After having read the excellent HX Love article, I decided to check the data on my new German ECM Manufacture, type Technika III (not the Italian ECM that makes the Giotto; I guess the result a joint venture gone wrong). On their website, http://www.ecm.de, they mention (translated):

"We further developed and improved our Thermosyphon system, so that the heat exchanger is heated up now exclusively by the hot water and no longer touches the steam. Thus the water has the perfect temperature also with the first use after a long standby-time." (http://www.ecm-espresso.de/index.php?id=200)

Now, the machine is advertised as the Rolls Royce among home espresso machines and recently voted best machine for a respectable German magazine. It must be good, but this statement seems to go against all wisdom found it the HX Love article. Is there really no need to bother about the temperature before pulling a shot? Any experiences with the Technika III?

I think that it is entirely possible that the machine won't require much of a cooling flush, and that our friends in 110V world have long been getting machines that run hot for no real good reason. Manufacturers seem to build their machines differently for different markets and I suspect that somewhere along the line someone got the idea that the US market likes machines that run hot.

The original Faema e61 machine seems to have had a lot of really cool features that haven't trickled down to its prosumer descendants. Forget Synesso; back in 1961 you could set up a machine with different temperatures at different groups and a minimal flush required! Given that you could do that 45 years ago, I think that ECM Deutschland's claims at least sound plausible.

Cheers,

Luca

Is there really no need to bother about the temperature before pulling a shot?

So I was wondering, since you've got the technika. How is the flushing on this machine?
And did you compare it with other machines?


greetings from an other dutchie

Here is a link to the illustrated parts breakdown for one of their machines.

http://www.bfc-espresso.de/pdf/ecm-technika3.pdf

From what I SEE, it looks like excellent build quality with substantially reduced flushing requirements.

Thanks for the link to the diagram, Eric. The heat exchanger is shown on page 6, part #27:



It's a closed-end heat exchanger like the La Cimbali. Part #32 is the injector that gets mentioned from time-to-time. Its job is to act as a "mixer" by allowing the cool water from the pump to enter at the back of the heat exchanger. Manufacturers use different lengths for the injector to tweak the brew temperature profile (e.g., a longer one in this type of heat exchanger would result in higher brew temperatures and a more pronounced spike in the initial brew temperature).

Aloys wrote:Is there really no need to bother about the temperature before pulling a shot?

Not all E61 heat exchanger espresso machines require extensive flushes, though a lot of them sold in the US do. The Vibiemme Domobar Super, which was recently reviewed on this site, has a thermosyphon restrictor and requires a small(ish) flush. The Quickmills, Isomacs, and Expobars sold in the US don't come with such restrictors and they require larger flushes.

Does this mean the machine doesn't have a 'hx hump'?

some other pictures





looks like the hx is somewhere in the middle of the boiler

wulip wrote:Does this mean the machine doesn't have a 'hx hump'?

Sorry, I cannot look at a spec sheet and even offer an informed guess, I would have to measure. Changing the length of the injector by as little as a few millimeters can change the shape of the brew temperature profile.