While a cafe is definitely this machine's natural environment, I burst into tears when I think about how much that nice chrome is going to get scratched by barista's knocking out coffee after coffee in a commercial setting.......

In my opinion there is no need for a special lever blend. I habe been using machines with commercial lever gruops für almost ten year now and almost always prepare my coffee with light Single Origins. Ethiopian naturals or Kenian coffees excel when prepared as a ristretto on a commercial lever.

Lever machines are especially suited to be combined with unimodal grinders as their pressure profile as well as their brew temperature are decreasing while pulling a shot.

mathof wrote:Why? I find they work well with my Londinium spring lever, except for dark roasts where I need to limit the extraction yield.

Yep, my interpretation of what he was going for is a traditional Italian style roast.

I roast my espresso to the "event horizon" of 2C. I have two Victoria Arduino Athenas in two coffee bars. One has cheap baskets, the other has VSTs. I prefer the cheap ones. You can grind a bit coarser and the coffee is sweeter. The VSTs have more "pop". Not something I look for in espresso.

Presumably, they used levers in Trieste as well, where some of the roasters say they have been doing first crack roasts for decades. So this blend for the restored lever is probably more about perceived history than actual history. Does anyone really know all the different things Italian roasters were doing in the 1950s, before there were mass market brands, and when regional differences were much sharper?

about the only thing I'm confident in, is that they weren't sharing any details about the components of the blend. And the Blender was very likely a more prominent/important role than the roaster.