Looking at the Little Guy and thinking of getting one. It would be nice with a user's experience thread where we could compound and expand the forum's collective knowledge. Do you have one? I would much appreciate user input, and so would everyone else here in the forum of course

Website is here: https://lovethelittleguy.com/

What I know so far:

• The Little Guy used to be called Otto but the name was changed for patent reasons. Some small changes to the machine were made, and accessories/paraphernalia was added (such as an induction plate).
• The machine is modelled on the Atomic espresso machine, which has lots of copycats but let's not dwell on that. It is improved in design, but is made in stainless steel while the Atomics (old and current) were made in aluminium.
• It could be described as a hydraulic lever machine - which is of course the reason why I put this post in the Lever machine sub forum.

Have at it

Nice to hear that the Little Guy is back in production!

I went deep into these a few years ago but never pulled the trigger.

You might enjoy this recent (Oct 2021) comparison between an Otto and an Atomic that popped up in my YouTube feed last week:

Enjoyed it
Gaah for that golf club puck disruptor swing to the portafilter though
I also wonder: if the coffee receptor/bowl gets that hot, why not put it on just before coffee is running through? That should let some more of the crema stay.

so this is steam pressure like a Moka pot or does it have a system to deliver higher bar pressure like a 9barista?

Well... I hope some Little Guy user is on this forum and can chime in.

They do claim that, unlike the older Atomic design, the Little Guy Espresso is a stovetop espresso machine and (if I didn't read that somewhere else about some other machine) a hydraulic lever... this thread was just moved to brewers by our admins, so unless somebody comes here and proves/says it actually manages 9 bars (or, say, 6 bars at least), it might be better to call it something else.

An actual question here to the users: does the coffee taste like espresso?

It sounds like it's in between moka and espresso as far as pressure goes. I've read claims that it produces about 3 bar but not sure where that number came from.

In this video the creator says it's "about twice the pressure in a car tyre":

truemagellen wrote:so this is steam pressure like a Moka pot or does it have a system to deliver higher bar pressure like a 9barista?

It doesn't have a mechanism like the 9barista or Bacci stovetops for high pressures. There is a valve, but actual brew pressure is dependent on the puck's resistance (grind size and prep).

I see i know there are some machines that have basically an OPV inline before the puck and so the pressure builds higher than just straight steam through the puck but usually those release at 2-3 bar and then it floods the puck with that rush of water where it is at high temp and cools a bit with the group area. Unfortunately those designs are usually poorly implemented and the pressure dissapates quickly depending on the puck

truemagellan: Yeah, you are talking about the Brikka, for instance, maybe?
I have no idea how goodly or badly this is implemented, but would be really interested to hear from a user.

I do many pulls at around 3 bars with my manual leva (Strietman ES3) and they can be great - it is just that they are not usually very hot at the same time... this one seems like it should be hot-ish.

The Brikka valve is after the puck and releases at a fairly low pressure, well below 3 bar. The Brikka is kind of a hybrid immersion/percolation device as water sits in the puck for most of the brew and then is forced out rapidly at the end.