I was planning on buying the new Le'lit PL41 with built in PID when it comes out in a few months but I have decided I want a stainless steel boiler over the brass of the Le'lit (yes, I am afraid of chemicals leaching. If you can convince me otherwise, maybe I will stick with the Le'lit, but stainless just sounds better). I currently have a Gaggia Factory 106 but am now looking for something that heats up fast (like the le'lit is known to do), has a stainless steel boiler, and that I can PID or has a PID already built in. Something in the $600 range would be best but I am open to slightly more or less. Excellent steaming abilities are nice, but I am less concerned with that than I am in just pulling a few good shots in a row.

Any help on what I should be looking into would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Brass is copper and zinc. What "chemicals" exactly are you concerned about? Stainless steel is iron, chromium, and small amounts of all sorts of other stuff depending on the specific alloy (carbon, nickel, molybdenum, and manganese are typical). It's extremely likely that your entire household water supply piping is based on copper and brass.

Stainless steel strikes me as a lousy boiler material. It's hard to work and repair (much more difficult than brass), gets weird with like-material connectors, and has poor heat transfer characteristics. A very quick google search seems to indicate that most if not all espresso machines using stainless boilers are of the Saeco and DeLonghi ilk, which to me means that the stainless is there for marketing appeal rather than performance.

I'd suggest not worrying about the boiler material and going for a machine that performs well.

Hi there,

(Im from Pittsburgh too, boooooo Green Bay!). Brass also contains lead. A test done on lead in faucet water attributed most of the lead that was measurable in the water to brass faucet fittings (here is the first thing I found while googling just now but there are better sites for more info: http://www.mwra.com/04water/html/Lead_Faucets.htm ). The hotter the water, and the longer it stays in there the more lead there would be in the water. I am not saying it is instant cancer, or black death, just that if possible it would be nice to avoid it in my espresso boiler where the water gets really hot even though its not in there for very long. Maybe it doesn't matter, and maybe the espresso manufacturers use brass with such a small amount of lead in it that I should stop worrying myself silly and start caffeinating myself silly. I was really just wondering if there were any good machines at my price point that had stainless boilers and were worth looking at, or else Ill just get the Le'lit and try not to think about it.

Thanks

It's out of the class/price range you're talking about, but the Cimbali Junior Casa DT1 is built to last forever and has a stainless boiler.

Hmmm, Im not going to lie, but this went over my head. Are you saying that some brass boilers dont have brass actually in contact with water? Or that other higher end machines use materials other than brass?

Thanks

This page at 1st-line shows several diagrams of boilers with heat exchanges inside of them.

http://www.1st-line.com/cofffact/hxtypes.htm

I've never see an actual heat exchanger. It would be nice to see a cutaway view of a boiler with a heat exchanger inside. I looked but couldn't find such a picture.

Couloirman wrote:Brass also contains lead.

Hmm, maybe a percentage point? I guess I don't know any hard numbers. The 8% quoted in the MWRA website sounds really really high to me and I rather doubt that boiler brass has that level of lead, but I guess I can't quote any sources. Lead is more of a problem in developing nervous systems (i.e. children), so I'm on the side of "don't worry about it", but it's not my nervous system we're talking about.

If you do decide you can't stand the notion of a few ppb of lead, I fear you're going to have to fork out a good bit more than the $600 you mentioned.