Mistral vs Linea flavor profiles ?

[zak42]

I was fortuante enough to be visiting friends in Portland this week, this was my first time up their and i spent a good amount of time visiting the various coffee shops. All the places I tried were using Hairbender for espresso and I found that the flavor profile between the stumptown shots (from the Mistrals) was consistently different to the other places i tried (which all seemed to be using LM linea's). I'm really intrigued, is there a recognised difference in the flavor profile of different commercial machines ?

As an aside, the real eye opener for me was not the espresso, but trying some of the different coffee's brewed on the clover at the stumptown anex, the Brazil Fazenda Sitio Sao Jose in particular was an amazing cup.

[malachi]

Glad you had the chance to go to the Annex.
Tasting those coffees - either cupped or from the Clover - is a wondeful opportunity.

As for the different machines...

There are some generalized differences in flavour between the two.
That being said - the truth is that what you're tasting as the difference is largely due to factors unrelated to the manufacturer of the machine.
I don't know which non-Stumptown bars you went to, but you're going to see a ton of variance between the Stumptown bars and other bars on attributes including:
- type of grinder
- dose
- target extraction time and volume
- brew temp
- brew pressure

The list above is going to account for more than 75% of the differences - even if you're talking about Albina Press vs Stumptown (where you see the most similarity in values, training, etc).

In response to you question, however, if you taste shots of Hairbender pulled by a Stumptown barista on the Linea in the Roastery (which is managed by Stumptown tech staff and calibrated the same as the Mistrals) you will likely find the shots are less "dense" on the palate and tend to have dominance on the high and low ends of the flavour profile. The shots from a Mistral, on the other hand, seem to have a dominant mid-reach and great depth and concentration of flavour.
The Mistral is not simply a Linea in a nice case. Kees creates a whole new machine - just starting with some of the LM parts (which he modifies in most cases) and then replacing other of the LM components with new parts.
The most signficant changes have to do with water debit and flow rate along with temp stability.

[luca]

... plus you've got to remember that not all lineas are the same. Some are pidded, some aren't, some have restrictors for preinfusion, some don't, some guys use a 16g basket, some use an 18g basket, some have preheat, some don't ... heaps of differences just there ... and, of course, the individual settings can vary ...