Videos of Greg Scace at home (and his La Marzocco Leva X) - Page 4

Want to talk espresso but not sure which forum? If so, this is the right one.
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baldheadracing (original poster)
Team HB
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#31: Post by baldheadracing (original poster) »

gscace wrote:... The pump is isolated from the cylinder when you release the lever ...
Last piece of the puzzle 8).

Thanks again for letting Jay release the videos and also thanks for answering my questions.
-"Good quality brings happiness as you use it" - Nobuho Miya, Kamasada

gscace
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#32: Post by gscace »

CoffeeMac wrote:I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the Leva shot quality, especially where its lever characteristics seem to make a difference.
So I just got asked that same question in a private message and I'm gonna have to punt a bit. I can do back to back comparisons holding coffee, dose, filter basket, grinder and water constant, but I haven't recently done it with the Leva and anything else in several months at least. I guess since the question has been asked by several people I'm gonna have to revisit it
CoffeeMac wrote:I have a plumbed-in Londinium and can control pre-infusion pressure up to 6 bar. I did a temperature study with a temp probe embedded in 18g coffee to see what impact PI pressure had on peak brew temp under "real world" conditions. I found that peak brew temperature steadily increased until about 3 bar, but remained roughly constant after that. But I also found the only way to tame light roasts (I.e. bring acidity down) was to go to 5 bar PI pressure (which would have about same peak brew temp as 3 bar). So something besides peak brew temp must be at play here - rate of rise of temperature, the PI pressure itself, water volume delivered to chamber, etc. It seems like magic to me, but I certainly can't complain about or question the consistently excellent results in the cup so I've decided to just accept that it works.

How far down the lever rabbit hole do you plan to go?
A lot of lever machines don't really interest me. I'm really interested in how coffee extracts, what affects it, and how to do a better job of it. Old lever machines have temperature control issues that for me make them not all that desirable, even if they are beautiful art objects and even if they
can make good coffee. I've been quite lucky recently to work as a consulting engineer in coffee and extraction science / engineering and it is keeping me pretty busy. The Leva is really interesting because it addresses temperature very well and fluid flow in a unique way. As far as i know it's the only truly modern lever machine, so I feel very lucky to have it in my stable. I seem to be acquiring espresso machines these days and may buy example lever machines, but I might wind up keeping them for their significance in the development of coffee machinery, not necessarily to use in my work.

patrickff
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#33: Post by patrickff »

It is almost a shame that NIST does not have a dedicated coffee "lunch group".
:roll:
LMWDP #753

Javier
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#34: Post by Javier »

I have been to that "coffee wunderland" in the past, and it really is a coffee wonderland. Great to read your posts again, Greg! Did Jay include a video of your coffee roaster?
LMWDP #115

gscace
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#35: Post by gscace »

patrickff wrote:It is almost a shame that NIST does not have a dedicated coffee "lunch group".
:roll:
I don't work there any more. When I did, for a couple of years I went to the NCSL (National conference of Standards Labs) as part of the the NIST presence there, equipped with an espresso machine, grinder, measuring stuff and a poster about measurements in coffee one year and a poster about coffee extraction mechanics the following year. The NIST booth did 10 times their usual trade show volume in one day, which was pretty cool.

-Greg

gscace
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#36: Post by gscace »

Javier wrote:I have been to that "coffee wunderland" in the past, and it really is a coffee wonderland. Great to read your posts again, Greg! Did Jay include a video of your coffee roaster?
Yes you have. I see that you moved to Florida. Naah, we didn't talk about roasting much. Jay is really good at roasting and my setup is actually a bit of a hack and the weakest part of my program - something that I plan on addressing since I'm supposed to be running a lab and business as a consulting engineer.

-Greg

boshk
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#37: Post by boshk »

Hi Greg, do you have your own youtube channel or considering setting one up?
I think a lot of folks here would be very interested in your thoughts and experiences.

jbviau
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#38: Post by jbviau »

Just a side note here to say that I have so many good memories of coffee-related discoveries made at Jay's Hampden shop, which I understand he recently closed. He was always so generous and enthusiastic in passing conversations with me as I began to explore specialty coffee in 2009. Thanks for the tip on the videos, Craig.
"It's not anecdotal evidence, it's artisanal data." -Matt Yglesias

gscace
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#39: Post by gscace »

boshk wrote:Hi Greg, do you have your own youtube channel or considering setting one up?
I think a lot of folks here would be very interested in your thoughts and experiences.
No I don't. I ought to do some videos on Scace devices.

drH
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#40: Post by drH replying to gscace »


Thanks again for all of your efforts posting about the Leva X. It's such an intriguing machine.
Now that you've had some time with it, would you say that you can use it to prepare shots at least as good as the straight 9-bar pump machines?
Do you think that given the profiling, that you can repeatably do better?
Given a choice, would you prefer this machine to another equivalent La Marzocco (e.g., a Linea PB or something else)?