For some strange reason, few new espresso machine buyers worry about warm up time. One approach is to keep a machine running all the time and have it always warmed up. This seems to be the approach to be used when espresso is being produced many times each day. It is highly wasteful when just a few cups are made each day.

When espresso is produced only once or twice a day the most sensible machines are small ones that heat up fast enough to be producing espresso in less than 10 minutes from turn on. Machines like La Pavoni, Elektra Microcasa a Leva, and Olympia Cremina come to mind here, though many small pump machines can warm up quickly too. As soon as the espresso run has been completed they can be turned off and left to rest, perhaps until the next morning.

The fast heat up machines are great when unexpected guests arrive too, because they can be ready to produce espresso by the time the greetings are exchanged!

If you're going to nitpick like that. I say any machine with electronics is wasteful. You should really be using a ROK.

The machines mentioned do not have any electronics ...

I will say the Breville DB is fast, very fast. Thanks to that separate heated group it's temp stable and read to pull a shot in 10 min or less from turning on, other semi machines is more like 30+ minutes minimum, I usually leave my CC1 for 40 min.

baldheadracing wrote:The machines mentioned do not have any electronics ...

Do you boil the water on your stove to heat it? Otherwise it has electronics to engage a heater.

I've been impressed by my Bezzera machine's warm-up time. BZ07 and Strega I can be pulling shots in 10m or so, while the boiler is coming up to temp, the grouphead heating elements are working as well. Most efficient? I would say a small lever would probably be more efficient with less metal etc. But less complicated devices are like that by nature. This is what interested me in my current press project.
I believe he was categorizing "electronics" as circuit board low voltage style components. As opposed to "electrical" components like heating elements, wires, switches, etc are a bit different. Just separating out the complexity needed for the device to work.

brianl wrote:Do you boil the water on your stove to heat it? Otherwise it has electronics to engage a heater.

La Pavoni lever, Elektra MCaL, and Cremina only have switches to turn a heating element on and off - mechanical (electrical) switches, not electronic relays or controllers.

Has anyone compared electrical usage by machine type? It's an interesting question. I have each of my circuits monitored and so should be able to put a number to my machine (V2B) once it arrives.

I hope the OP uses a hand grinder...

chaffshaker wrote:I hope the OP uses a hand grinder...

You should try boiling water by hand...

The energy use to grind a shot of espresso is negligible compared to that of the espresso machine. So if you really want to minimize the energy footprint of your espresso routine, you want to look for an espresso machine that is less massive rather than more massive. Unfortunately, the rule of thumb for consistent espresso is that more mass is better than less mass.

Eastsideloco wrote:The energy use to grind a shot of espresso is negligible compared to that of the espresso machine.

Yes, my comment was tongue-in-cheek. I recognize that resistance heating is a huge consumer of electricity, and that stabilizing a large thermal mass is a costly proposition (from an energy perspective). I'm in a situation where I have a good amount of excess solar from rooftop PV, so I will be brewing with the sun so to speak.