La Marzocco GS3 at a good price *and* from a reputable dealer, et. al. - Page 2

[HB]

Dan doing his part to help out the sales of his sponsors and contributors

Ha ha... don't get me wrong, the thermofilter is invaluable for calibration and evaluation.

For example, Greg made a custom thermofilter for the Ponte Vecchio Lusso and it arrived last Friday. In only two short evenings, I have refined the Lusso's temperature management better than I had in the prior two months of trial and error by taste and intuition. These hints and tips will be codified in the Buyer's Guide. La Marzocco GS3 owners, on the other hand, benefit from the results collected by Greg Scace, Chris Tacy, Andy Schecter, et al that were integrated into the product during its prototype phase. Unless a GS3 owner suspects their equipment is malfunctioning or wants to calibrate to competition standards, I think the onboard pressure gauge and temperature readout are sufficient.

[gscace]

Ha ha... don't get me wrong, the thermofilter is invaluable for calibration and evaluation.

For example, Greg made a custom thermofilter for the Ponte Vecchio Lusso and it arrived last Friday. In only two short evenings, I have refined the Lusso's temperature management better than I had in the prior two months of trial and error by taste and intuition. These hints and tips will be codified in the Buyer's Guide. La Marzocco GS3 owners, on the other hand, benefit from the results collected by Greg Scace, Chris Tacy, Andy Schecter, et al that were integrated into the product during its prototype phase. Unless a GS3 owner suspects their equipment is malfunctioning or wants to calibrate to competition standards, I think the onboard pressure gauge and temperature readout are sufficient.

The use of Scace devices for the GS3 is for quality assurance and getting the last gnat's ass of performance. I dunno where the pressure measurement is taken for the integrated pressure gauge on the GS3. I think that there's an offset from the displayed value to the value at the group. I can't remember if the temperature offset between boiler and coffee cake can be accounted for in the software for the machine, so it's useful to know and to keep track of as changes in both temperature and pressure compared to nominal settings is useful to predict failures. For example, scaling shows up as increased pressure drop.

You won't need a Scace to teach you how to flush. The GS3 don't need nuttin but a short spritz to clean the grinds off the shower screen.

Whether or not that's worth the coin is of course up to you.

-Greg

[roblumba]

1. Are the GS3s still shipping with the sloppily drilled holes to make the tray fit?

The holes are okay on mine, not the greatest, but it's a very noncritical area and I don't see it causing a problem. The weight of the drain is minimal on this area of the frame, so it should cause a problem.

2. It seemed a lot of of people with the Mazzer Mini Electronic (which I have) and the GS3 were unsatisfied and upgraded their grinder. Anyone happy with the Mini E and the GS3?

I wanted to get a step closer to the taste profile I get at Barefoot Coffee Roasters so I upgraded to a Rio Normalle. You can find used ones on Craigslist every now and then. The Bay Area is full of Coffee shops so you are bound to find one if you keep looking. I found a Rio Normalle from a guy who was shutting his store down in San Francisco for $365. It had new burrs and was used by Ritual Coffee Roasters in a Barista Competition. So it was a very special grinder.

6. What is recommended for water? Currently I'm using Crystal Geyser per Jim Schulman's Insanely Long Water FAQ. Is that good enough?

I highly recommend if you are using bottled water, to go out and get a 5-gallon jug and a 1 gallon jug from Whole Foods. Now, fill your 5-gallon jug with water from one of the many local Pure Water or equivalent stores. Now here's the slightly tricky part. You don't want pure reverse osmosis water because it has practically zero hardness and doesn't optimize the taste for your espresso. Get a HACH 5B test kit from http://www.hach.com. They are $14 plus shipping, etc and you can test the hardness accurately and many times with this kit. You basically want your water hardness to test to about 3 drops of from this kit which equals about 51 mg / L hardness. Once you get the kit you'll know what I mean. In my case I tested my tap water and it was something like 150 mg / L. With a little trial and error, I found that I only needed to add around 12 ounces of my tap water to a 1 gallon jug of Pure Water to come up with 51 mg / L hardness. So now I have taste espresso water that doesn't scale up my machine.

BTW, I work near the San Jose Airport, I can easily meet up with you on a lunch hour and bring my test kit. Just have some fresh coffee for us to try out.

7. I'll likely switch from Illy beans to something else. I don't want to get into home roasting just yet, but I don't mind buying beans online and having them shipped once a week or so. Any recommendations from GS3 owners for a good bean to start with (will be shipped to Palo Alto, CA) and what temp. to use to start? (Note: I know this is a big subject. I'm not looking for the *best* beans, just a bean that works well for someone on a GS3.)

I highly recommend for you to visit the Barefoot Coffee Roasters cafe. Their cafe is located off of Stevens Creek and Lawrence Expressway. If you haven't been there, you should definitely make that a top priority for trying out new beans and getting inspiration. You can also pick up several bags of freshly roasted beans if you go on a Thursday or Friday. They usually stock their shelves on those days to prepare for the weekend. I like to go every few weeks and stock up on beans and since they are so fresh, you can easily throw some in the freezer to save you a trip. But the nice thing about going to the store, is you get exposure to the excellent Barista's, and you get 1 free double shot per bag. So go ahead and get 2 or 3 double shots for free while you are there. See what the blends taste like when they prepare it for you. Or bring a friend and treat him to some mind blowing shots of espresso. Barefoot also uses GB5's and they even have a temp probe hanging off the side of the machine most of the time. So feel free to ask the barista the temperature, extraction time, dosage or whatever. They are more than happy to tell you, even on a shot by shot basis. And they love to hear your feedback. It's actually very nice to have multiple shots there, because shots can very slightly from extraction to extraction, you can get once good shot and the next one could be incredibly good and you can find out from the barista what the behavior was for that shot and learn from them. I've definitely learned a lot from them.

I wrote a little bit about how I work my personally coffee supply. It could easily work for you too since Barefoot is also local for you.

So basically, try to find a roaster so that you can get it to your house so no more than 1 or 2 days old. Buy 2 or 3 lbs and freeze them in smaller 8 or 10 ounce jars. Now, your free to order beans from places that perhaps take 5 days to deliver. The beans in the freezer will be your buffer stash to hold your over until you order again from the more distant places. Right now, I have probably 2 lbs of Barefoot and 1 lbs of Ecco Caffe in the freezer and I'm going through 2 lbs of Klatch Coffee that took 4 days to get to me because I had ordered it on a Tuesday, they roasted and shipped on Thursday, it sat in a Fedex Wharehouse over the weekend and I received it Monday. But I don't fret about that kind of stuff too much because I have my buffer stash. However, I don't want my buffer stash to get more than 4 weeks old, so I'll probably wittle at my buffer stash for a while before ordering from Intelligentsia or some other place. And the cycle continues.

Also, I have small 8-ounce mason jars with the one way valve installed on the lids. So for this 2 lb order of Klatch Coffee, I've transferred 1 lb into the valved mason jars for immediate use, and the other pound is still in it's original unopened valved bag. When I finish the first lb, I'll put the second lb into the valved mason jars for immediate use. By minimizing the exposure of the beans to air, the shelf life is extended long enough for me to go through 2 lbs. The small mason jars work great. I had a jar that was Miller's Blend from Intelligentsia. It was nearly a month old and the crema and flavor were excellent. Granted, the crema was a little thin, but the body and flavor was very good. It behaved fairly well during extraction. I was quite impressed that this valved mason jar method can extend the shelf life for nearly a month.

[mhoy]

I too was directed to Barefoot Coffee. I strongly agree with what Robert said. Barefoot coffee is a wonderful place to go and it will give you a perspective on what your coffee should taste like.

Once a person in front of me wanted their drink adjusted (more milk/coffee or something or other I wasn't paying close attention). Anyway, this delayed serving my espresso (which he had started) so the barista discarded it saying it wasn't fresh and he made me a new espresso. Service

Mark

[Jacob]

You won't need a Scace to teach you how to flush. The GS3 don't need nuttin but a short spritz to clean the grinds off the shower screen.

I have programed one of my otherwise unused brew-buttons for a short 'clean the shower screen' flush and another one for a longer 'pre-brew' flush (Klaus Thomsen have found that a flush of almost 4 seconds works the best on his machine, so that's what I use)

[roblumba]

I have programed one of my otherwise unused brew-buttons for a short 'clean the shower screen' flush and another one for a longer 'pre-brew' flush (Klaus Thomsen have found that a flush of almost 4 seconds works the best on his machine, so that's what I use)

Does Klaus Thomsen have his measurements right? From what I understand, the GS3 might prove to be more stable than many people can measure, so the measurements will show instability, but you are just looking at instability of the measuring device. I would be very skeptical of Klaus Thomsen's findings.

My taste buds tell me that a 4-ounce flush is not needed. No flush works just the same as a flush of any amount. I'm not trying to boast, but practically speaking, I can tell the difference between .6F changes in temperature in the taste of the espresso. I will typically adjust by .6F increments and know when I need to go up or down more. In my case, I see the biggest variation is in the grinding and dosing. My distribution is very simple, just NSEW and tamping and temperature are all pretty much stable. But the grind might be slightly off based on humidity, age of the beans. And my dosing might be slightly more or less because I go by eye. With the GS3 set at a particular temperature, I can watch the extraction and see slight differences in flow rate and you can pretty much predict how the espresso will taste based on the flow rate because the GS3 temperature is dead on the same every time. You can even predict how it will taste if you overextract a little bit, or let it go a little longer or shorter than usual. Don't even need to think about the temperature part of the equation.

[jakline]

Hi Rolumba,

We traded some messages when you where getting your GS3.

Thanks for the reply on this thread.

I will try Barefoot Coffee.

As for the water hardness, Chris is sending some test strips. I don't know how accurate they are. I'll likely take you up on the offer to come over after I get the machine.

Thanks,
John

[Jacob]

Does Klaus Thomsen have his measurements right?

What measurements? I would surprised, very surprised, if Klaus have used any measurements to reach this conclusion.
I have not made an actual test myself yet! I just adapted Klaus' findings and have being playing around with some of the more significant parameters.

My taste buds tell me that a 4-ounce flush is not needed.

Do you get 4-ounce in 4 seconds

[roblumba]

What measurements? I would surprised, very surprised, if Klaus have used any measurements to reach this conclusion.
I have not made an actual test myself yet! I just adapted Klaus' findings and have being playing around with some of the more significant parameters.

What parameters are you talking about? I haven't had to play with anything other than temperature, dosing and trying different beans. Sorry if I sound ignorant, but I have no idea what this 4 ounce flush does in terms of temperature or of any more significant parameters that need tweaking. My GS3 has been stable across multiple shots and without any flush or tweaking of parameters. If there is such a GS3 machine out there that needed these hoops to be jumped through, I would be suspicious that something was wrong. Perhaps another thread might be more appropriate for this since this was really started about getting a good price, etc.

[buzzmc]

Ecco is very good. You could also try Barefoot Roasters in Santa Clara. Their Boss blend is very tasty. Coffee Klatch is also excellent, and they ship very quickly. I get my package about two days after ordering, and I'm over 200 miles from their store. My favorite blend of theirs is Belle Espresso.

I'll second (if it hasn't been already) Barefoot, as well as The Boss blend.... Redwood used to be my favorite but they stopped making it and The Boss showed up. Bigfoot, Boss, and Sweetness, all yummy.

[Marshall]

Well, my Livia just blew up today and I'm not interested in repairing it. So it has suddenly become a high priority to get a GS3.

I was told at the SCAA show that the Dalla Corte Mini's are about to get (or just got) UL approval and that U.S. pricing is being finalized. Their machines hugely impressed the WBC certifiers in Vancouver this winter, and the home versions have the same integrated brew heads. You could save yourself $3-4,000 (plus tax).

[roblumba]

I was told at the SCAA show that the Dalla Corte Mini's are about to get (or just got) UL approval and that U.S. pricing is being finalized. Their machines hugely impressed the WBC certifiers in Vancouver this winter, and the home versions have the same integrated brew heads. You could save yourself $3-4,000 (plus tax).

Has that machine gone through it's growing pains yet? Sorry, I've been tunnel visions on GS3 lately so I'm not aware. Has there been any reviews of that machine?

[Marshall]

Has that machine gone through it's growing pains yet? Sorry, I've been tunnel visions on GS3 lately so I'm not aware. Has there been any reviews of that machine?

They've been sold in Europe for at least two years, so the reviews are mainly European (some in German). Here is a detailed British review: http://www.bellabarista.co.uk/pdf/DallaCorteminicloserlookv2.pdf