Buyer's Guide to the Elektra Semiautomatica - Page 7

[another_jim]

Another data point on the Elektra.

"Ski the bird," a CG regular who's owned an Elektra for several years was by this afternoon to check out whether he would prefer the E61 for a second office machine. After lunch with him, his lovely wife, and their undercover dog (no pets in the building), we started pulling comparison shots.

We were duplicating his setup: a Mini, triple basket ristretto pulls, Black Cat 4 days old, (just getting to early ripe, needs a good shot to get sweet rather than cooking chocolate), and Weiss distribution (I was kidding at first, but it turns out the triple needs all packing help it can get). This is as far away from my epicene SO singles on the M3 as espresso gets, so I was really looking forward to the results.

At first I was trying to pull triples on the Elektra and him on the Tea; d'oh, chalk it up to practice. Once we got the who's on first sorted out, we started getting good shots that were actual triple ristrettos for comparison purposes.

Turns out body is about the same on the two machines; it's the taste intensity rather than viscosity that is slightly higher on the Tea. However, the Teas best shots tasted flatter than the Elektra's, the chocolate on the Black Cat tasted like it had sat a few days on the counter, while the Tea's was more aromatic. The extra taste intensity was mostly a sort of taste equivalent to dust on a window or noise in a stereo.

The differences were subtle, but repeated twice on doubles and triples, and quite noticeable. The Black Cat single was much less intense, but shimmered, it was so clean and sweet.

Anyway, SKB will go with a 2nd Elektra. Cannonfodder is next, as soon as he tears himself away from Metropolis.

[cannonfodder]

Tuesday. Can't miss the first Monday night football of the season, and I am just driven out, over 400 miles today. I will toss the Gaggia and Cimbali in the van so we can play with it as well, another point of comparison. I did not bring my single basket, actually, I don't even know where it went.

[niad]

Time for more sharing of how great i think this machine is.

The Elektra made big success once more when we had guests over yesterday. It is such fun to see people who normally dont drink such strong coffee just wanting cup after cup. I am also glad that everyone that sees it firstly think it is so good looking and after that they want to join in the process just because it looks so complex with all the pipes and shapes.

Here is an extract from my friends blog:

"On Sunday we visited Anna and Niklas in their new house in Rimforsa and had delicious coffee prepared by Adolfsson himself. Thank you all for hosting us!"

Even my mother who probably haven't had anything else than drip coffee in her life drank a double the other day, it was very strong but smooth and good she said. My father who normally just sit down at the table sneaked out into the kitchen and followed me into the process of making coffee. Of course i talk about it and makes it somewhat the center of the discussion at times but it is a genuine spontaneous interest from everyone who sees it, thats great i think.

[another_jim]

Cannonfodder came by this evening, and I got the privilege to meet one more interesting coffee lover. Unfortunately for this test thread, dinner and conversation took up more time than espresso testing. From what I could tell. we pulled too few shots to really get a feel of the differences between the Tea and Elektra; but CF may have another opinion since he did pull a few shots while I was minding the pots and pans.

Unfortunately. the Elektra picked his visit to do its first "sticky mater" routine. This is getting to be so tiresome (when taken on all mater equipped machines together), that it deserves one of those Phoebe songs from the "Friends" sitcom:

sticky mater sticky mater sticky mater

[cannonfodder]

I can say without reservation that the Elektra is a wonderful machine in both form and function. I never really got the A game going but the singles were still wonderful. Definitely much lighter cup than the doubles, the subtle notes were more pronounced.

It truly is a home machine, you are not going to pull 6 back to back doubles and steam 20oz of milk but that is not what it was designed for. The machine recovers as fast as you can prepare another shot so entertaining a small group with espresso would not be a problem. The steaming abilities are more than adequate for a couple of cappuccinos or macchiato. I don't know how Elektra did it, but they built one heck of a machine and definitely worth a look (even with the sticky Pstat) .

It was a very interesting and enjoyable experience. The dinner was divine. The food, drink and conversation were very enjoyable and the espresso a bonus to top it all off.

Unfortunately, I got back to the hotel at around midnight and work called with a server problem at 3:30am so that was the end of my night.

[luca]

Nice to see that coffeegeek/home barista dinners worldover are the same. Something about people interested in the way things taste that makes for good food ... I'll get back to you when I figure out what it is ;P

OK, so the sticky MATER sucks; what's YOUR excuse for leaving it in there, Jim? Huh? Don't you have a drawer full of spare PIDs and pstats? ;P Macgyver strikes again! Seriously, though, why don't you just PID it or put a barksdale pstat on it now for s*&ts and giggles?

Cheers,

Luca 'pidless' C

[another_jim]

OK, so the sticky MATER sucks; what's YOUR excuse for leaving it in there, Jim? Huh? Don't you have a drawer full of spare PIDs and pstats? ;

No room for a PID. The Mater isn't so much malfunctioning as operating within it's own inimitable specifications. I have a Yaeger pstat Chris carries as a higher quality cure for the Mater and Ceme blues; so I might use it. I just thought I'd wait for a real malfunction before I break it out.

[HB]

Jim's Buyer's Guide to the Elektra Microcasa Semiautomatica is online. Comments, corrections and follow-up questions to the article are all welcome in Article Feedback.

Jim and I would like to thank Jim Piccinich of 1st-Line Equipment for sponsoring this review. I would also like to thank Jim for his patience during the copyediting process (it's a lot like a dentist's visit - the prospect is more upsetting than the reality ).