Great event Jon! Thanks for making it happen.

With the Pavoni pre, Barefoot's Element was superior to their Boss. The Element excelled with the grind on the coarse side and a short preinfusion, 2-4 seconds. Element liked cooler better than hotter, 199° to 201° at the portafilter, my guess and 11.5 grams of coffee was the sweet spot over 11 or 12.

edit: see the companion piece for more on the Pavoni performance.

--Some quick pics from the pulldown. Thanks to all that participated and the good folks at Barefoot!

A great event. Hope there is another one in the near future. The folks at Barefoot were very gracious to host. Thanks to everyone for the Cremina pull tips.

A great event. Hope there is another one in the near future. The folks at Barefoot were very gracious to host. Thanks to everyone for the Cremina pull tips.

Thanks to everyone for coming down, thanks to Marie and the Barefoot team for letting us come in and take over that corner of the shop.

I really enjoyed this, and hope we can do it again. It seemed that everyone had a great time, including the Barefoot Baristas. I got to pull shots for a few, which was actually made me a bit nervous.

We had a few of the other customers wander over to check out the Levers. There were at least 2 people who hadn't even heard about the event, but were previously interested in getting into Lever machines. From what I heard, Doug and his Pavoni pulling Element was the best shot. I think this really demonstrates that skill has a lot more to do with shot quality than the machine. Here are a few pictures:





GaryH from coffeegeek (in my last picture above) posted some more pictures over on a coffeegeek thread I cross posted this to:

http://coffeegeek.com/forums/worldregional/uswest/473966

Yes, this was great fun, but I'm still kicking myself for forgetting my thermocouple wire even after going out and buying a spare box of fuses "just in case." As a result my temps were all over the place, but I struggled dialing in "The Boss" and never quite found the right does, grind, and temp... "The Element" was much more forgiving and I managed to pull a few good tasting shots.

It was nice to meet everyone and also to see Gary from the other side of the camera after all the great pictures and trip reports he's posted over on CoffeeGeek. All those machines were so beautiful, I just wish I had more time to talk to and check out each machine and that I spent less time failing to pull good Boss shots on the La Peppina.

A big Thanks a Bunch to Barefoot for hosting and to Jon for putting this together.

I finally got around to pulling the pictures off the camera... check out all this bling, very nice machines. I also got out my PID with the thermocouple wire at home to pull a couple shots of The Boss... I started with 12 grams with the kettle at 204 and got an ok shot with light crema and tightened up the grind one notch and upped the dose to 14 grams with the kettle at 202 and assisted the lever on the way up to increase the pressure and was able to get a good shot with darker crema and the aftertaste that lingers forever. Nice. I know I'm adjusting multiple variables all at once, but being late, and pulling doubles, I have a limit to the number of shots I can drink right now.

I made the Wife a cappuccino which she enjoyed after it cooled enough to drink (overheated the soy in the microwave a little too much) and finished with pulling a SO shot of the El Salvador Los Luchadores Pacamara that Jim (Mokemo) roasted and brought... tasted good even though the pour is not dialed in but I'll have to try it before drinking a Boss as I'm still getting the aftertaste.