A very short journey to a lever.....June 2016 I bought my first "espresso" machine or so I thought. I bought a Saeco Poemia and a Baratza Encore for my grinder. At that point I thought I was dishing out quite a bit of money for a coffee set up....Boy was I wrong! I started researching more about espresso and how to produce better shots and stumbled across Home-Barista. I spent too many hours reading and re-reading. I was became very dehydrated along the way...Too much coffee not enough water. I then went to the Buy/Sell forum and saw that a Quickmill Alexia was for sale. I read the reviews and decided this might be the machine for me. At the time, I wasn't an espresso only person. I preferred milk drinks. I convinced myself that I would turn into an espresso only person. I had my Alexia from May 2017- until last week where I sold it to my friend. I really enjoyed the shots I pulled (I upgraded to a Mahlgut MG-1) and started to wonder if it were possible to do better. So, I started looking up a lever. Now, I 99% of the time drink single origin shots. Some of you on here might cringe at some of the espresso I pull but to me it is enjoyable and gives me energy which is what I need being in the Army (P.S. their coffee sucks) Fast forward to today and I am patiently waiting the arrival of a Brass and Copper MCAL that had about 50 shots pulled for 1/2 the price of a new one. I am excited to get it up and running and experience those lovely layered shots everyone talks about. I am sure I will go through a few shots before I get their as I know it can be finicky but I am excited!

Braden

Braden, good to hear you found a suitable lever. Where did you luck out ?
Keep us informed on your MCAL experience.
Leverism is a slippery slope but then again that could be applied to many other things on H-B.

3 shots in....Much different than E61. I am putting about 15 in and getting about 20 out. Still figuring out the grind but the shots are exactly what people say they are. Layered and soft. I am extremely pleased. One thing, how do you put the Eagle on lol. It didn't come with a screw and the guy who sold it said he never put it on...Not the biggest deal but I do like the Eagle! I will post some pictures later...about to make shot 4.


Braden

Bonjour à tous les "Lever aficionados"!
Here's my current setup...
Olympia Express Club 79


Caravel V3...


My espresso journey only started 13 months ago...
I bought and sold first, a La Pavoni SI (pressurized PF) and then...
Mokita Combi (added swivel steam wand and solenoid)
Avanti Alba
Isomac Relax
ECM Giotto premium (full restoration)
Ponte Vecchio Lusso
Untill my current machines...
Caravel v3
Olympia Express Club (restoration almost completed)

Also own 2 commercial machines...
2 groups black and gold Gaggia D90
Iberital Ladri 1 group

Not to mention I also dragged a few family members with me and found these machines for them:
Free Gaggia Classic
1980s La Pavoni professional 16 cups
Dual switch La Pavoni Europiccola
Bezzera bz99

Sparing you guys the grinders stories!

Did I mention that 13 months ago I was drinking Tassimo? I think we can call it a newly found passion!
Obviously, my wife does not believe me when I say that I will never sell my Oly Club and my Caravel, but I'll do my best to prove her wrong!
What does the futur hold for me? Well, I can easily imagine a La Peppina sitting next to my Caravel! Mind as well add a faemina, a microcimbali, a Brunelli, a mini Gaggia, a Zacconi, and a Mcal to that list!
Oh! Will for sure keep my eyes opened for any vintage single group commercial lever like... a Lambro, Aurora or Orion, to name a few!

What started as a passion for espresso machines quickly turned into an obsession for vintage levers...

But I refused to get treated!

Cheers!

This is a great read and has been kind of inspirational.I posted a few pics of my rebuild to the Repairs forum, but wanted to thank folks here in the lever forum as HB was the key to my finding just the right way to get back to enjoying the small amount of coffee that my gut can handle anymore

Over the years I've had a huge coffee habit, occasionally supplemented by moka pots and low-end espresso makers, and after my first internal plumbing inspection my gastroenterologist told what I already knew but was ignoring about reflux. Coffee had to go, along with most of my caffeine intake for other reasons, and for about 4 years I drank almost only decaf tea. Fast forward, and I find that I can enjoy 1 double espresso per day, but $3/day at the local shooting gallery gets expensive, and their shots aren't all that great.

So I end up at HB looking for info about how to make espresso at home. I quickly latched on to levers and manual grinders as a way to naturally limit intake (pretty sure that if I had an electric grinder and a pump machine I'd be like a lab rat with an electrode in it's brain - press-press-press-press-press-press...). A little shopping on ebay and craigslist got me an unused Knock Hausgrind, an antique Troemler apothecary scale (I'm a Philly kid and they were made there), and a sad Europiccola that needed rebuilding. One order to HB's suppliers and a weekend later:



Not knowing anything about this other than what I've read, I started with bagged beans from the supermarket to get familiar with things, and by the end of the bag I could even drink a few of the shots I made. With some experience, I bought beans from a local roaster/shop (Weird Brothers in Herndon VA), and have gotten the routine and settings reasonably well dialed in. The Hausgrind seems to do a nice job and is just slow enough. The scale works well and looks nice in the kitchen. Only issue is that it's calibrated in avoirdupois grains and is a balance, so I need to convert from grams and use a counterweight. In a nice crossover to another hobby, it turns out that a 200 grain .45 caliber bullet measures a good double and a 148 grain .38 caliber makes a good single with the scale adjusted to pull 15 grains off each.

The Europiccola is a nice machine for my needs. It heats up fast to make my one shot per day, and I may not even do the mod to remove the steam heat, for that reason. So far, so good, although I must say a small spring machine like a Sama/Ponte Vecchio Export or Microcasa a Leva looks intriguing...

Hey, neat trick. I shoot 200r lead SWC in my .45, too. If you do your own reloading like I do, playing with Pavoni levers is right up your alley. Congrats. I only have one thing to add, and that is that once you read up on thermal management of these things, you will not be terribly limited in your intake. You will be able to almost bang out shot after shot until you doctor becomes very displeased with your "bad" behavior. So don't learn too much by reading here or your will find that your lever machine is not very self-limiting to your intake. Welcome.

-Peter

For what small amount this is worth, darker roasts have less caffeine.

For me, learning from my Cremina is like learning to be a parent.
Before our kids were born we read tons about how to properly parent children. We knew everything there was to know, in a theoretical sense, and we were not shy about giving others our parenting advice. Then our daughter arrived. Within a few months we greatly revised our thinking. Three years later our son arrived and now we don't give any parenting advice at all.
That attitude was also me before our Cremina. I had so many firm ideas. I liked my Silvia, and I was positive my Rocky grinder was ideal. When people would post about its grind variability I thought of that as its strength, smug in the belief that this variability allowed the full range of flavors to be drawn out. I was positive that exactly recreating the same tamping pressure time after time was really the key to great espresso.
Then I bought a Cremina. I bought a naked portafilter and somehow it took weeks to get things going right. I thought I was a pro at foaming milk on my Silvia, but this Cremina...
Must be the machine. I watched the OE rebuild videos and quickly knew everything to do. I dismantled my Cremina and immersed everything in a citric acid bath overnight. I then reassembled everything and it performed beautifully...for a while. Then water started leaking from the portafilter during warm up. I realized I had put both piston seals channel down, not top channel up and bottom seal channel down. Next I realized that the citric acid bath had caused some de-chroming on the brew head and yoke.
I wanted to have this baby right, so I posted requesting a business that does this work. No luck. Every place in my area does car bumpers, etc and had no interest in doing my pieces. I finally found a place 1500 miles away, took apart the Cremina and sent them my brew head and yoke. they said they'd get right on it.
2 weeks later I inquired and was told they had a 3 to 6 week backlog.
I now give no advice, I just try to take solid advice. This whole thing has humbled me in a really wonderful way, and I'm better for it, completely apart from the espresso.

p.s. I sold my Silvia and my Rocky, and bought a Mahlkonig K30 Vario. I was completely wrong about grinders, too.

Welcome to the rabbit hole.

Bill,

Your rabbit hole is crowded with a Salvatore Lever. How are you liking that?

Flint