La Marzocco Linea Mini User Experience - Page 5

#41: Post by **Marshall** » June 7th, 2015, 8:49 pm

It sounds like LM is going above and beyond to create a happy customer experience.

June 7th, 2015, 9:22 pm

Indeed Marshall, the customer support provided is on a whole different level than I've experienced with other manufacturers. Here are a few additional things they offer their customers:

A new website geared to home users: LM Home
Top notch customer phone support. I've called in a few times and spoke to different people and all of them have been helpful, particularly Ben Blake.
Chef Steps videos (note that these are available to the public as well)
A discount on parts as a registered LM customer.

A lot of people questioned the value of this machine on a features/price basis, but that ignores the value and importance of support and long-term availability of parts. In addition to having support from my local vendor (Clive Coffee) it's also nice to have better direct access to the manufacturer (located in the US) to help address any technical issues or problems down the road.

June 8th, 2015, 2:10 am

Here's a video from SCAA 2015 "Making Espresso Coffee at Home with the La Marzocco Linea Mini":

#44: Post by **canuckcoffeeguy** » June 8th, 2015, 8:26 am

keno wrote:So far, I've found the Mini to be more forgiving than the E61. The preinfusion must be doing its job pretty well. I have had very few issues with channeling, not that I had a lot with my E61, but I definitely feel like that was more of an issue on the E61

How about shot clarity? I find clarity from LM machines in cafés I frequent to be greater than my E61 generally produces. Although, these cafes are using a mix of pricey commercial LM hardware. (e.g. Stradas, GB5s, Lineas)

#45: Post by **Marshall** » June 8th, 2015, 10:37 am

Nice video of my first Mini experience. But who were those two guys jabbering behind me?

#46: Post by **brianl** » June 8th, 2015, 11:29 am

keno wrote: The water in our area is on the soft side and overall very good for espresso machine use so I used one of the supplied test kits to evaluate it as a baseline. TDS was low, chlorine was a little high, and pH and alkalinity were a little low. So I treated the water with a Brita filter to eliminate the chlorine and added a very small amount of potassium carbonate to increase pH (to neutral) and alkalinity (to 80 ppm) using some other test strips to make the adjustment. I then used the second LM supplied test kit to evaluate my post-treatment water. It was spot on with all LM recommendations, with the exception of TDS which is a little low. I could add some calcium carbonate to increase, but the espresso tastes good as it is and with slightly lower TDS it will reduce any chance of scaling. I'd recommend taking this overall approach to water treatment even if you don't have an LM machine as it should reduce the risk of problems down the road and eliminate a lot of maintenance hassles with descaling.

It appears that the recommendations on their water calculator will require scaling every year or two. greatly reduces, yes, but remove the need? I don't think so.

#47: Post by **laservet** » June 11th, 2015, 10:57 am

keno wrote: Portafilter
I realize these newer LM portafilters have been out a little while now, but this is my first experience with them. The rubber handle is very comfortable and fits my hand great. The handle also seems a little longer making it easier to get sufficient torque when installing it in the group. The spouted version, which comes supplied with the machine, has the removable spouts with a single and a double. This is supposed to make cleaning easier, but the downside is that you don't want to tamp with pressure on the spouts. LM has therefore added a flat spot to the 10-2 o'clock position to allow the PF to be placed on a countertop edge for tamping. The spouted PFs also accept up to a 21g (triple) basket due to the deep design. Finally, and best of all the PFs are made from solid stainless steel. This has two benefits - first, it is supposed to improve thermal retention once they are fully heated, and second, it makes them much easier to clean. Chrome plated brass PFs can get nasty and difficult to clean once the chrome plating wears off and exposes the brass.

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I have a GS/3, early model, and it came with only one PF (previous generation so it doesn't have the flat spot for tamping), I paid extra at the time for an extra LM (bottomless) PF. The bottomless had a very sharp edge around the bottom rim that cut into my tamping mat so I rounded that edge off with a Dremel. Lo and behold, the PF is brass with a heavy chrome plating, not solid SS, even though the advertising at the time said they were solid SS. Do you know for sure the new ones are SS?

June 11th, 2015, 11:42 am

The new spouted portafilters (flat tamping surface with break-away spouts) are indeed stainless. The LM factory bottomless is still chrome-plated brass.

#49: Post by **Séb** » June 11th, 2015, 7:41 pm

Marshall wrote:Nice video of my first Mini experience. But who were those two guys jabbering behind me?

I hope your espresso was good

It was a nice video BTW

June 11th, 2015, 9:19 pm

Marshall wrote:Nice video of my first Mini experience. But who were those two guys jabbering behind me?

Wow, there you are at 3:00 in. Very cool!