Right now there is not a single pump machine on the market, at any price, I'd even consider besides a DE1. Perhaps the Duvalle belt driven machine once it's out, but nothing until then.

Look at some of the things people like Rao are doing with them that are just straight impossible with other machines. Including substantially higher extractions out of grinders not usually able to punch so high. Everything on the DE1 should have been absolutely 100% mandatory on every machine besides the little plastic toys for years now, and now that people are starting to see what it can do, hopefully it will be soon.

The Lelit is better than many since it at least bothered to make pressure variable, but flow profiling is going to need something like an Acaia and carefully watching the graph to pull off, versus following any flow profile you'd like. Among other things no other machine but the DE currently bothers to include. Also the DE has a serious group and not some far outdated temperature unstable E61 that's always going to mess with preinfusion like it or not.

If I were in a snarky mood, I'd ask whether it's out of date to actually drink shots. Maybe we should just be measuring their extraction yields.

And if I were in a chest beating mood, I'd ask if the DE1 or any other automatic machine can profile with shot weight instead of time as the X-axis. This is the SOP for every lever user (or Bianca user) who varies the shot's flow rate by how full the cup is. Of course, I'm sure you enjoy integrating the flow by time curve to accomplish this. There's also the little matter of being able to overcome variances in puck prep on the fly, rather than needing another, as yet to be invented, 5K contraption to assure the perfect puckology.

Yes and yes.

I may be somewhat unique in that I was a pre-order customer for the Decent Espresso machine and now have the Lelit Bianca and couldn't be happier. The Lelit is beautiful and hands-on. A friend of mine has a BDB and likes it and if one can achieve Slayer style shots with it that would be a worthwhile consideration. I find the BDB ugly. I find the DE1 Ugly. I find the Lelit Bianca gorgeous. For me the ability to interact with the machine, a gorgeous machine at that, is what drew me to the Lelit Bianca. I will likely never be able to afford a La Marzocco or Slayer but the Bianca paddle helps me feel less disheartened by this fact

another_jim wrote: And if I were in a chest beating mood, I'd ask if the DE1 or any other automatic machine can profile with shot weight instead of time as the X-axis. This is the SOP for every lever user (or Bianca user) who varies the shot's flow rate by how full the cup is.

That's literally one of the selling points of the DE over machines costing more than ten grand. It varies flow rate based on what's getting to the cup by being connected to a scale. It does everything you or I can do with a lever, but better with the instant response time of a computer. I'm huge on the importance of being able to react to what's happening in real time. That's why I use a CT1 and wouldn't have even been tempted by anything with a pump pre-DE. But I'd have to be absolutely delusional to think I could compete against the reaction time of silicon.

On outdated pump machines like Synessos and Slayers I still had an advantage of seeing something the computer can't. That's gone now. And I retain enough flexibility to not keep my ideas anchored in a dying past.

This stuff reminds me so much of the first chess computers that could beat grandmasters. For the longest time they didn't want to admit it was possible and would think of any excuse. Now it's well acknowledged and undisputed that nobody can come close. Doesn't take away from fun and doesn't take away from competitions in chess, but in coffee I'm concerned with results more than process. I want the closest thing to perfection that is achievable in the cup to focus on trying different regions, varietals, milling processes, and so on while knowing no step I do is anything less than the absolute best possible. If that's handing it over to a machine that's better than me, I'm glad to. I care about the coffee.

another_jim wrote:If I were in a snarky mood, I'd ask whether it's out of date to actually drink shots. Maybe we should just be measuring their extraction yields

It's being a certain age Jim, I share your views.... I get a bit triggered by the facination with a computer screen for coffee in the form of drink production, roasting and grinding.

People need to look, smell and taste, because that's what it's really all about.

DaveC wrote:It's being a certain age Jim, I share your views.... I get a bit triggered by the facination with a computer screen for coffee in the form of drink production, roasting and grinding.

People need to look, smell and taste, because that's what it's really all about.

I feel the same, although I'm only a youngster just beyond the fifty mark.

I get the most out of coffee by smelling and tasting it. I've never had the need to measure my extractions with any fancy equipment (although I could borrow them for free if I wanted to). Ok, I went to art university where we were encouraged to trust our senses....

And of course, I am a huge Star Wars fan. "Trust your feelings!" could be my motto.

And back to the original post: I would go with Bianca, obviously. I love my Caravel because it let's me do all the decisions. It makes pulling an espresso as close to an art as it can ever be.

I think there is nothing that can beat the feeling of pulling a perfect shot all by yourself - repeatedly, after some rehearsal time.

IMO, the two most interesting machines on the market right now. If I was in the market, I'd go for the Lelit for a few reasons:

1. I like that you can easily improve a shot by being able to interact during the extraction.

2. I also like the fact that almost all the key components are well known and readily available.

3. Lelit demoed what looked to be a version of the smart espresso profiler so I'm thinking they will add support for it in the future. I'm not sure yet how useful that info would be but I like that they are looking to add more technology to give users more options.

arcus wrote: 1. I like that you can easily improve a shot by being able to interact during the extraction.

2. I also like the fact that almost all the key components are well known and readily available.

3. Lelit demoed what looked to be a version of the smart espresso profiler so I'm thinking they will add support for it in the future. I'm not sure yet how useful that info would be but I like that they are looking to add more technology to give users more options.

1. DE can already do that faster and more accurately than you by the exact rules you give it in response to what's actually happening with the bluetooth scale.

2. DE components are also all readily through their store.

3. DE can give all the data the Smart Espresso Profiler gives, along with many other variables it doesn't.

Ultimately anything you want to do with coffee a computer programmed to your tastes can do better. You're extracting by rules in your head that a computer can apply faster and more consistently than you. No matter if you're a newbie or the single best barista to ever live, a computer (set to your own ideal parameters) can inherently do better than you even for your own tastes.

If you enjoy the process and want to keep it hands on, that's fine. But don't fool yourself into thinking your brain can somehow do it better than silicon. You can't. Noone can. We've been over this in many other fields and it always ends with the meatsacks being many orders of magnitude behind. Personally, I'm happy to have science handle my getting my extraction exactly how I like it (and even roasting ideally) and leave the art to the farmers.

(I will say that, for now, our meat computers are better at creative tasks. Which is why the ability to design and experiment with profiles is so important to me. But silicon computers are far better at executing what we come up with.)

Just a quick (for me ) retort on this, because I believe that while technology will ultimately win this fight, it's not quite there yet.

Here's a couple of my observations, obviously subject to fact checking:

•DE machines don't use the scale for controlling flow.
To the best of my knowledge, they use it to stop the shot and display the goings on of the scale because it's neat to look at, and also for big data. Collect TMI, and then apply statistical process analysis and data analytics to see if all your data is telling you anything. Cool? Yes. But not what Jim was asking about.

•DE machines use time as the x axis for their profiles, not what's in the cup.
Caveat here that the advanced shot profiler does some cool stuff and may be able to toggle to the next section of the shot based on feedback from the scale, but I can't say that I've seen this for sure... actual profiles I've seen are generally on the order of "pump x ml/s for y seconds or until pressure hits z bar" or "maintain x pressure for y seconds or until flow rate exceeds z ml/s". It would be cool to use the scale feedback as milestones for the advanced shot profiles, but it may be that using their pump modeling to estimate flow rates is better in practice. I don't know.

•My opinion is that human control is less likely to "break" in terms of "When I increased the brew pressure, the flow choked. I should back it off and soften the puck a bit longer." This technique can save a shot and allow one to throttle through and have a quite nice espresso (or some sort of concentrated espresso-ish coffee beverage) at the end. I've saved a few choked shots by just closing my profiling valve all the way and letting it steep for 30 seconds and then bring the flow and pressure back on slowly to get a pour started. Decent simply can't do that. Yep. I am the one who crammed 20g into my basket with too fine a grind and nutated it to get it to clear the shower screen. But I thought I'd try it, so I did. It was fine after I saved it, but no way no how was this going to flow without a long steep to soften up the puck. This would have been a tossed shot for sure with anything other than a manual profiling machine at this point in time of the smart machine development.

Computers kind of suck at this right now. Eventually, they will beat us but we still control the grind, dose distribution and prep. As such, we can realize our own mistakes and save them on the fly (I have, MANY times!), where the computer tends to fail. Pressure profiles tend to increase the flow when a channel opens up in order to hit the target brew pressure. Flow controls have a tough time with varying puck permeability where increased pump output reduces flow. Tight and intertwined parameters of flow and pressure can help overcome this, but I'm a big fan of the natural relationship between pressure and flow. In particular, I think the decay of pressure as the puck erodes is a good thing and helps balance the shot. I can't think of an example where maintaining constant pressure at the puck is really beneficial, but I'm sure there are times. Of course I know most folks are using a tapered profile of sorts, but even so, I like that this happens on its own with a fixed pump output machine using a reasonably sized gicleur.

Constant flow seems to generally be better than a static pressure, but I think the controls are not really "there" just yet to do this well with active pump control, when taking into account our imperfect puck prep. The Duvall Espresso machine has this market cornered. It's a mechanically driven piston, so setting the speed of the drive gear just sets the flow rate, pressure be damned. There are obvious physical limitations to this, but it is the one machine I can think of where volumetric control is intrinsic and nearly infallible, as long as the barista gets the handle side of the portafilter taken care of so as to not choke the machine entirely.

All this said, I'm a strong proponent of Decent and I love what they're doing, but as of yet I see no way to save a shot that's going south using one and the one thing I hear consistently is that Decent owners go through way more coffee than they did with their old machines. Presumably, this coffee is all great and they just want to play to get their chart looking better, and that's fine. I very rarely toss a shot. There's just so much control I have now that whatever ends up in the cup is good if not great. I'm not trying to do anything other than make a repeatable shot that's as good or better than the last one I pulled. I smell, I taste, I view, I refine. There's nothing other that what my tongue tells me that will really influence the refining process. The data is just there to help me do it again and guide what refinements I make, if taste tells me any are needed. I suspect Decent owners largely feel similar, but I think there's a calling/urge to have fewer pressure spikes and a slightly flatter flow curve, etc... and I'm not entirely sure those details are entirely indicative of tastier brews... But I might be wrong

That's all,

Cheers!

- Jake