Hi,
I am currently using a Bezzera BZ10 and a Eureka Mignon MCI. Most of the time I drink Cappuccino and only light roasts are used. I'm really unsatisfied with my current setup regarding shot consistency, steam pressure and taste complexity. Any suggestions if I should first upgrade the grinder, the machine or both at the same time? And what upgrades for light roasts do you recommend?
In terms of grinder I do single dosing at the moment which is a mess with the eureka, thought about the Lagom P100 or Monolith flat max.
The machine should be a dual boiler with 2bar steam pressure as I drink mainly cappuccinos.
What would you suggest?
Thanks!

Hi Nico - have you considered a Decent? For light roasts I don't think there's a better machine out there. It lets you adjust flow rate, temperature and pressure easily and repeatedly. Not having a dual boiler - for me - is not a concern. When you get to flow or pressure profiling you'll be reviewing the screen so much you won't want to steam milk at the same time (at least that's my experience!), and there is no wait time after pulling the shot prior to getting perfect steam on the Decent. I agree a larger flat burr grinder is also going to be a good upgrade. I'm personally waiting on the new cast burrs to become available for the Lagom P64 before moving on from the Niche.

I thought also about the decent but the Tablet feels quite disturbing for me at the moment. The Eagle one prima or ECM Synchronika look really nice and offer a lot of functionality but indeed the decent offers best value for money. Who knows maybe I change my mind and end up with a decent

Yeah I understand the mistrust of the tablet - it took me a little while to get used to it too! The way I got my head around it is that a lot of high-end espresso machines will have some form of electronics houses inside the machine casing, be it in the form of an LCD display, water sensor or PID to heat the group/boiler. The decent just takes the brains of this and houses it externally in a tablet so it can be updated in future for a faster model if necessary, or easily replaced if it breaks.

You can run the Decent 100% without the tablet just using the group head controller. I actually keep mine off to the side of the machine and pull it out if I want to change any settings or take a look at the shot graph.

Grinder first and foremost in my opinion.

Agreed. Upgrade to one of the top end large flats and you may even find you don't need any kind of flow profiling to consistently pull great espresso with light roasts.

Thanks! Any recommendations? I'm highly impressed by the monolith flat max. Lagom p100 and Weber EG1 seem to have little quality issues at the moment.

I agree with Baldheadracing and RyanP - the grinder is first. Not sure where you have been reading about issues with the EG-1. Mine has been working fine so far. It is a huge improvement flavor wise compared to my Mignon XL.

Like yourself - most of my drinks are cappuccinos. The three machines I considered were the ECM Synchronika, LM G3 and a Slayer. Ultimately chose the Sync and have been very happy with it. It came with flow control and I wasn't sure I would use it. After dialing it in (about 6-8 shots) to the medium / light roast that I mostly use, I tried the FC and once started, have used it on every shot since. At this point, I wouldn't buy a machine without FC.

Since you are in Germany, ECM should be readily available to you since they are located in Bammental.

I live near Heidelberg so ECM is a home game. The machines I'm thinking about are the Synchronika, Eagle One Prima and Decent. In the current kitchen there is no option for plumbing in so with the Synchronika there will be only prewetting and no real preinfusion or am I getting this wrong?

baldheadracing wrote:Grinder first and foremost in my opinion.

I second this. I've had a monolith flat for two years now, so very rock solid.