It was designed as a cupping table. Here it is.

A shipping-damaged Rancilio Silvia and Rocky Grinder:


Looking decidedly un-damaged

The previous owner had ordered a brand new Silvia v2 and Doserless Rocky from a site in the states, and for whatever reason, they consolidated the machine and grinder into one box for shipping, probably to save on dimensional weight pricing. When they both arrived here in Canada, the mounting tabs on the Rocky had sheared, causing the front and back casing not to stay together. The machine was mostly fine, but the black uprights had bent ever so slightly.

Apparently the company offered to ship a brand new set to this guy for free - and didn't want him to ship back the damaged product due to costs. As a result, I scored both for $400! Bending Silvia back into shape was no problem, but the grinder tabs were toast. Instead of spending ages fabricating a new mount, I just grabbed a couple zip ties and a piece of silicon vibration isolator, and strapped the two halves together. Notice the zip ties on Rocky in the picture above

Of course the deal was mostly irrelevant, as this was my jumping off point for espresso, and has lead me 'down the garden path' to future machines like the Bezzera Magica, Vibiemme Double Domobar and most recently a Profitec Pro 700.

I should mention that Silvia was very good to me - after getting things figured out and some good beans, she regularly pulled some of the most fantastic double ristrettos. I don't have many old pics of her in action, but this is indicative of a few of her typical results:




On an interesting side note, back when I got this setup, the defacto PID option for these machines was the Watlow PID from PIDKits.com. At the time, I found a small outfit on eBay selling Auber PIDs to control Silvia run by a fellow named Suyi Liu. I bought my PID from him, and later worked with him directly to refine the PID algorithms and add the pre-infusion functionality. I'm proud to say that in a very, very small way, all the current Silvia's sold with Suyi's Auber PID have some input from yours truly!

Nice score on two counts, the Rocky/Silvia combo and discovering Suyi Lee of Auber. He advised me on how to PID my Conti Prestina, sold me the parts at a very reasonable price, and that mod went very well.

I've been getting ready to pull the trigger on a Compak K10 to complete my quality setup. Then I became aware of a Fiorenzato Doge being offered at 1st-Line Equipment as a refurb for $899 shipped. Why not save about $500 for something with the same grind quality that looks this amazing?



I used my Pharos to dial in the grind coarseness for the Cremina and made some wonderful decaf cappuccinos this evening. Three shots and it's dialed in. I was also surprised that with the hopper removed it isn't overly huge. And it is much, much quieter than my Super Jolly grinders, faster too, of course. I will still use the Pharos but now I have the luxury of an electric titan on the kitchen counter.



To prepare it for single dosing I removed the finger guard and will make some arrangement to do small dose feeding through the bean chute instead of keeping the hopper installed.

I'm sometimes amazed that Italian manufacturers will make a machine this stunning and put thin brass plate on the adjustment collar. Some of that is missing on this new grinder, but so what, given the quality of shots this is already producing. I expect the missing plate is a blemish in my refurb and wouldn't be seen in a new one. The interior diameter of the plastic collar is 64 mm. I'll need to go with a slightly smaller inner diameter, about 48 mm, for an improvised chute to keep beans from being retained under the collar and will probably use a tamper as a bean weight. The tape is my mark for zero, where the burrs touch.



Here's Jim's smackdown report of the Doge versus the Robur. It was a virtual tie. And my version seems to have a beefed up motor at 700W instead of 500W. The feel of this is quality as in Jim's review. Grind quality is superb with the first few shots, so it will only get better. He described the burrs on the test unit as 68 mm. The specs for this read 71 mm but sometimes that's measurement without a difference as the inside geometry of such burrs can be identical. As a side note, my gram scaled failed this morning and I can't find the other in my moving boxes. This grinder is pulling consistent shots with me winging the dose by volume.

I got the next to last refurb, but I see a new one listed for not much more.

The grinder came with a complimentary bag of roasted coffee, dark roasted coffee. I was hesitant to try it at first but came to my senses and decided to check it out as a traditional Italian blend. As straight espresso it needs sugar, but is then quite mellow. This is the way these blends are designed and is why they're usually served with one or two cubes of sugar. It shines as a cappuccino where bittersweet chocolate notes come punching through the milk without the acrid acidity found in lower quality roasts of this style. It's a fairly well-caffeinated morning blend but doesn't contain robusta. I pulled it on a Cremina starting at 179F on the outside of the group. I had the power toggled off so temperature wouldn't climb and burn the coffee. 179F would seem about right for immersion brewing too. I'll find out which blend this is from 1st-Line and will then post about it in the Coffees forum. According to Jim Piccinich of 1st-Line, I was sent the MM or Mid-Morning blend, which is described on their site here.

Congrats on your Doge score! I had an older Fiorenzato T-80 gringer and it was a TANK. I always wondered how the Doge would pan out.
Looking at your Doge by the Cremina, it doesn't look Bunn coffee grinder big. Nice!

There's a current thread on whether the titan grinder term is obsolete. However you parse it, this is a titan grinder for consistency, flavor, burr size and heft.

I don't think I'll ever be able to top this. Not in a thousand lifetimes.

A 1950's La San Marco "Lollobrigida". I just hauled it up stairs and set it down on my coffee bar. Sorry, I'm too wiped out at the moment for more pictures. But it's breathtaking and I can't believe I own it now.



I've had the last 2 days to research it. It was a Craigslist find, by the oddest way. I'm always searching, but this one caught my eye because of the nature of the listing. No pictures of it, no name, just "Estate Sale", and it popped up searching for "espresso machine". It was tons of fine furniture and art, collectibles etc, but it happened on the 5th and 6th, when I was at work. I emailed the guy on the 7th and just inquired more about the vague description of "1950's espresso machine" and if it hadn't sold, would he send me a picture.

I just got back from his storage shed. His father and mother collected rare antique's and fine furniture here in San Francisco in the 30's.

Two days of Google searching showed only a few scattered pictures copied from 2 sites. As far as I can tell (and I could be wrong) the only other known copies are in a collection in Italy, and the Daniel Di Paolo Collection in Melbourne Austrailia.

The guy who just sold it to me threw in an Atomic Coffee Maker too, for free. I'll upload more pictures later on, this will have to do for now.

Somebody pinch me. A cursory examination shows that it's only missing the plexi top. It has not one, but two original portafilters, the original drip tray, all the other brass trim, and even the two plexi side panels. Original gauge, lever handle, etc. This is going to be a very fun restoration. It's 220v, the guy said he plugged it in and it got hot (there's still a lot of water in the boiler). More to come. I'm off on another adventure now. But I'll share more later.

I am laughing my head off, Tom! That is too awesome! You and I should getting into the lever scouting biz.
You found a score.

Wow!