I have a Peppina and a Caravel, and to me it's not much of a contest, the Caravel is certainly my first choice. I like shots from my La Cara better than both though.

Here is mine.

+1 on any open boiler machine.

I have a Peppina and love it. And the valve system of the Peppina lets you pull and partial pull without messing with the puck.

Negatives are a tall/deep coffee basket profile. Those are common on small levers. They are not bad, They just pull different than the big PF's.

-C

CRCasey wrote:I have a Peppina and love it. And the valve system of the Peppina lets you pull and partial pull without messing with the puck.

Yeah, if you get the tiny valve to play along nicely. It's not hard if you've got a scalefree machine and if you've polished the valve seat, but it's a pain to get it working properly. If it works, it works brilliantly and is much safer than ordinary spring levers because the lever can't fly up and break stuff. If you're used to that safety and a tiny piece of scale prevents the tiny valve from closing you're in for a nasty surprise though.
I especially like i can make tiny pulls to wet my microfibre cloth or to give the dispersion screen a little rinse without using a full pull. This saves in boiler refills and driptray emptying.