Hi All,

The past few years for me have really been a dream come true in terms of coffee gadgetry. Having started out working on commercial HX machines with various levels of use and abuse, in the last few years I have been well and truly spoilt to use some great machines to earn cash whilst at uni. (Can you call it work if it is that much fun?) From about 2005 to 2006 I worked on a Synesso Cyncra and from 2006 to present I have been working on a La Marzocco FB80. Through barista comps and just generally visiting members of the incredibly welcoming and hospitable coffee industry, I have also gotten to use a whole boatload of other machines, which has been a real eye-opener.

The purpose of this thread is to provide some unbiased impressions based on actual use. This thread has been prompted by the various discussions that the GS3 has provoked and, in particular, Jim Wright's request in this thread. In writing this, I don't want to get too self-aggrandising! I hope very much that everyone will be able to distinguish between what is fact, what is opinion or personal preference and what experience everything is based on, so please feel free to point this out if there are any ambiguities.

La Marzocco Linea (and FB70)

The Linea has had a long production run, dating from, off the top of my head, the early nineties to present. LM's 80th anniversary book provides excellent dates, photos and production runs and I remember flicking through it and being impressed that LM produced substantially more lineas than most of the other machines that it had produced - perhaps fuelled by the expansion of starbucks.

The Linea is historically significant for at least two reasons. First, the relatively large production run and publicity gained through the WBC and Starbucks really generated a lot of buzz about the dual boiler concept and catapulted this machine into prominence as a both a benchmark and a classic. Second, the long production run of this machine meant that a lot of R and D happened along the way, carving out the path for the development for future machines. The most infamous example of this development is the replacement of the brew boiler tstat with a PID, made famous in the cafe world by David Schomer. Another example is the release of the FB70, which is basically a Linea with a different shell around it. LM's tradition of experimenting on Lineas continues to this day. Notably, Mark Prince's home linea has been tricked out to be essentially a bigger, badder 110V GS3 and LM debuted its newest incarnation of its famous paddle group on a new Linea.

The march of progress needs to be kept in mind when reading online generalisations about La Marzocco based on Lineas. Similarly, cool features on the other machines that I will post about in this thread can be viewed as improvements on what the benchmark Linea offered, or further journeys through doors that this machine opened. It is for this reason that I have started this thread with a discussion of the Linea.

It is a strange quirk of fate that I have gotten to use a whole swagload of different Lineas over the past few years. The oldest was a dreadfully neglected Linea installed for a month as a temporary machine whilst waiting for another to arrive. A well-kept thermostat-controlled linea lived in the cupping room at work for half a year. Recently, a PID controlled machine has taken up residence in the training room.

Pros:
*Tray above group is absolutely brilliant for sliding receipts and takeaway cups across. The absence of this tray on the GB5 has been the single biggest and most recurrent complaint that I have heard.
*Reliable in high volume cafes.
*Drip tray grate is made of segments that sit on top of the drip tray. These segments are small enough to fit easily in the dishwasher.
*White semiauto brew button and hot water button give great feedback.
*Brushed stainless segments on shell hide fingerprints quite well.
*Machine edges rise above cup warmer to form a rail, which works effectively and does not look out of place.

Cons:
*Variations between different production runs and different machines made for different markets mean that you really need to ask some questions to determine what you are getting.
*Shots less visible than on a machine with exposed groups.
*Gicleurs are orifices used to slow the initial flow of water in these machines - LM's take on "preinfusion." Gicleurs were not standard on at least some Lineas. Lineas without gicleurs can be tricky to use, as you see the first drops of espresso just a few seconds after hitting the brew switch. (Solution - make sure that you ask and find out what you're getting. 0.6mm seems to be very popular, but I like 0.8mm)
*Steam knob has a lot of free rotation that achieves nothing.
*Some steam valves need a lot of TLC with high volume commercial use - cleaning, reassembly, replacement. (Perhaps the steam valves needing TLC co-incide with operators not properly purging before and after use.)
*Irritating pin holds steam knob in place.
*Spouts on earlier portafilters quite far apart - you could pour a double espresso into a single demitasse, but chances are that the streams would go down the sides. (Solution - replace spouts with current LM spout.)
*PIDs are retrofitted and, so, are often awkwardly positioned under the machine.
*I prefer the cheap wire drip tray grate to the metal ones used in the Linea.

I'll save comparing shot quality and steaming between machines for another post. The next installment will be the Cyncra ...

Cheers,

Luca

Nice start, Luca -- I'm awaiting your continuing posts . . .

Thanks Luca, great post and likewise looking forward to more!

Great summary of the Linea. Might add discussion between the AV and EE, especially how it effects the actual shot temp from idle and hence difference in needed pre-shot flush to bring the differing plumbing external to the saturated group up to temp. Most notably the older AV's with AV external to group instead of internal like newer models.

Keep 'em coming!

miKe mcKoffee wrote:Great summary of the Linea. Might add discussion between the AV and EE, especially how it effects the actual shot temp from idle and hence difference in needed pre-shot flush to bring the differing plumbing external to the saturated group up to temp. Most notably the older AV's with AV external to group instead of internal like newer models.

Good point.

In order for this to make any sense at all to the uninitiated, it would be important to have an understanding of the saturated group design. There is a thread devoted to this very subject here. In a nutshell, the LM group contains a huge amount of water at brew temperature, which is the key to its temperature stability - the idea is that this huge amount of water keeps all of the relevant components close to brew temperature. The components cannot overheat because the water is at brew temperature. It is basically a very similar idea to integrating the group in the boiler. In comparison, some machines simply have groups that are basically chunks of metal coming off the boiler. These get hotter and hotter with successive shots and take a comparatively long time to heat up. The famous e61 group has much, much less water in it than an LM saturated group, however in a heat exchanger machine this water can be quite hot. These groups require significant tweaking in the factory or on the bench to get the flow rate right so that they do not deliver excessively hot brew water. These groups also tend to drift around a bit in brew temperatures, at least on HX machines. That's probably more than enough info on the subject for our purposes, so I'm not even going to touch the issue of using the e61 group in a dual boiler machine. Suffice to say that the concept behind the saturated group is basically the most straightforward and easily understandable way to maintain repeatable brew temperatures that I have ever heard of. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that brew temperature never entered the minds of the LM engineers designing the group, though!

The AV linea models are the ones with the volumetric keypad, whereas the EE versions simply have a start/stop brew switch. In order to implement the volumetric controls, water has to flow through a flow meter. On the AV lineas, water leaves the saturated group, flows through a copper tube, through the flow meter and then through another tube and back into the group. The tube is external to the saturated group and there is a bit of distance between it and the group. This means that the tube will cool down and, consequently, the first lot of brew water that runs through it will lose heat and come out too cool. For this reason, it is usually necessary to pull a "warming flush" on AV lineas. The good news is that it is basically impossible to flush too much water when doing this, as you can't overheat the flowmeter and tube because you are running brew temperature water through them. By comparison, some HX machines will put out water with a lower brew temperature if you engage in an excessive flush. The Cyncra, GB5 and GS3 all fixed this minor problem.

I guess that another point worth mentioning briefly is that the Lineas do not all use identical groups. The most recent lineas have groups welded to the boiler, whereas older machines have the group bolted on to the boiler, with a gasket inbetween that will need replacing once in a while. (This is a very long timeframe, though ... perhaps once or twice a decade.) From memory, it is possible to retrofit the "hybrid" or "pierro" group cap used in the AV GB5 to at least some of the welded group Lineas. The bolt-on group lineas need that group cap to be modified. This group cap contains an integrated flowmeter and solenoid that basically eliminates the temperature drop problem.

Cheers,

Luca

OK, time to move on to ...

Synesso Cyncra

Once upon a time, La Marzocco manufactured machines in Seattle. Around the time that Starbucks decided to start using superautomatics, La Marzocco made the decision to close down their Seattle base of operations. LM Engineer Mark Barnett had had considerable success designing and producing LM's Swift grinder, so he took the brave step of setting up a new company, Synesso, in 2004. Actually, company started off life under the odd name of TREUH, but presumably it was realised that that name was just not a winner!

Barnett's machine, the Cyncra, received some big kudos right off the bat. One influential opinion was voiced by David Schomer in his article Engineered Perfection in Espresso:

Espresso is out of its prison of engineered mediocrity

Schomer's article does an excellent job of capturing the buzz that this machine generated. It's quite short, so it's probably worthwhile reading it rather than my repeating Schomer in this introduction. Go ahead; read it; I'll wait.

Back yet? Good!

I worked on a Cyncra for a year or so. At that stage, the machine was still relatively new, but had achieved a lot of critical acclaim. Occasionally I get to use other people's Cyncras.

Pros:

*Lovely staff are always willing to answer questions promptly.
*Ability to set different groups to different temperatures.
*Paddle groups give good feedback.
*Exposed groups give good visibility of the pour.
*The machine lends itself to being sprayed various colours, having lights installed, etc.

Cons:

As I wrote in the thread Considering the Synesso Cyncra for home use ...

*Shower screens bent and needed to be replaced every week or two. (Solved by using LM shower screens.)
*After a bit of use, paddle group often failed to switch pump. (Solved by dismantling it and rebuilding it.)
*Failure of probes regulating steam boiler. (Solved by replacing probes and upgrading brain box to 0.1C resolution fanless one. However, I should note that as a result of this experience my former boss bought a stand-alone commercial milk steamer just in case.)
*Overflowing drain box. (Solved by cleaning the gunk out of the drain box regularly, which is awkward because all of the grinders have to be moved to then remove the side panel of the machine to scoop all of the gunk out.)
*Overflowing drip tray. (Not sure if this has been solved.)
*Cuts on sharp edges of the machine are still common, particularly on the drip tray and the safari rail. (Not sure if my old boss has gone and sanded down those edges or anything and the newer machines seem to have folded stainless on at least some of these edges.)
*Constant dripping from steam boiler fittings. (We didn't think it was a big deal, as the drips were slow and it didn't seem to be causing a problem.)
*Some parts of the machine are simply awkward; eg. some people find the steam lever hard to use and it would be much nicer not to have to crouch down to read the temperature of the groups, particularly when things get busy and you're trying to work out which group someone has dialled your single origin in on.

*Given that this thread will take the direction of being a comparison between machines, I add that the Synesso portafilter is fine, but the LM portafilter is more pleasant to use. The LM portafilter has rubber handles and a double spout that is narrowed so that you can get both streams into one demitasse. The spout has a flat bottom that can be propped on the table whilst tamping, if you wish. My former boss bought LM portafilters to replace the stock Synesso portafilters.

In Why not Synesso?, I made largely the same points and Ben (pdx) provided some good counterpoints. Ben's responses are worthwhile reading.

I feel compelled to note that I would be surprised if the current generation were as unreliable as that particular machine, which was of a relatively early production run. However, I still want to post this purely because the GS3 discussions have given me the impression that people think that Synessos are, and have always been, entirely problem free.

Cheers,

Luca

luca wrote: Suffice to say that the concept behind the saturated group is basically the most straightforward and easily understandable way to maintain repeatable brew temperatures that I have ever heard of. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that brew temperature never entered the minds of the LM engineers designing the group, though!

Luca if the group wasn't designed with the ability to control brew temps then what was the purpose of it and of installing what at the time was a highly sensitive thermostat "capable of 1 deg c adjustments"?

Thanks Luca, for posting this info all in one place.

luca wrote: < snip >I feel compelled to note that I would be surprised if the current generation were as unreliable as that particular machine, which was of a relatively early production run. However, I still want to post this purely because the GS3 discussions have given me the impression that people think that Synessos are, and have always been, entirely problem free.

IMHO, it would be foolish to assume any machine is bulletproof, but even more so for an early production run of a first model from a brand new company!

Complex new products often have teething issues, it's a fact of life. In those cases, how happy the owners are usually comes down to whether the buyers knew what they were getting into (don't buy bleeding edge if you're not ready to deal with it... I myself could have used a few reminders during my life ), and more importantly, how responsive the OEM is in supporting the product to help owners work through any problems they encounter.

In any case, your observations on that early vintage machine seem like particularly useful info for anyone considering buying one of the older models used - which are certainly not as common as LMs, but do come up for sale occasionally. (Counter Culture was selling a 3 group earlier this year, not sure if it went yet, and there was also a 1 group advertised on CG a while ago that has since been sold.) It seems like in that case, one would be wise to inquire about the vintage of the machine and figure out exactly what possible issues might be relevant to that particular unit. (Same as buying any other used machine, I guess.) Another item of note was the crazy water story posted here.

All of that said, consistently with your surmise that some of the problems you observed were likely addressed in later production, it is notable that the owners who have posted in the Synesso for Home Use thread (and PMed me in response to all my questions offline) have experienced none of these problems, and noted changes to correct most if not all of them in the years since those first machines were released (new probes and electronics, group head revisions, etc.). And that said, it's certain there are still many things yet to be improved!

Looking forward to your next installment. (I'm guessing it might be hard to compare output with so much time having passed and fading memory, but how about some technique tips for both?)

EDIT: I have since heard more details of the water story offline from someone who ostensibly knows, and apparently not only was the problem determined and corrected for current/future machines, there was a little blame to go around re: why it took that particular user a while to get the issue resolved.

please Luca... give us more!
this is such a great thread! can't wait!

alexander

Paul_Pratt wrote:Luca if the group wasn't designed with the ability to control brew temps then what was the purpose of it and of installing what at the time was a highly sensitive thermostat "capable of 1 deg c adjustments"?

Really? Were people interested in brew temperature at that time? If so, then LM have been unusually quiet about being so far ahead of the game! I guess that I should read the intro to the patent and come back.

This is an interesting point to note because I have heard that temperature was never a consideration in designing the e61 group. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

Cheers,

Luca