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Yeah I looked into the Achille and the consensus was lots of cheap parts that will break very quickly.
Those La Peppinas look quite interesting. They do look quite delicate though, how are they in terms of reliability?
Edit: Just had a look at the rebuild process for one, looks surprisingly simple for an old Italian machine!
Was actually having a look on BB, though I don't think I'd be allowed the amount of kitchen real estate that those machines would take up!
mmccarthy
Stevethecoffee
I've had a Gaggia Achille which made the best espresso I ever had - That was a manual lever with a heat-exchanger, you really got a feel for when to back off the pressure as the coffee extracted. Shots had a texture like yogurt. Don't buy one though, the build was ropey as fuck and they all go badly wrong.
I also have an old La Peppina, that makes decent coffee but the novelty wore off quite quickly.
BB have a few prosumer type lever machines. The Quickmill one has had problems since birth, I'd avoid that, there's a weird Barazza one which uses a vibe pump so you get a shitty noise - one of the joys of levers is the silence, and there's an ECM one which is really good. That's got a proper massive commercial lever group and doesn't try to be too clever but it's abour 2k I think.