Interesting idea to weigh the milk before and after steaming on different machines; such geeky experiments are right up my alley.
Next time I fire up the Expobar I'll give it a go. I did notice that the steaming improved noticeably when I removed the teflon liner, which is said to reduce condensation (BDB comes with a liner-free 'burn me" wand).

pcrussell50 wrote:In flow profiling, there are two "teams" forming sides...

1) The "profile-on-the-fly" team that you and I are on

and

2) the "program it and watch it run", team that the DE'ers are on.

There are pluses and minuses to both, with the weights given to them, the subjective preference of the user. If you like to do it manually and like to have precision control on the fly to for example slow down a flow that ended up a little faster than you like. OTOH, if you are a meticulous enough puck prepper you can build your profile in your DE and knock out identical shots... as long each puck is the same as the last. A lot of people place a high priority on that degree of automation and potential for shot-to-shot repeatability.

-Peter

Peter, id like to remind you that those with the V1.3 GHC can profile on the fly. Now that I've played with it a bit it's much better than twisting a knob and trying to match notches you drew with a sharpie. Here you just rest your finger on the first tick for 1ml, third tick for 3ml, etc all the way around. Same goes with pressure if you choose to do a manual pressure shot.

Also wanted to chime in that I upgraded my firmware & got a three hole tip and found that it produces amazing micro foam. Took 55 seconds to steam 8oz of 2% Kirkland Lactose free milk.

OP, I was really considering the Londinium. I think it's a great machine even though I've never used one but many are happy with theirs.

Jev. I never made tic marks. Never even considered it. I adjust my flow purely on fly, eye on the tail/naked and nothing else. Seat 'o' the pants. I'm firmly on team (1). But I like all kinds of coffee gear. I have two Pavoni levers for example. I could see getting a DE1 one day. And an old skool HX E61. I've got the space, the means and the tolerance for clutter. Just a little short on time and motivation at the moment.

I got dragged into this thread offering a data point that I thought was relevant to the OP since he mentioned cappuccinos and flat whites in the thread title. I hope that hasn't gotten lost in all this.

For the record, I rarely make milk drinks. And if I do, it's Gibraltar'esque. About the same amount of milk as coffee or less. That's why I'm more of a messenger in this thread.

-Peter

pcrussell50 wrote:Jev. I never made tic marks. Never even considered it. I adjust my flow purely on fly, eye on the tail/naked and nothing else. Seat 'o' the pants.

Same here, and decided not to bother installing the less sensitive Jake valve with its better modulation. I adopted Peter's crude method of guesstimating the flow rate while the dose is grinding; somewhere close to 1.5 mL/second. When the gauge climbs to 3 bar, it is easy to smoothly turn the knob to hold it there till the first few drops, generally 20 to 30 seconds, and then smoothly increasing flow up to 8 bar a la Jake G. Getting great results with several lght and medium light coffees. No need for tick marks.

FWIW, both of my cars are stick shift.

If you want the best of both worlds re: steam quality, I've read another thread that suggested pulling the no burn teflon liner out of the ECM Sync, and replacing the steam wand tip on the ECM that comes with the one from the LMLM. And this resulted in fantastic milk steaming.

Regarding E61 temp stability, please correct me if I am wrong. You can get a high degree of temperature accuracy for a darker or lighter roast, but just not if you want to rapidly go back and forth between roasts/beans? But, if you are just getting a new bag of beans in every 2 weeks, you can just adjust the PID for the new bag and get strong, consistent temp stability after flushing the group... is this right?

dsc106 wrote:Regarding E61 temp stability, please correct me if I am wrong. You can get a high degree of temperature accuracy for a darker or lighter roast, but just not if you want to rapidly go back and forth between roasts/beans? But, if you are just getting a new bag of beans in every 2 weeks, you can just adjust the PID for the new bag and get strong, consistent temp stability after flushing the group... is this right?

With a DB machine and an E61 group head, you don't have the problems of thermosiphon causing the group temperature to slowly creep up, or that the inlet temperature varies during the shot as cooler water flows into the HX.

With any machine with a big boiler and a big chunk of brass it can take several minutes to change temperature and stabilize. A lot faster than coming up from cold, but still not as fast as the boiler changes temperature. The HX flush and surf routine is something of a tradeoff here, being more quickly able to change temperature shot-to-shot, at the cost of having to do the flush and then watch group temperature rise to the point you want.

I was too busy at work to call around today. I am looking at a few machines such as the Quickmill Vetrano 2b, Lelit Bianca , ECM Synchronika. I will take another look at the decent machine it just looks cheap but it's small and I like that. If the Decent can produce a more consistent shot with temps more stable than a e61 then maybe it's what I'm looking for. Just want to buy once cry once at this point.

Stavey wrote: If the Decent can produce a more consistent shot with temps more stable than a e61 then maybe it's what I'm looking for. Just want to buy once cry once at this point.

If temperature stability without ritual is your thing, time has left the e61 behind. Actively heated groups and saturated groups own that space now.

-Peter

Stavey wrote:I was too busy at work to call around today. I am looking at a few machines such as the Quickmill Vetrano 2b, Lelit Bianca , ECM Synchronika. I will take another look at the decent machine it just looks cheap but it's small and I like that. If the Decent can produce a more consistent shot with temps more stable than a e61 then maybe it's what I'm looking for. Just want to buy once cry once at this point.

Take a few minutes to listen to John B. talk about measuring temp at the puck compared to E61 machines. If the video didn't direct you to the correct it is 39:11.

I think at times we put too much emphasis on control or thinking the latest thing is going to improve our game. This is not unique to coffee, it's the same with any hobby. After using a dual boiler for many years at home, I bought a lever machine for the office and really enjoy it. I happened to find a great deal over the weekend on an e61 hx machine and have been pulling shots with it for the last two days and have been really impressed. I think it's more important to work on your skills, your prep, your technique and really refine what you do because no machine will make up for it. This is no criticism to anyone - I have to remind myself of the same thing any time there is a tempting new and improved piece of gear. I think find a machine that you will enjoy using - and learn to use it to the best of your abilities.