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Interesting review article I thought:
Coffee shop owner and UK champion barista Maxwell Colonna Dashwood checks out six coffee makers - http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/07/best-coffee-makers-tried-and-tested-barista
Also, what a name!
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OK peeps. I need to put my Brugnetti Simona machine up for sale. Moving house and the new kitchen will not have space.
It looks like this:
These are pretty well regarded machines the originally retailed in the £600 range. I bought it second hand off t'bay and it has had very little use over the last year or so - small child, no time. It makes cracking good espresso - hippy, object, big daddy wayne and Velocio can all attest to that. Full disclosure - they have a reputation for rust on the chasis - there is a small amount in one corner that would respond well to some touching up. The guts are immaculate.
It will come with the original basket, plus a naked PF and a spare grouphead gasket (if I can find it). Looking for £250 all in. I also have a Porlex mini I could throw in as well.
PM if you are interested. I really need to get this out of my house. Ta!
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OK peeps. I need to put my Brugnetti Simona machine up for sale. Moving house and the new kitchen will not have space.
It looks like this:
These are pretty well regarded machines the originally retailed in the £600 range. I bought it second hand off t'bay and it has had very little use over the last year or so - small child, no time. It makes cracking good espresso - hippy, object, big daddy wayne and Velocio can all attest to that. Full disclosure - they have a reputation for rust on the chasis - there is a small amount in one corner that would respond well to some touching up. The guts are immaculate.
It will come with the original basket, plus a naked PF and a spare grouphead gasket (if I can find it). Looking for £250 all in. I also have a Porlex mini I could throw in as well.
PM if you are interested. I really need to get this out of my house. Ta!
Lovely machine. What do you use instead? Not moving to the 'burbs are you? -
^^ SE?! Awesome! I'll may get to see you guys more than once a year :)
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those Simona's get consistently good reviews
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I was recently in an Italian cafe near my house (one that had foods and beer which is why I was there).
I noticed they had a beautiful espresso machine. I got excited when I noticed they had an actual tamper next to the machine. "Maybe these people give a shit about coffee" I thought to myself.
I ordered an espresso and was pretty bummed about what happened next. First I hadn't noticed the hopper, so the beans were preground in the hopper, then the dude bypassed the tamper and pushed it against the plastic thing on the grinder.
The espresso was over-hot and watery. It sucked, the machine was so pretty and the coffee was so non. I read some shit and I am pretty sure one of the problems was if the machine is sitting and not pumping out coffee, the water gets over hot. You have to flush out the water that sits in the heat exchanger I guess.
I almost want to go back there and order an espresso, throw it away and immediately order another one to see if the temp gets more right.
The machine was a Faema E61 ( an old one). If I had a cafe I would think about getting one of those.
Nerdy articles on the machine
part 1: http://coffeegeek.com/opinions/coffeeasia/06-05-2007
part 2: http://coffeegeek.com/opinions/coffeeasia/12-18-2007 -
As are most of us that are both cycling and coffee fanatics, I'm a bit of a geek and listen to radio 4 every now and then.
I missed it when it was on live, but there was a show about trainees at Costa yesterday. Am about to give it a listen. I may be an interesting insight into just how terrible it must be to work at one of those places
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03trmlr -
I worked in a Starbucks once. Have never felt so much like a slave. So many arsehole customers and so much milk. In fact that pushed me finally in to veganism.
Still, it paid for my MA.
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Very good ;)
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EAT is tiny compared with Starbucks though. Especially back then. I'm sure that makes a difference.
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Yeah as I left, they started implementing a rule that you couldn't take leftover food home. Fuck that, only reason I stayed there for so long was I could feed my whole household for three nights a week for free. And as the only english guy there, I could get away with chatting shit as I was "teaching English" to the other baristas.
Not had a coffee from there in years. That's where I learnt to drink coffee. Wonder if it's any good? Doubt it.
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After the previous chat about grinding-before-use being more likely to lead to better coffee than portafilter upgrades, I went down to the market to an independent bean seller on Saturday...got a small batch of 50% Sumatra 50% Italian ground up, then dashed home hopeful. Tasted like shit. No crema. Straight back on the Illy. The grounds looked about 5 times bigger in the fresh than the bought. Any suggestions? How do you know which way to take things (in terms of finer or coarser grinding) when dialling things in?
Looked at a few grinders...but can't really tell if any of them are shit or not? Whats the general verdict on these? They seemed ok price wise:
http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kitchen/serenahe/APlus/DBM8/side_500px._SL400_.jpg
http://www.dualit.com/assets/images/thumbnails/detail/1/detail_1469.jpg
Cuisinart gets good reviews...
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Coffee Appreciation
Posted by
@justMouse
The coffee machine was at work and broke the plastic handle so needed a replacement quite quickly. Walked over to the techicians area and looked in the scrap bin and found a bent conrod that fitted and I liked my technical skills in bolting it together.