malling wrote:This might be the single worst machine to buy for those fanatic about it, as you have no indication or easy way to get the necessary data out.

But it certainly has a heating circle, but hitting the same won't be easy. Also I would be surprised if there isn't a noticeable difference if you let the water sit in long enough.

Well, we don't know much about the heating cycle so I wouldn't call it the single worst machine. If it cycles like the Strietman, what renatoa suggests may be good enough? In the worst case I would think one can install a thermocouple somewhere. That is if the cycle swings too big. Otherwise it's a moot point. Or, like you wrote, once you add water, the combined temp may be much more predictable.

Ha! James Hoffman posted a review of the 58 today.
FWIW, I take these reviews on YT and even H-B with a large grain of salt, but overall, I thought it's a decent take.

One comment that caught my attention was the hottest brewing temp he got was ~93C which is a bit lower than expected. Not sure what the deal is with different peak temp people are reporting. Pre-launch reviewer got 96C, Raglo above says it's too hot, Hoffman says the opposite. I suppose it could be due to manufacturing variance that I mentioned earlier but not sure. I also know temp adjustable kettles sometimes don't produce truly boiling water even though it reports 100C.

My guess is James Hoffmann didn't pre-heat the puck screen.

The confirmation of a rising temperature profile was the interesting tidbit of information to me (although a room temperature puck screen would also contribute to that). I'm happy that I went with a used Europiccola over a Flair58.

Cable management looks horrible and the machine is ~$500 eek

baldheadracing wrote:My guess is James Hoffmann didn't pre-heat the puck screen.

Quite possible. I couldn't find the exact weight of the screen to do thermal calculation, but B-Plus, who first introduced the screen AFAIK, says "pull shot with higher water temp (+2-3C)".

The confirmation of a rising temperature profile was the interesting tidbit of information to me (although a room temperature puck screen would also contribute to that). I'm happy that I went with a used Europiccola over a Flair58.

I saw that too and looked at the temp chart earlier in the video. Here's the screenshot of it. If you look closely at the vertical axis, you see that it's quite blown up (I hate those). And if you ignore the initial dip (common to most machines), we are looking at 93C to 93.3C from 7 sec to 20 sec mark. A whopping 0.15C (or 0.27F) of "rising temp profile".

K7 wrote:I saw that too and looked at the temp chart earlier in the video. Here's the screenshot of it. If you look closely at the vertical axis, you see that it's quite blown up (I hate those). And if you ignore the initial dip (common to most machines), we are looking at 93C to 93.3C from 7 sec to 20 sec mark. A whopping 0.15C (or 0.27F) of "rising temp profile".

Interesting! To put that into context, (most?) commercial spring levers and (most?) conventional home lever groups will have a declining temperature profile that will drop 4C-8C during a pull.

I'm not saying one profile is better or worse than another; that is a matter of coffee used, taste preferences, etc.

baldheadracing wrote:My guess is James Hoffmann didn't pre-heat the puck screen.

The confirmation of a rising temperature profile was the interesting tidbit of information to me (although a room temperature puck screen would also contribute to that). I'm happy that I went with a used Europiccola over a Flair58.

The temperature curve would be called flat on most machines. The rising temperatures are like within 0,5c in other words it's really insignificant and is something you see on allot of DB machines.

With very lighter roast I'm glad it doesn't have this massive temperature dip you can encounter on some levers (+4c) because I don't think that is all that desirable with that type of roast, with darker it is definitely not an issue, but light roast I have previously experienced it being problematic.

K7 wrote:Quite possible.
I saw that too and looked at the temp chart earlier in the video. Here's the screenshot of it. If you look closely at the vertical axis, you see that it's quite blown up (I hate those). And if you ignore the initial dip (common to most machines), we are looking at 93C to 93.3C from 7 sec to 20 sec mark. A whopping 0.15C (or 0.27F) of "rising temp profile".
image

really good point.. people get enamoured with numbers and fail to interpret them correctly. I'm not sure there is something that can touch the Flair 58 in its price range.. Sure the electrics might need to be refined.. but I think James might be a little overboard with his need for 'simplicity'. Disconnecting in sequence is not that big a deal.

I wonder what can happen when you disconnect it in the wrong order? I say "when" not "if" because it's going to happen, even to those who know the order. My wife has a computer monitor with similar red warnings in the manual about the order of connecting things and how failing to observe them will nullify the warranty.

From a consumer perspective it's a ridiculous requirement.


But, not to worry. There will be another Flair 58 update soon enough.

In Europe it also would not hold up in court if you did it wrong and it ended up harming it. So you would still be covered by the guarantee... My guess is it will just result in allot of guarantee claim and they would be completely unable to crawl themselves out off it.