James Hoffmann: The $20,000 Espresso Machine, The Manument: The Swiss Watch Of Lever Espresso Machines -
James Hoffmann: The $20,000 Espresso Machine, The Manument: The Swiss Watch Of Lever Espresso Machines -
Hope you all find this interesting, delighted I got the chance to have a play with the machine!
I cannot imagine how the patreon user who just received an espresso machine the price of a small car must feel. Very cool move from James.
Everyone on the patreon discord was both wanting it and also worried about the tax implications of winning it lol
Would have been like $7000 NZD of import tax for where I am
I was hoping he was going to measure the claimed temperature accuracy, since a big part of it was the ability to switch it on and make an espresso straight away.
The stated hope was that this technology would be able to trickle down, but he also provided examples of extremely cheap machines that could already do the same thing (but that produce shitty coffee) so I'm assuming the technology he's hoping trickles down is the ability to quickly and accurately heat water?
The temperature testing might have been hampered by it not being a 58mm portafilter as I think his Scace is 58mm? Just guessing obviously.
I think so too. The 55 mm complicates things
Yeah, that was my takeaway. He really liked the ability to have espresso whenever he wants without having to wait for the machine to warm up while also not using any electricity. The accuracy portion of the actual temperature was secondary.
The near instant heat up is a big part of how I ended up with my Bambino with its "Thermojet"(Thermoblock coil thing) heater.
3s from wake to ready, it takes longer to grind and prep than to heat. I usually pull a blank shot through the clean portafilter into the cup I'm going to pull the shot in so the downstream parts aren't crashing the temperature, but that's still seconds.
Ascaso and Decent have more up-market offerings with thermoblock heaters that are similarly fast but offer more control. I wasn't 5-10x price compelled for my needs, and I'm certainly not over 100x price in to that thing... But it is a great feature that the commercial derived machines don't do.
The silence is too me by far the most impressive aspect.
I didn't realise heat up time was such an issue. Maybe there's differences in countries power supply as well. In Australia, my BDB is ready to go in under 5 min.
The BDB and the Micra are pretty quick machines to heat up. It's mostly E61 machines and the like that take a good while to get to temp (like 20 minutes+)
You also get people that will say you need to let the machine sit and normalize temp. Thinking about the full path the water takes it make some sense. A lot of people pull an empty shot after it heats to help that.
But also you are getting into diminishing returns. Some can’t taste a difference and sometimes the difference is imagined.