by da gino on Fri May 01, 2009 7:05 pm I was lucky enough to attend the beginner's training class at Counter Culture yesterday. It was a blast and went from 9-4. I've wanted to attend one of these since I heard about them and finally got the chance. Now I want to go to some of the more advanced labs.
Here are a few impressions...
1) it was great and filled with lots of information
2) it reminded me just how much I've learned here from the posters on HB. I learned a lot at Counter Culture, but there was also a lot I already knew because of you guys.
3) I got to pull a many shots as I wanted on their LM and Astoria machines using a Robur, an electronic Robur, a Mahlkönig Vario, and a Super Jolly.
4) the people at Counter Culture are remarkably friendly and happy. I've rarely been anywhere where people seemed to universally like their work so much. As we took the tour I looked around and kept seeing people grinning as they chatted. It must be something in the water there (coffee perhaps?).
As for the equipment, I expected adjusting to different equipment to be hard especially having only really steamed milk on a Pavoni, but creating reasonable microfoam was fairly easy on both machines even using 3-4 oz of milk or so (although it was even easier with 6 oz or more) it just happened much faster and boy was it easy to get that vortex going.
Even with the Robur we saw that bad technique would result in channeling. This is the second time I've been around a Robur and a Super Jolly there and the second time that I walked away impressed by the quality of the Super Jolly and amazed at what a bargain it is relatively speaking (especially picked up lightly used). That said I did use the higher end grinders more often while I was there - who wouldn't have?
Finally, I'll mention that the best 1/3 of my shots on a Pavoni and a Macap M4 were to my taste as good as the best 1/3 of my shots I could pull on this much higher end equipment. The bottom 1/3 of my shots on the Pavoni are much worse than the bottom 1/3 on the high end stuff. My guess is the same would have been true of one of the HX or DB machines commonly talked about on this site combined with any of these grinders.
Hugh
