The small handcrafted pottery pitcher has worked out well. Facebook (like Orr's Own Espresso - if you care to) not so much. But to take in $400+ for the boys and girls club over 10 3 hours markets is something.
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Five + years since I received my two group lever from Skyler of Republic Restoration of Seattle and she's still going strong. It's the project that keeps on giving as I am plumbing in the machine (no more Flojet bottle pump when she's at home) and turning the hot water tap into a filtered water tap for our home. When on roadshows I'll use the Flojet pump still.

And she is going back on the road. The Sunnyside WA American Cancer Society Relay for Life will have my Portacaffé to offer tasty coffee for donation at that event, Saturday May 16.

more to come...

I have reconfigured the water intake as part of a home water filtration system. Plumbed in.

I also modified the machine from two steam wands to one steam wand, one cool water tap. I found the OEM wand works better than the one I purchased from Espresso Parts and I don't need two. I wanted to have a cool water tap on the machine and I have no use for a hot water tap. I use Bonavita PID'd kettle for the Portacaffé stand. Also drawing hot water off a boiler leads to higher groups temps. You've gotta have control of group temperature for optimal lever use, you know.

Within the machine I used copper, rather than plastic. Also compression fittings are more quick disconnect than I find JG or Watts fittings to be. (Those are quick connect, but far from quick disconnect.) For portable use I will be able to switch back in the original Flo-jet system I had in use. I hope I won't have to configure the thing again if I eventually make propane an option. After this image I made one more change. The intake line is directed back over the edge of the table rather than down through the table like the drain. That space is used for storage so have the line go down would be more likely to have inadvertent and disastrous separation at the John Guest fitting.



Here is the cool water tap! Bye-bye, Pur kitchen sink mess! Our drinking pitcher fills so quick with that 3/8 line doing the filling. Also bye-bye Flojet filling noise.


The drain still goes to old 5 gallon carboy, leaving one carboy beside my espresso table. Here I've moved the drainage catcher to the basement to collect the first purging of the water - softening, filtration system:

Nice work Flint. Congratulations for all of the good work you do for charity.

Thanks for the shout out, Clint. One of these days, and probably not far off, I'll finally make it to Limestone. Whenever that is, I look forward to it!

This year's Winter Market is ending after this weekend.

I guess I'll have more time on Saturdays for roasting.

One more go however, with Coffee Shrub Colombia Inza Finca Villa Rica as the tasty coffee of the market, donations to the boys and girls club.

The youth at our church are planning a trip. Roasting has opened a bit less time intensive fund-raising efforts, although the barista in me still loves to share great coffee and espresso. Besides exchanging fresh roast for donations to the local boys and girls club, I offered to roast some tasty current crop Coffee Juan Ana for their upcoming trip.

Here's a shout out to HB for splitting this thread off, but not closing it. I can still blog about my hobbyist/barista/roaster thing.

The big espresso machine has a new cup tray. Just needs a gig making espresso.

"...for the youth of our church."

Thanks for the efforts with our next generation.