Bluenoser wrote:I'm not sure there is something that can touch the Flair 58 in its price range..

None that I know of. Hoffmann made a similar comment.

Sure the electrics might need to be refined.. but I think James might be a little overboard with his need for 'simplicity'.

This is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't things. If they built the controller and power brick into the chassis, it would be harder and more costly to fix and probably more expensive and take more time to manufacture. With the current design, it's easy to spot failure point and swap it out if one part goes bad. The power brick could be smaller but it's not that big of deal to hide it behind something in the coffee station.

Disconnecting in sequence is not that big a deal.

Right, it's not like a USB device you connect and disconnect all the time. And one doesn't need to memorize the order except to unplug it from the wall first...not that hard IMO. Sure it's a design oversight, but AFAIK they fixed it a while ago but still ship with the sequencing warning.

K7 wrote:The power brick could be smaller...

Could it? I was messing around with adding heating elements to my Robot and even a 50W power brick was kind of clunky. The cleanest would be to integrate everything into the base somehow but as you say that would make it more difficult to replace. Or upgrade. :-)

K7 wrote:Q: Has anyone done a temperature study on this? From what I've seen from Flair pre-lease videos, it should be very solid, but I would be curious to know if someone did a study with a Scace or something similar, especially for back-to-back shots.

Answering my own question, I found a temp study done by a German coffee site/YT channel. They too saw a peak of ~93C like Hoffmann did. Hmm...Not the end of the world but I was hoping to see 95+C. Not sure what's going on here. If it really maxes out at 93C, Robot with the max preheat would beat this as far as temp goes. Interesting.

So if filling the group with boiling water, even so it drops to 93 ?

Regarding connecting order... what if you simply unplug from the wall and keep everything not disconnected ?
I can't see any schematics that can be damaged by such approach... and I am into electronics for almost 40 years...

It is strange that there's a disconnection order. JH wondered if it has to do with a capacitor in the AC/DC circuit. My thought is that it might be that the 4 pin connector is more likely to arc / short, particularly on the male end.

renatoa wrote:So if filling the group with boiling water, even so it drops to 93 ?

It appears so. I've seen a few temp reports for the cylinder water near the heater that looked good, but AFAIK Hoffmann's and this study are the only ones that measured the right-above-the-puck temp. Cold puck screen could explain 2-3C lower temp but I find it unlikely both of them made the same rookie mistake.

K7 wrote:Answering my own question, I found a temp study done by a German coffee site/YT channel. They too saw a peak of ~93C like Hoffmann did. Hmm...Not the end of the world but I was hoping to see 95+C. Not sure what's going on here. If it really maxes out at 93C, Robot with the max preheat would beat this as far as temp goes. Interesting.

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If you preheat with water, you can pump the temperature up, but just with the electronic it max out at 93-93.5C.

I done it with placing it on the kettle or running a couple of hot water through it, it drain in the old. This means you can get it up to 95ish but it was hard to get precise repeatable that way.

But I have not really seen any real benefit with that brew temperature, neither on this or my former DB, It rather consistently where best around 93.5-94,5c. It would have been great if it just got that 0.5-0.7c higer but we are so close to optimum I don't think it's really an issue. I never liked espresso the moment it hit 95c nearly as much as bitterness starts creeping in. Above 96 it gets an odd off flavour and mouthfeel is unpleasant. But I'm very bitter sensitive so I notice bitterness before the majority.

Exactly, I am a brewer in the 90s neighborhood... rather 88 than 92. So this is not a buying criteria for me, just interesting to follow.

So little activity on this thread..

I've had the 58 for one month now. Took me some time to get used to the new lever, workflow, and baskets (i bought 7 to try out ) but I can say this thing ROCKS! Superb shot after shot...

I've been looking for one on marketplace for weeks and just missed one by minutes.