Have fun everyone
See you next time
Thanks again for hosting, Dominic

If the weather isn't conducive to outdoor sports tomorrow feel free to fly on up here!

I just wanted to say a big thanks to everyone who came and allowed me to play host for a day, also to everyone who brought coffee and wine and dessert. Based on the number of times I had to empty the knockbox we must have pulled about 60 or so shots for the dozen or so of us in attendance.

A big thanks to Vlad as well for pulling shots and keeping the coffee flowing while I was running around doing other things.

I enjoyed the discussions (and experiments) of different preinfusion techniques and Jim's demonstration of "double clutching" the lever to get a nice flow going from what would have been a choke shot.

And to whoever left the Ethiopia Hambela (I believe Jim S), thanks for that. it was really on today, i went through the rest of the bag over the course of the day while playing around with the Monolith, when I got it dialed in it tasted almost like a rich buttery peach cobbler.

It was nice to spend the day with such a great group of people, I look forward to seeing you all again.

Did anyone take any pictures?

I had a great time; it was so wonderful getting to meet everyone and pick everyone brains. To Jim, I just picked up some Ethiopian from Asado today!

Thanks everyone! And thanks Dominic for hosting.

Thanks for hosting, Dominic. It was a privilege to be able to pull shots on the Faema. Also many thanks to your wife and you for the steady flow of awesome pizza Margheritas, and to your kids for running around speaking Italian. It was something to remember.

vberch wrote:Did anyone take any pictures?

I didn't take any photos, but I have a picture stuck in my head.

One way I try to learn is to take the coffee I'm most familiar with to these gatherings and see what happens when I encounter some unusual equipment. The image I can still see is that of what had to be the most gorgeous, finely grained tiger striping I think I've ever seen on any pour from any machine. The beautiful Faema and the impressive-in-an-entirely-different-way Monolith flat appear to be a match made in espresso heaven.
The cup from that pour had a smoothness and depth of flavor I don't get much from my rig, and that was without any special attempt to dial the grinder setting or dose. I was pretty wowed.

Thanks Dominic to you and yours for such a nice afternoon.

It was a lot of fun. Thank you very much for hosting, Dominick! We had (in no particular order) a number of different coffees, wonderful food, great wine, amazing company, great new Monolith Flat grinder, Mahlgut conical hand grinder and Dominick's spectacular two group Faema President. It was a blast!

It was the first time I used a Monolith Flat and what a spectacular grinder! It was very easy to use, super quiet and produced great results. We weren't doing any A/B comparisons due to the lack of time. It would be great to compare a Monolith Flat to Conical in the future. Flat handled everything we threw at it with ease! We had many people pulling shots and switching between 5 or 6 different coffees. It handled wonderfully without a glitch!

I wanted to thank Dominic for being a spectacular host. My wife and I had wonderful time meeting everyone and enjoying their company. Being relatively new to the espresso scene, we both learned quite a bit and got to experience a lot of things we wouldn't normally get to. It was a lot of fun.
There was something immensely satisfying listening to a father speak with his children in Italian while eating Pizza Margherita and drinking espresso. I look forward to doing this again and meeting all of you again.