacement from my phone before I left the kitchen.
With it, I can track my extraction precisely. I go in with 20g of grounds, and look for a 40g shot ideally extracted in 23-25 seconds.
If you don't have a pressurized portafilter basket, the scale is virtually necessary to ensure you're getting the same amount of coffee each shot. This doesn't sound like a big deal, except with a normal portafilter basket the only thing holding back the pressure is just the puck of grounds. Increasing or decreasing the dose by even mild amounts can wildly affect the shot pull time just like changing the grind size can.
I don't have a scale, and I use whatever basket came with the machine, which I do believe is unpressurized. I don't have the bottomless portafilter, though. I feel like eyeballing pressure gauge and the flow from the regular basket is usually sufficient for me to ascertain the quality of my grind, tamping, and distribution.
To add to this useful post - you can get second hand grinders from cafes quite cheaply. To avoid the massive ones, the models like the Super Jolly can be fitter with an entirely compatible hopper from a mini.
The Mazzer ones are indestructible and can be painted to look pretty special.
They might not have quite the kudos of the fancier models though, and are more of a dependable workhorse.
If you’re after beauty and limited electronics, the Faema e61 is still made (ignore the Jubilee, the Legend is the one I mean). Most parts are I interchangeable with the original.
At the other end of the scale, and making coffee that I’m not sure I could tell apart, is the cult classic, the Rancilio Silvia. You’ll pick a second hand one up quite cheap, and they are very good.
Mine made approximately 15k coffees with one cheap service 10 years in. It’s still going well.
The rancilio looks great. A different comment said it takes 4 minutes to switch from brewing to steaming? Is that correct? I quite like a flat white in the morning and 4 mins is quite a while ;)
I think it’s quicker than that, but I took a different approach. I
steamed, switched to espresso then released the excess pressure into a jug. Then made coffee.
FWIW I think the Flair brand offers the best price performance for entry level espresso. It takes more practice to get a consistent shot, but it can definitely make good coffee. There are now many good hand grinders that can do espresso grind for less than $200. Then you just need a kettle.
The Wacoco products also make a solid shot, but they are even more inconvenient for home use.
I love the Flair. I've been using it around 2 years now just about every day.
It's just right for home use where you're not making lots of espresso. It's simple, has basically nothing to break, wastes extremely little energy, takes up very little space on the counter, etc..
And once you get good at using it you can do lots of things that require very very expensive boiler machines to do and make very good espresso.
I’ve been working on a raspberry pi 0w based PID controller for my Gaggia.
It’s working quite well. I think the SD card based installation flow could really help a lot of people who would otherwise need to flash an MCU.
Currently it’s only doing PID temperature control. I’d like to benchmark model predictive control. I’d also like to do some of the more advanced features like pressure control, wire up a scale, and make a nice web UI.
What kind of pressure are we taking about? This project would definetely benefit with chating with a barista and understanding the principle of brewing a coffe shot, or working/getting experience with a professional machine. Personally i think the best you can get at home (unless you can afford a pro machine) is aeropress. Dead serious
How do you know this person hasn't had plenty of relevant experience? And no hard disagree on aeropress. You can make great espresso at the correct temperature/pressure with non-pro machines. I make a few a week with a Flair Pro 2 and they're very consistent. Like <$700 for lever+grinder+kettle. I also have an aeropress and it's fine but they make different drinks.
Espresso is typically made with 9 bar of pressure.
An aeropress doesn't actually generate any pressure. It just moves a column of water through a puck of coffee like a percolator. You can buy some special add-ons for the aeropress that cause it to build pressure but it's really just for generating more foamy/crema brew and not getting a proper espresso shot out of it. All that said the aeropress is still awesome and a great way to brew coffee, it's just not going to replicate espresso shots.
About the Aeropress, I guess the question is: When I press it down (in my case, using the elbow for added pressure) how many bars can a typical user reach?
Let's do a little calculation. For an upper bound, let's say you press your full weight onto it and the coffee grounds' resistance is not the limiting factor. That's maybe 90kg, times the acceleration of gravity, for about 900 newtons. That force is applied to a pi*(30mm)^2 or ~3^-3 m^2 area. That gives us a pressure of 900/3e-3 = 3e5 Pa or 3 bars.
James Hoffmann answered this with a modded aeropress with a pressure sensor: a typical aeropress brew is in the range of half a bar. The max he could achieve was 1.5 bars, but like he says, no one brews like that. He also found anything past 0.5 bars began to taste awful.
No. The aim of the aeropress is good extraction , not foam/cream. And i doubt you get 9 bars from that thing in the photo. Therefore i suggest an aeropress (and learn about extraction and taste) instead of building a machine without understanding the principle of brewing a shot. For which you need a ceramic grinder by the way. But do not get me wrong, i am all for open source and building things. It might not be about coffee though.
The builder reuses the pump from a real espresso machine. It might not reach exactly 9 bars, but it's between 7 and 9. I don't know where your skepticism comes from.
Source: I own and repair espresso machines as my hobby and for my daily coffee habit.
Indeed I seem to have misread the answer, and have answered poorly. Thanks for pointing that out. My point is that understanding taste, grinding and extraction will take you a long way. One of the keys for extraction is fixing the variables. If you for example have a steel grinder that does not grind evenly(and burns or heat the coffe with friction) the resulting extraction is a result of hazard. You will have both overextracting and underextracting.In the same way not having consistent ( enough) pressure will give poor results. There are ways to compensate but you are going to have «errors» in the taste. I have trained as a barista, trained with scent kits, and have been given enough home coffe brews (supposely espresso) by coffe fans made with home machines that I lost hope in any of those machines. Really experiencing taste while limiting the method is more benefical in my opinion.
And kust to be extra clear I am not saying that an aeropress gives you an espresso shot.
Pressure is not an issue since a vibratory pump in the most basic espresso machine can produce 15 bar of pressure quite easily. In fact, manufacturers have to put an overpressure valve in their machines to limit maximum pressure to the optimal 9 bar.
Also, this project is about sophisticated temperature and pressure/flow control, something even many/most professional machines simply can't do. So I really don't think the person who built this machine lacks experience in brewing coffee.
>Personally i think the best you can get at home (unless you can afford a pro machine) is aeropress. Dead serious
Given the notoriously grainy mouth feel of aeropress coffee, and the sheer joy I've had out of proper espresso made with even less-expensive home machines (e.g. a Rancillo Silvia, to say nothing of nicer home machines like Rockets), I'm utterly stunned by the weirdness of this assertion.
I wouldn't be more puzzled if you'd said the best you can do at home is a Mr Coffee. Dead serious.
There's a certain sweetness that comes through with a well done shot, along with a real smoothness on the palette without sacrificing body. Certainly all coffee has a bit of bitter going on, but with a properly done shot -- under real pressure, with a dialed in set of variables (grind mass, desired shot mass, shot time, etc) -- it's just part of the party, not the whole thing.
And you can absolutely get this at home, but you need a proper machine. (A Moka pot won't do it. People might LIKE Moka coffee -- lots do! -- but it's not the same thing.) I'd rather pull a shot from my Rocket than go to any shop in town. And, as I said, I've had shots just as good from machines much cheaper than my R58 (like the aforementioned Silvia).
IME, genuinely good espresso is a fairly rare thing. The set of coffeeshops that pull consistently good shots is a much, much smaller subset of [Coffeeshops] than we might expect.
What an aeropress produces is more akin to French press than anything else I've had. It's absolutely nothing like espresso. Since I'm not a French press fan, I end up not caring for it, but that's a preference thing, not an indictment of the method. When it comes to filter coffee (which is to say, non-espresso), I prefer Chemex.
Of all the things that I could possibly think of "making a DYI version of would be fun", a machine that has ~0.5-1.5 liters of boiling water at significant pressures is on the very very very end.
Hats off to you if you feel comfortable with that, but I wouldn't want to be in the same _room_ as that thing.
Water under significant pressure is not really that big of a deal. It is largely incompressible, so if there is a leak, it just, well, leaks. Sure, it can spray, but even then I've been hit with hot water from my espresso machine and while it was temporarily painful it didn't burn me.
Air or steam, on the other hand, is a different story - steam boilers obviously can fail explosively. The pictures of the machine makes it look like it has a steam wand but I think that's just because he salvaged an old boiler - I don't think he's actually bringing up the temperature in the boiler high enough to make it a steam boiler.
I'd say my stovetop espresso maker is pretty open-source. And has worked fine with no changes except new gaskets for 5 years now. I did just have to replace it with a steel one since I now have induction stovetops.
Italians generally do, and if you're going to use their word then that should be what counts. (Obviously it has the downside of not let you brag about how high a pressure you used to... well, no-one actually cares what you did with the pressure, but big number better, clearly)
I think that's a misconception about moka pot coffee vs. a well-made espresso. Espresso isn't really "stronger" than moka pot coffee. Moka pot coffee is actually brewed at a higher temperature, but a lower pressure, than espresso. Espresso temperature is not even boiling (200 F is a common temp), but under much higher pressure by means of an electric or manual lever pump (9 bar is the common definition).
The result, to me at least, is that espresso has a much "thicker" mouth feel, but much less bitterness, than moka pot coffee.
Now that I have a kitchen with some space, I am considering getting a proper countertop espresso machine. Then I'll be able to do a proper compare and contrast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKA2COJRt6M
For what it's worth, i've had a Decent DE1+ for about 2 years, and while it's very unlikely i'll change, i am excited to see what other options crop up in the coming years. for me personally, there is no competition, mainly from a quick-to-heat and pressure/flow profiling perspective, both of which are quite important to me.
my understanding is the hardware side for accurate flow-profiling really is quite hard with off-the-shelf components, so the open source espresso machine is unlikely to become a widely available commodity, unlike say 3d printers which can easily be homebrewed and work amazingly well.