TimEggers wrote:I hope you guys will also note the coffees and grinders used for the evaluations. I'd also like to hear more about technique used. John are you using WDT? Is anyone else? Lets hear it! In the meantime great work, this is really shaping up to be a lot of fun!

I'm grinding with a doserless Mazzer Super Jolly into a glass spice jar, and declumping by stirring with my trusty dissecting needle. The grounds are then transferred into the filter basket, and leveled to the top of the basket. If the dose is too high, grounds are removed by stirring with the needle and releveling. You can pack 15g into the Pavoni double basket without hitting the screen, but the taste suffers. When I downdose to 12g the taste is far better. As you can see, the tamped grinds are well below the rim with a 12g dose:



I'm pulling 20-25ml volume from the double basket, using the Fellini move approach. This amounts to one full stroke after the puck has fully preinfused and the first drops appear.



The brew ratio is around 50% (46.4% in this case), smack dab in the middle of the "regular espresso" category.

Hi Greg,

gscace wrote: Since it's my first lever machine experience I don't have lots of experience wrt coffee taste compared to other lever offerings aimed at the home market. I find the coffee taste to be creamy and sweet. These attributes are at the expense of flavor clarity.

I am glad you chimed in. It was really interesting to read your first impressions about the Lusso.

If you would like to test another home lever machine, I can bring over my Gaggia Factory (i.e., rebranded La Pavoni) and loan it to you for a few weeks. Please, let me know if you are interested.

Javier

Nov. 7 AM update:

This morning I matched coffee dose volumes as best I could between the Marzocco and the Lusso. I have lots of 58mm baskets and I have a small straight sided double basket that is very shallow and holds about what a Rancilio basket holds - 14gm. I used this basket and pulled shots of Harrar from the Marzocco. These were extremely sweet berry bombs. I was able to get quite close with the Lusso by updosing, very little pre-infusion, and the pulling technique I described yesterday. Lusso shots were less viscous and slightly less sweet, but creamy. Volumes were what they were. I don't get hung up on shot volume. I look at the extraction and how it progresses, stopping when the extraction lightens and thins, or I get the taste profile that I want. Volume is what it is. FWIW these shots were prolly a little less than an ounce.

I'll mention here that the Marzocco is fed by a Fluid-O-Tec TMFR rotary pump. The pump speed is controlled by a variable speed controller whose output is regulated by a PID process controller and an electronic pressure transducer (If you wanna fall asleep at your computer there are posts on HB that blog about the pump and its effect that were published last spring when I put the system together). The result is that the pre-infusion and brewing pressure profile is variable and reproducible. The current pressure profile is to use a 2-second constant pre-infusion at low pressure, followed by a fast, concave-up pressure ramp to full pressure, then declining pressure similar to lever profile. So I'm in a position to make observations of the Lusso's behavior, try to duplicate them on the Marzocco, taste the result, and see if I understand the process.

The thing I came away with this morning was the accentuated sweetness and berry taste of the small Marzocco shots brewed with a shallow basket. At this point I attribute this to the reduced temperature gradient from top to bottom of the shallow basket, compared to the straight-sided 18 gm basket that is my usual starting point. The slightly reduced sweetness from the Lusso shots compared to the Marzocco shots may be the result of the extra depth of the small diameter Lusso basket compared to the shallow one i used in the Marzocco. At this point I'm also thinking that the required second pull on the Lusso results in reduced viscosity. I may program the Marzocco to duplicate it.

Another interesting idea I had was to bore out the center of a very shallow 58mm blind filter basket so that I could install the Lusso's basket into the marzocco. Sealing between the Lusso basket and the bored 58mm blind filter could easily be accomplished using a Viton O-ring. By doing this I can minimize differences in brew basket configuration when comparing machines.

What would I learn? If I can produce identical taste from two fundamentally different machines by producing the same temperature and pressure conditions in the coffee cake, then I'll learn something about the effect of pressure and temperature profiling wrt coffee taste. I'd also learn a little about what makes lever machines tick, whether or not the taste produced by a lever machine is intrinsic to the machine configuration (the lever, chamber, etc.), or whether it can be duplicated regardless of machine style.

-Greg

Javier wrote:Hi Greg,



I am glad you chimed in. It was really interesting to read your first impressions about the Lusso.

If you would like to test another home lever machine, I can bring over my Gaggia Factory (i.e., rebranded La Pavoni) and loan it to you for a few weeks. Please, let me know if you are interested.

Javier

Hey thanks. Glad I didn't bore you too much. WRT the Gaggia Factory - I think I'm in the queue for a Pavoni at some point in this dog's breakfast and I should prolly opt for the test machine so that I'm on the same page as the rest of the reviewer / conscripts. If I'm wrong I'll let you know and take you up on yo' kind offer.

-Greg

gscace wrote:...long pre-infusions didn't work well. I got better taste and a more uniform extraction cone (bottomless portafilter, remember?) when I pre-infused for shorter periods, only a couple of seconds-worth.

This goes against recommendations for my MCaL but I gave it a try, and the results have been beautiful. I may never go back to 10++ second pre-infusions. It takes great resolve to release that lever after two seconds-- it feels so.... wrong.

Welcome John and Greg, thanks for joining the fray!

I took a couple days off from the Lusso and returned to it today. Before starting the session, I thought about the "stale water" comments that come up occasionally, though typically in the context of the perennial heat exchanger versus double boiler debates (e.g., Tasted Your Reservoir Water Lately? and Can water go stale?). Since the Lusso has a fairly large boiler, it stands to reason it would potentially suffer from this problem. So I let the boiler come to temperature, drained a cup of water, and let it cool for 30 minutes before tasting. After two days, yes, there was an unmistakable metallic / stale taste to the water. Thus the moral of the story: If you want the best tasting espresso, drain down the boiler each evening.

On other news, the Elektra Microcasa a Leva is en-route to Dave's and should arrive on Friday. He's a long-time La Pavoni / Gaggia Factory user, but has only tried the Microcasa one other time. I look forward to hearing his reprisal of Steve's Elektra/Pavoni side by side, especially given the dosing / preinfusion suggestions from Karl, Greg and John (frege) above.

The Elektra arrived today safe and sound. I love the lines of the Elektra, always have always will despite the tiny portafilter and drip tray. I did not realize how much I have gotten use to a plumbed machine until I had to remember to flush into a pitcher. I am tempted to buy one for nothing else than decoration, but I do like the shots it makes. Unique is the only way I can describe it. They are less espresso like and more like a rich and bright coffee. Actually, the more I think about it, it reminds me of a cup from a Clover but a little thicker and with a little more intense flavor.

I have also gotten use to a 3 way valve. Now I know this does not have one but in the daze of routine, I pulled a shot, 'not bad, let me try another with a different dose' so I grab the portafilter and twist, POP! Arrrrr. Portafilter sneeze. Luckily it was partially depressurized so it just splattered instead of exploded.



The Elektra twins, or should I say the youngster and his great, great grandfather same brand but with designs that are decades apart. Two more diametric cups do not exist, both excellent yet drastically different. Was this pairing fate? Or more importantly will they have to pry the portafilters from my cold dead hands to get it back, time will tell.