The Painful and Happy Road…My History of Digging a Hole in an Italian Coffee Machine

This article was first published on What’s Worth Buying. Please follow this account to get more good articles. Author: Eric Xiang

I have reached the age of 40 before I knew it, and I have been drinking coffee for more than 20 years. From being a novice in coffee shops at the beginning to roasting beans by myself and drinking coffee by myself now, I have a lot of feelings. I share this with my friends who like to drink coffee as a snack after dinner. If you like it, please support me, and if you don’t like it, please stay out of my way!

People's lives can be colorful or dull. How to live? It's the path you choose! In fact, it's the same with drinking coffee. You can simply take caffeine just to refresh yourself, drink instant coffee casually; you can also go to a BIGER independent coffee shop or Starbucks to take a photo; you can also buy a coffee machine worth hundreds of thousands of yuan, a grinder worth tens of thousands of yuan, and use fine coffee beans to make the ultimate flavor of coffee in pursuit of the ultimate coffee... I am just a coffee enthusiast who has a little obsessive-compulsive disorder and pursues the ultimate taste. I don't open a shop, I don't fool people, I just want to drink good coffee. For those friends who left different opinions under my previous articles, I can only say that everyone pursues different things, and we have different paths, so we each go our own way.

Let’s take a look at an old picture for entertainment. When the new house was being renovated, all the equipment was placed in the warehouse.

Italian coffee, as the name suggests, originated from Italy. To put it simply, it is espresso, but Italians, who are born to enjoy life, have added various dairy products and flavored syrups (fresh milk, cream, vanilla syrup, etc.) to espresso-based coffees to create various fancy coffees. With the addition of milk and flavored syrups, the traditional black coffee, which is difficult for novices to drink coffee, has been completely broken, and has become the most widely consumed popular drink. Although Italian coffee originated in Italy, the biggest beneficiary on the planet is Starbucks from the United States.

The finest concentrates will have a nice smooth oily texture, sometimes with slight tiger stripes.

Traditional Italian ESPRESSO is brewed in a moka pot, but as people's requirements for coffee quality become higher and higher, various steam pump coffee machines have replaced the cumbersome and poor quality moka pots, which are cumbersome to operate and have become the mainstream in the market. However, the grades of coffee machines range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands, and from low to high. This has given me, a coffee lover, the motivation to keep digging holes in the coffee road, and this article has come up. Now, as my primary school Chinese teacher asked, I will tell you my sad and tearful story with digging holes as the central idea...

Ancient hand-cranked grinder

I was about 17 years old when I first walked into a coffee shop. My original intention was not to drink coffee, but to wait for someone to kill time. The shop was run by a middle-aged Taiwanese couple at the time. The man was roasting beans and the woman was making coffee. I ordered a cup of Hawaiian Kona for 18 yuan (18 yuan at that time was probably equivalent to 200 yuan now). When the siphon pot started to brew, the whole room was filled with the aroma of coffee. I took a sip and really got to know coffee! It was slightly bitter, but before I could frown, a strong aftertaste accompanied by an indescribable flavor at the time (now thinking back, it should be a caramel cream flavor) filled my entire mouth and nose. It turns out that coffee is not bitter, but sweet. Until now, I am glad that the coffee shop I first walked into had excellent quality products, which kept my understanding of coffee on track.

Siphon coffee full of ritual

After that, I slowly began to miss the taste of coffee, so I became a regular customer of that shop. I often chatted with the boss to learn some coffee knowledge, and I learned that there are many varieties of coffee besides Mandheling and Blue Mountain. About a year later, I bought my first set of siphon equipment, a double-disc hand-cranked bean grinder made in Taiwan, and a set of hario siphon pots, and began to learn how to make siphon coffee. Thanks to a good teacher, I made rapid progress, and soon I could make good coffee by myself. I have been playing with siphon coffee for more than 10 years. After that, I slowly started to get in touch with Italian coffee, as well as various ways of making coffee such as hand brewing and ice extraction. I have been drinking coffee for so long, but the real pit I dug and buried myself was when I started playing with the second Italian coffee machine...

Many people are into Italian style machine Tsannkuen 1826

My first espresso machine was a Tsannkuen 1826A, which I took home for less than 300 yuan. I drank it for 6 years with a hand grinder, Illy and Lavasa. But I didn't drink much in those 6 years, mainly to make lattes and cappuccinos for my boss at home to go with breakfast. Most of the time, I still brew siphons with a sense of ritual. Why don't I drink it myself? The ESPRESSO made by the toy machine is completely inedible, which has always been a resistance for me. Until one day, the machine suddenly emitted a puff of green smoke and died. I began to really study espresso machines and prepared to buy a second replacement product. During the trip, I drank a cup of truly qualified ESPRESSO at the Levisa coffee shop at the Rome airport. It was not mushy, not astringent, and had a rich taste with a full mouthful of sweetness. From then on, I couldn't stop digging a pit, not only burying myself, but also bringing out a team of digging teammates. Everyone digs pits and piles up soil for each other and never gets tired of it.

That cup of espresso changed all my impressions of ESPRESSO, although looking back now it wasn't really good coffee.

I ordered a LATTE at the same time, but was served a cup of hot milk...

The real starting point of Italian coffee

Maxtor EM18 with poor workmanship

The second coffee machine is Maxtor Elegant EM18, a generation of "magic machine" imitation S, and the grinder is also the familiar artifact ENCORE for those who play espresso. But I didn't keep this combination for more than a week. The EM18 has rough workmanship, a water tank like a gasoline barrel, a tractor-like howling sound, and the shell edge is so sharp that it cuts your hands. After extracting coffee and frothing milk, you need to reheat the boiler... I started to dislike it from the moment I opened the box. In addition, I started to fall in love with latte art at that time. The steam imitation S is well known to be weak, and the extraction is also quite unstable. So within a week, before I had time to get used to this product, I directly married it away to harm other innocent people, and replaced it with a high-end combination of Aibo E61 and MAZZER MAJOR. I didn't miss it at all.

The workmanship and quality of Aibo e61 completely crushed the mediocre em18. I was willing to touch it for a few days when I just came back.

The good times didn’t last long. Although the E61 was good for concentrated extraction, I started to dislike the scum of steam. So within a month, before the handle of the E61 was polished, I gave it to a local coffee shop as a decoration.

Do you think you have finished digging the pit at this point? NO!NO!NO! The real curtain of digging the pit has just been opened, and the waste of life has just begun...

The first step for a coffee lover to get started with coffee is not to make it, but to drink it!

During this period, I constantly visited various well-known coffee shops and roasters at home and abroad through travel and business. However, the domestic coffee market is indeed immature, whether it is roasters selling beans or various famous coffee shops. It is difficult to find a few boutiques in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. However, there are many Internet celebrity shops with a row of sky-high equipment and dregs. In the process of constantly improving my coffee tasting ability, I have a better understanding of coffee extraction. I went to Paris and drank the most amazing coffee in my life so far in the store of the French WBC champion (Fragments Paris). From then on, it was unstoppable. Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Australia, the United States, Japan... The more I drank, the clearer the standard of measuring high-quality coffee in my mind became. These play a very important role in making a good cup of coffee for myself.

Join the WBC World Champion's sharing session at a local coffee shop

The store of the WBC champion in Paris

A famous local shop in Florence

The second-place shop in the WBC station in Berlin

Store in The Hague, Netherlands

A coffee machine tailored to your wishes

After selling the Aibo E61, I met Mr. Yao, the boss of Shanghai ROYAL Coffee Machine Factory, by chance. At that time, Mr. Yao suggested that several coffee enthusiasts come together to give their opinions on making a single-head E61 coffee machine with strong performance. At that time, several buddies were eager to make a lot of suggestions, including appearance, performance configuration, and detailed design. In the end, Lao Yao lived up to expectations and launched the first batch of ROYAL E61 coffee machines. Although there were many minor problems in the details when the first version of the engineering machine came to my hands for trial use. But the strong steam and stable large brewing boiler have excited me for a while, and the price of 6800 at the time was also very high! In the following year, Lao Yao also continued to listen to various feedback from the trial and kept modifying and launching new versions of the machine. There were various problems in the middle, including various leaks, PID motherboard freeze, insensitive pressure relief of the brewing head, defective angle design of the steam nozzle, and even the steam boiler heating tube cracking accident on the Internet. But all the persistence is worth it. After replacing two test versions and one mass-produced machine, the ROYAL E61 in my hand finally solved all the problems, and successfully completed a 7*24-hour non-shutdown endurance test for a month in my studio. I have been using it in the office since 2014.

The end of an era…saturated brewing coffee machines

Facts have proved that people yearn for good things, and they can only go up and not down! I was very happy to play with E61, but I ran to my friend's shop with my beans to play with two Lamarzocco coffee machines. From then on, I started to think about the second spring.

The same beans, the same brewing method, the ESPRESSO is round and full, the sweetness is greatly increased, a cup of espresso becomes a cup of honey with lemon slices. I have long known that the high-end coffee machine is dominated by the saturated brewing head coffee machine represented by Lamarzocco, but I didn't expect the gap is so big! So I started to lose my appetite and stared at the screen every day. With the praise of a group of great gods, I fell in love with the Lamazocco GS3 MP coffee machine. It is called the Rolls-Royce of home machines, but the price of more than 40,000 to nearly 50,000 is still a bit hard to buy. And at the same time, I also fell in love with the Mehdi EK43 grinder, which is also more than 20,000. Add up to nearly 70,000, it's really painful.

After two months of psychological struggle... Actually, it was mainly because of the bull market that year. I had a full position in CITIC Securities in the five trading days before May 30, and I successfully withdrew before May 30 when I caught the last big rise. I remember that day the stock rose by more than 8 points and I cleared my position. When it reached the daily limit, I felt a little disappointed that I lost 20,000 yuan. I didn't expect that when the plunge began, I realized the wisdom of the rich "not to make the last penny".

In the afternoon, I immediately paid the full amount for GS3MP and EK43.

The original GS3 family photo

The beauty that others see may not be as beautiful as others see. During the use of GS3, various problems also occurred. Although the extraction is great, the water temperature of the continuous cup is not as stable as that of the commercial LAMARZOCCO with two heads. The steam is not as good as the legend, but very wet. After a few months of use, the steam valve cannot be self-locked, and the brewing head also has the problem of dripping when closed. So I checked various materials, asked the official after-sales and many GS3 players, and found that these are common problems! The dripping of the brewing head is caused by the aging of a set of sealing rings on the bypass valve, and the steam valve is also. After asking the manufacturer's after-sales engineer, I got a confirmed reply that the manufacturer of the bypass valve sealing ring of the GS3 brewing head is identified as a consumable part, and it is recommended to replace it once a quarter (three months). The official after-sales spare parts of the three small circles are quoted at 450. My chrysanthemum tightened! Later, I found the official website of LM in Shanghai and bought it. The cost was more than 100 per set, which was barely acceptable. I played with it for less than a year, bought a suite and reserved a room as a coffee studio. When the time was right, I sold the GS3 at a discount and replaced the machine.

The great leap from single-head coffee machine for home use to double-head coffee machine for commercial use

After the baptism of GS3, I found that the ultimate goal of playing with coffee machines is to play with commercial machines. At this time, ASTORIA's PLUS 4 YOU came into view. The multi-boiler brewing system is more interesting than the LM design, with dry and strong steam, independent temperature control settings for each brewing head, and imported from Italy... I finally spent a lot of money to bring this thing home. After using the dual-head commercial machine, P4U has achieved a considerable extraction level, the steam is dry and strong, and the cappuccino and latte made have completely risen to a new level.

The rise of dual boiler to triple boiler system

For a coffee enthusiast, I will never be satisfied with a single device. Although P4U is good enough. But after seeing NUOVA's T3, I was distracted again... My friend was going to open a store, so I sold the PLUS 4 YOU at a discount again. I took over another friend's 3-head T3 coffee machine that was idle after the store closed. (T3 is a three-boiler system) NUOVA proposed the concept of 3 boilers after the traditional double boiler system. Friends who have studied coffee machines will know how important temperature stability is to the extraction of espresso. All manufacturers have tried their best to stabilize the brewing temperature as much as possible. Manufacturers like SYNESSO claim that the temperature of brewing hot water can be stabilized within a range of 0.2 degrees Celsius. The brewing head is the place where coffee is most likely to lose temperature. At this time, NUOVA's engineers designed a heat preservation preheating cavity for the brewing head, which not only meets the requirements of efficient pre-soaking, but also further meets the requirements of water temperature stability. In fact, T3 is only a single brewing head and 3 boilers. In addition to a shared steam boiler, each brewing head of my 3-head T3 has 2 additional boilers to provide hot water with a stable temperature for extraction. T3 certainly lived up to my expectations. The brewing quality has improved to a certain extent compared to PLUS 4 YOU, but it is limited to be honest. But every little improvement has to pay a huge price. The price I paid was also huge. In order to feed the rated power of 11.3KW of the 3-head T3, I pulled a 380V three-phase cable for this product. Just like friends who play with cars know how much it takes to accelerate from 0-100 in 3.1 seconds to 2.9 seconds.

The legendary NUOVA T3

Happiness of being embraced by two people T3

Pay for retro feelings

Purely hand-made custom retro lever coffee machine LONDINIUM LP

Playing with coffee is a hobby that burns money, but if you have a circle of people who play with coffee together, you will find that... the money burns faster. Ever since my friend "God of War" bought an L1 lever coffee machine from the British niche coffee machine customization brand LONDINIUM, he has been poisoning me from time to time. The lever coffee machine, this living fossil in the coffee industry was invented decades ago and is the grandfather of modern pump coffee machines. After the lever is pulled down by manpower, the hot water in the boiler is sucked into the brewing head, and then the rebound force of the compressed thick spring pushes the piston to push the hot water in the brewing head through the coffee extraction at high pressure. Due to the physical and mechanical release characteristics of the spring, the pressure of the entire extraction process will show a slow decline trend. This is also the prototype of modern variable pressure coffee machines represented by SYNESSO. After being forced to drink a few barrels of medicine by a few guys, and the fact that I was really coveting the appearance of L1, LONDINIUM happened to upgrade the original vibration pump configuration to a rotary pump, the smallest rotary pump in the world,

And changed to a newer model LP. One windy and moonless night, I couldn't fall asleep in bed, so I chopped it off.

The manufacturer's order-based production took about 5 days. The express delivery number was sent by email, DHL. Emmmm, friends who have shopped overseas know what DHL means... Sunny customs declaration, 30% tax! Hundreds of thousands of grass mud horses galloped through my heart.

As expected, 3 days later, I received a call from DHL Guangzhou Company, asking me to provide proof of purchase for customs declaration. Don't even think about it, declaring less is impossible. The honest British have already formally pasted the delivery order on the outer packaging, with the price, style, and number of spare parts clearly written on it for the convenience of customs inspection. What you are asked to provide is just to prove whether there is any error, which is a high-end and not a low-end. Honestly provide a screenshot of the purchase order and sign the customs declaration agreement. DHL is still very efficient. The domestic waybill number was provided the next day after customs declaration. On the third day, the DHL guy delivered the goods to my door, and also took out the POS machine and skillfully swiped a large amount of tariffs paid by DHL for me. Although I was still galloping in my heart, I couldn't treat myself badly. I quickly installed the machine, changed the annoying water tank to automatic water supply, and connected the water purifier. The shiny stainless steel body, the delicate wenge handle, and the fine workmanship... I couldn't help but play the role of a caressing party. The coffee produced is softer in taste than the pump machine, but the flavor is also a little bland. Who let the feelings cause trouble?

The restless dream of an eagle

Ever since NUOVA acquired VICTORIA ARDUINO, a traditional Italian high-end coffee machine manufacturer, the performance and appearance have been in its hands, firmly in place! Even Starbucks, an old fan of the traditional LAMARZOCCO, has switched to it and uses the VA388 Black Hawk coffee machine. All kinds of boutique coffee shops also use the Black Hawk. But what I like is not the Black Hawk, but the VA358 White Hawk, which was launched later than the Black Hawk. Although the product positioning is slightly lower than the Black Hawk, it is no different from the Black Hawk except for the appearance and performance configuration. The key is that the tofu-block appearance wins my heart. And the two-head White Hawk VA358 is much better looking than the two-head Black Hawk. The Black Hawk must have three heads to look good. It was another dark and windy night,

I saw on WeChat Moments that a coffee shop in Guangzhou had a White Eagle for sale, and the price was within my acceptable range. So I booked a flight to Guangzhou that night, and after the machine was inspected, I bought the White Eagle on the spot and sent it to YTO Logistics to be sent back to Wuhan. I also gave my three T3s at home to a friend who happened to have a shop... Although they are both T3 systems, the VA358 White Eagle has the VICTORIA ARDUINO logo, and the pre-soaking system of the brewing head has added NUOVA's latest SIS shallow-injection pre-soaking function, and the extraction performance is definitely better than that of the T3. I was once again exhausted for the sake of appearance.

Although my body has been drained time and time again, I am sure that this will not be the last time... KEES, SLAYER, and LEVA are still waiting for me. Coffee can be an ordinary beverage, or it can be a hobby. Many people think that the floral and fruity flavors described in coffee are just pretentious bragging. In fact, these flavors do exist, but it is difficult for ordinary consumers to get in touch with such boutique coffee. Everyone has their own hobbies. In fact, compared to playing with cars, playing with tea... playing with coffee is really not expensive. As I said, everyone has their own different lives, and friends with different beliefs can just treat it as a joke.