galumay wrote:You should certainly have a play with a Caravel, I think you would enjoy the pure simplicity of it....

If a Caravel owner in the SF Bay Area sees this, I would love to give one a try.

Loved the shoot out - smack down. And Hallelujah, I'm sticking with my Mcals.
Gary, would you be open to another smackdown in early Sept? I'm coming down to my beloved Bay Area to see Kool & The Gang and Commodores and I could bring one of my caravels so we could really smack down. What y'all think?
OO

Well hallelujah! Absolutely yes indeed. But this smackdown is likely to be between a Prestina and a Caravel, if you can stand it.

I don't think they're directly comparable actually, but it's a great excuse for another local H-B get-together.

This was my feeling: Mcal (and Bacchi ) is a very good machine
Ciao Gary!

drgary wrote: My new Stradivarius has a brass piston and chrome plated brass boiler too, except the boiler on mine does not swivel...



That is good information. Maybe the company has gotten the message that cheapening build quality hurts the brand.

There has been some reports that Pavoni have gone back to the brass piston after using the plastic one for a few years, however i can report my Millenium Pro (build date march 2012) has a plastic piston

drgary wrote:Well hallelujah! Absolutely yes indeed. But this smackdown is likely to be between a Prestina and a Caravel, if you can stand it.

I don't think they're directly comparable actually, but it's a great excuse for another local H-B get-together.

My thoughts exactly -any excuse for a Bay Area HB get together is a lil' bit 'o alright!. Particularly since I missed the last one in February. Maybe someone can bring an Oly so my curiosity can be satisfied one time.

Nice write-up Gary, and wonderful to see it turning into a social occasion, too

The results are pretty much what I have found with these machines, which shouldn't be surprising considering that the original Cremina was developed from the Pavoni and then refined over the years.

A few hopefully helpful observations from my own experience:

1) Once one has learnt how to manage the overheating issues on the Pavoni effectively it can deliver outstanding shots. There are not that many differences between the 49mm Pavoni group and the 67 Cremina so the shots can be very similar once you master the Pavoni. However, many find managing the Pavoni temperature a frustrating challenge. The early Creminas are much easier in this respect with their casing acting like a heat sink, and the later models with their increased space between the boiler and group easier still. This makes them more of an all-day-on machine. The design also makes it easier to pile on the pressure without danger of tipping or burning your hand on the boiler trying to steady the machine. It is, however, arguable that anyone applying that much pressure may want to consider the complexity they are losing in the pursuit of shot body and/or crema.

2) The declining pressure profile of the Elektra is one (but not I think the only) reason for its layered shots. However, with practice, one can replicate a similar profile on either the Cremina or Pavoni. With a big spring such as you have fitted, you are also able to up the pressure with the Elektra to obtain full-bodied creamy shots that are closer to what the manual machines can achieve, something that is more of a challenge on the Elektra normally, requiring very careful balancing of dose and grind. Moving from swings to roundabouts, however, the Elektra doesn't allow one to alter the pressure during a shot to modulate the flow as one can with a manual lever. On yet another hand it does enable beginners to achieve much greater shot-to-shot consistency.

It is true that Pavoni material and build quality is not what it was, but sadly neither is the quality of the very latest Creminas up there with earlier models, which were built like tanks. The difference between these two lever machines is however very much more in favour of the Cremina vs the Pavoni today (compared to the machines you compared), including in matters such as ease of applying high lever pressure and the amount of feedback provided.

Elektra quality has been pretty consistent and is not in my opinion far behind the Cremina today.

I hope these additional considerations are helpful to anyone perplexed about which of these machines to choose. It isn't in my opinion an easy choice (obviously, from my comments above! ) and I think temperament comes into it as much as bean, roast and shot preferences.

Cheers

Mike

michaelbenis wrote:1) Once one has learnt how to manage the overheating issues on the Pavoni effectively it can deliver outstanding shots. There are not that many differences between the 49mm Pavoni group and the 67 Cremina so the shots can be very similar once you master the Pavoni. However, many find managing the Pavoni temperature a frustrating challenge. The early Creminas are much easier in this respect with their casing acting like a heat sink, and the later models with their increased space between the boiler and group easier still. This makes them more of an all-day-on machine. The design also makes it easier to pile on the pressure without danger of tipping or burning your hand on the boiler trying to steady the machine. It is, however, arguable that anyone applying that much pressure may want to consider the complexity they are losing in the pursuit of shot body and/or crema.

Mostly agreed (see added below). I was surprised though that the Cremina also must be mastered for temperature. My Millennium Pavoni is more like the Cremina for temperature management but then the build quality of the Millennium Pavoni shows lots of cost cutting. That's a shame. Added: I don't believe the dual switch Pavoni or other vintage espresso machines without a pressurestat have "overheating issues" per se. Rather they need to be controlled manually. Since some coffees require more heat than others, the machine must get too hot for other coffees. But once a machine like this can get hot enough, it can also be cooled by simply toggling off the switch or using other methods. Similarly people can struggle with overheating a Cremina until they set the pressurestat appropriately and learn to manage temperature by following threads like those posted by tekomino. Regarding tipping the Pavoni, this is easy to control by either using a two-handed technique with the lever or by placing one hand on the Bakelite boiler cap, which is cool. I was surprised that the Cremina began to tip on one of our pulls and that wasn't an intense gorilla pull either.

michaelbenis wrote:2) The declining pressure profile of the Elektra is one (but not I think the only) reason for its layered shots. However, with practice, one can replicate a similar profile on either the Cremina or Pavoni. With a big spring such as you have fitted, you are also able to up the pressure with the Elektra to obtain full-bodied creamy shots that are closer to what the manual machines can achieve, something that is more of a challenge on the Elektra normally, requiring very careful balancing of dose and grind. Moving from swings to roundabouts, however, the Elektra doesn't allow one to alter the pressure during a shot to modulate the flow as one can with a manual lever. On yet another hand it does enable beginners to achieve much greater shot-to-shot consistency.

Agreed again. I sometimes simply enjoy letting the lever do the work too. If one likes the style of shot pulled that way, it eliminates a variable and one can attend to other things -- as long as blonding doesn't proceed unnoticed.

michaelbenis wrote:It is true that Pavoni material and build quality is not what it was, but sadly neither is the quality of the very latest Creminas up there with earlier models, which were built like tanks.

I'm surprised to read that having seen a 2002 Cremina with the case off and having read Doug's write-up of the new one. What changed that is undesirable?

michaelbenis wrote:I hope these additional considerations are helpful to anyone perplexed about which of these machines to choose. It isn't in my opinion an easy choice (obviously, from my comments above! ) and I think temperament comes into it as much as bean, roast and shot preferences.

+1

A Note on Toggling Heat Switches on Vintage Home Lever Machines

The issue of achieving temperature control has come up in this thread, so I thought I would share my understanding of how that's done to assist those comparing dissimilar machines, perhaps without experience using them. The idea of temperature control with a home lever machine* may seem difficult at first glance but I don't find it all that difficult. Please feel free to correct any errors or elaborate on method.

There's a preparatory phase of bringing the machine up to temperature. With a pressure gauge, thermometer or temperature strip, this is easy to tell. Say you have a Pavoni or Elektra with a pressure gauge. You can watch it go beyond shot-pulling pressure/temperature (one indicates the other**) and settle back down in range, somewhere between .8 and 1.2 bar for pressure, which is my favorite measurement. The second phase is when it reaches temperature. Water has been fully heated in the boiler but now the group is hot to the touch. A thermometer, thermocouple or temperature strip on the group indicates cruising temperature, which differs slightly across machines from the exterior measurement to what occurs within the brew chamber. But the barista soon learns the temperature range to shoot for by taste. To get to this temperature faster you can flush water through the group and steam wand to eliminate lower-density air as Robert Pavlis instructs in his wonderful thread on Dalton's Law. Otherwise air tends to leak and give way to steam and hot water more efficiently transferring heat to the brew chamber. Now the group is up to temperature as a heat sink and you toggle heat switches to control temperature within a range.

Temperature Control and Steam, with/without PSTAT

Home lever machines equipped for steaming may carry sufficient steam at the top of the boiler that no additional heating is required. This is the case with machines like the Elektra Microcasa a Leva or Millennium La Pavoni. Machines without a pressurestat often have a dual heating element or a hotter mode using a single element. That hotter mode produces robust steam but temperature is too high for pulling shots. One learns to bleed off steam to lower pressure and to return to brew temperature. With the High heating mode off, heat will radiate and temperature will drift back to shot-pulling range. Again, with some means of measuring temperature one can consistently pull shots within a desired temperature range. I'm not the first to assert this and read a nice thread about it by Fullsack here, using a Pavoni to pull shot after shot.

Added later: Lifting the lever halfway allows hot water into the group to increase group temperature. If you're using a thermometer on the group you can watch the temperature go up a few degrees to dial in your shot. Sometimes I'll use a few of these pumps to get the shot temperature just right. On my Millennium Pavoni I sometimes dip the portafilter in cool water to adjust group temperature.

* Any home lever machine can overheat or miss the mark for temperature. That's the difference between home levers and commercial levers that are designed to be left on indefinitely and have a massive group act as a heat sink to help stabilize temperature. I'm suggesting that temperature control with any quality home lever machine isn't that hard to learn if you pay attention to the issues above and put in some practice.

** There are ways of correlating steam pressure with temperature described elsewhere (ask Dr. Google). I haven't gone into detail here.

Quick replies, Gary (sorry!)

I think anyone talking about overheating issues on lever machines means "if not managed". They are all relatively easy to control by switching off, cooling the grouphead with a wet cloth, turning down the pressure stat, especially if you like light-roast SO beans etc.

Incidentally, even the big commercial levers can benefit from heat management techniques which differ depending on the machine. Note how Gwilym Davies uses his Arduino, for example: Gwilym Davies's Chicago talk on the Victoria Arduino Leverand also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35iylRWT09I

On the little domestic machines, I personally prefer to show a little patience and wait for them to heat up rather than open port flushing.

The very latest Creminas show the bean-counter's hand at work, reducing the ancillaries supplied with the machine, reverting to the cheaper circlips on the lever, reverting to the cheaper pressure gauge with stop pin, moving to thinner sheet steel for the casing. Once Olympia made no compromise on quality. That no longer appears to be the case. Hopefully feedback like this will get Olympia and their new owners Schatti taking more care to protect their brand equity.