Taiwan's world-class coffee machine collector! If you can't recognize his collection, don't say you know coffee!

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Which of the most famous and precious coffee machines in the world do you know? Slayer? La Marzocco? No, no, these machines may be expensive, but they are definitely not "precious". As a coffee lover, what could be more satisfying than collecting a room full of rare machines that are out of print all over the world? Especially when other collections can only be put on the shelf or stored in a museum, but you can use them easily and at will.

This spherical coffee roaster Kirsch & Mausser is a coveted item by international coffee machine collectors and specialty coffee shops. There are very few of them in the world, and almost all of them are in museums.

The person in the picture is Lin Zuoyi, the second-generation operator of Li-Ming Machinery, a leading gear and reducer manufacturer in Taiwan. He has become a world-class collector through his coffee hobby.

Lin Zuoyi likes to be called Joe. He is a coffee maniac. He is "crazy" because he has collected hundreds of espresso machines and coffee bean roasters that are older than him. They are all out-of-print models that cannot be bought even if you have money. He puts photos on his Instagram (@leicaism), which makes senior foreign collectors crazy. "My collection is very hard to find, and foreign collectors are drooling." Joe has met foreign collectors who have not contacted him yet and came to Taiwan to visit him directly. He could only treat them to a cold reception. You will be scared when you really walk in, because there are dozens of huge black metal coffee bean roasters on the upper floor of the factory building that is hundreds of square meters in size. Except for a few Probot classic models, the rest are machines repaired by him. In the nearly 100 square meters of the lounge, there are at least 50 large coffee machines in Baroque style, space style, and modern style, each of which is older than him. Next are several large 3.5-meter floor-standing bookcases with hundreds of French solid wood manual coffee grinders bought in Europe.

Vittoria coffee bean roaster specially designed for roasting small quantities of coffee beans

Coffee Kingdom in the Rooftop Garden

Joe's coffee kingdom is hidden in the rooftop garden of his family's factory. In fact, it is a guesthouse specially used by the company to entertain important guests. His "madness" for coffee is to make the best use of dozens of machines. Every year, he bids at top auctions such as "BOP", "Geisha Village", and "El Injerto", and regularly purchases raw beans from Nordic Approach in Northern Europe. He roasts one or two thousand kilograms of beans himself and provides them to customers and employees at cost price. In order to prevent colleagues from not having good grinders to process such high-end beans, he also regularly provides high-quality drip bags for subscription, and ELIDA or Geisha have appeared. Joe said: "They are all for our own people to drink, so we drink better ones!"

This row of coffee machines alone is worth over 10 million on international auction sites, but they are all rare items that cannot be bought even with money!

Joe was born into a factory family and is a PhD in information management, specializing in cryptographic engineering. He published his first computer book at the age of 18. In high school, he was full of scientific spirit and often went abroad to participate in science exhibitions, winning many awards. As a result, he was interviewed by the media and was directly recommended to university. He was fascinated by photography at first, so he used the royalties from publishing many computer bestsellers to buy various special Leica lenses, even lenses for filming movies. It was not until graduate school that he met with photography enthusiasts at the most professional positive film processing company at the time and learned about brewing coffee, and then he plunged into the world of coffee.

Joe has collected hundreds of old cameras. This is a very precious RolleiFlex camera. Although it is an antique, it still works very well.

The biggest difference between Joe and other coffee fans is that his first espresso machine was a semi-automatic Rancilio Silvia, which was more than twice as expensive as the most popular Krups at the time. His geek spirit was fully used to learn how to roast beans. "At that time, people in Taiwan began to import raw beans. Since students were relatively poor, they wanted to buy raw beans and roast them themselves, which was economical and fun. I still remember that I used a milk powder can to try to make a hand-cranked coffee roaster at the beginning." Joe said that after DIYing for a while, he turned his attention to the old popcorn machine.

For Joe, roasting coffee beans was just a hobby during this period. After graduation, he returned home to work in the factory and stopped doing it for a long time. After getting married and having children, Joe wanted to spend more time at home with his children after work, so he played with the coffee machine while taking care of his children.

Joe's Faema slot machine is finely crafted and older than he is. His daughter can make good coffee at the age of seven.

At that time, multinational coffee brands such as Starbucks led to the "second wave of coffee revolution". At that time, Joe said that the targets were coffee machines from the 1950s to 1970s, and the age of coffee bean roasters was even older. In line with the spirit of research since he was young, Joe believes that in terms of the essence of the concept of "good coffee", the functions of coffee machines or coffee bean roasters have been perfected around the 1960s. Although he graduated from a science and engineering department, he attaches great importance to design aesthetics and material technology. He believes that the second wave of coffee revolution did not make the machine better, but compromised the design aesthetics and metal materials due to considerations such as quick coffee brewing and cost.

Therefore, more than a decade ago, Joe actively met with European second-hand coffee machine dealers and deployed many informants to help him find old coffee machines and bean roasters from the last century. In particular, during the crazy coffee production trend at that time, the early German and Italian bean roasters that could only roast 5 kg and 20 kg at a time were often shelved, but Joe really bought them without hesitation. Now we can see that he has more than a dozen coffee machines and bean roasters, each of which is a classic with a story. For example, the Italian Kirsch & Mausser bean roaster, which has a history of more than 80 years, is really beautiful.

Gaggia home machine is the pinnacle of Italian craftsmanship, this one is very rare in Asia

The miracle of the third wave of coffee revolution

Things change over time. In the past few years, the "third wave of coffee revolution" has gradually become popular, and Blue Bottle and Nordic coffee have been well received, driving the trend of boutique coffee, making "small-scale roasting" a trend. Early German and Italian roasting machines have become the target of many high-end shopping, especially these machines with classical and decorative appearance, thus becoming the best storefront for coffee shops around the world. For example, the German machine king Probat UG22 is now being snapped up by boutique coffee flagship stores all over the world. Last year, the Golden Horse Award-winning director Ann Hui and actor Liu Ye jointly produced a Chinese Nestle coffee advertisement, which featured this machine king. The production unit went through a lot of hardships to find out that such an ancient artifact actually appeared in Taiwan, and finally asked Joe to lend it.

Joe's collection of roasters are all old machines purchased from abroad, with roasting capacities ranging from 5 kg to 60 kg. The small-capacity machines are mainly used for top-grade estate beans such as Geisha, roasting a few pounds at a time, while the 20 kg machines are used to process "normal" premium beans such as 1 pound of green beans at NT$1,000. The above two types are for friends and family to enjoy. As for the large-scale roasters, they are used to roast beans for employees and customers. Each roaster was brought to Taiwan by plane, and Joe rearranged and assembled it himself. "These old machines all use mechanical principles and do not use any circuit boards, so they are the most durable. At most, they will be equipped with new temperature detectors." When asked if it would be troublesome to deal with these old machines, Joe responded: "Compared with the reducer worth hundreds of millions in our factory, this is much simpler!"

After each machine is sorted out, Joe will find a weekend to roast coffee like crazy. It takes about 15 minutes to roast once, and he roasts dozens of times a day intensively, so that he can understand the important characteristics of each machine. "Roasting coffee is very simple, just like making a plate of fried rice. If it is not cooked well, think about what went wrong, discuss it with friends, and make it better next time." Joe explained that roasting coffee is the same as the PDCA (Plan, Execute, Check, Action) principle in management, but it is much simpler. This also explains why Joe gives his coffee to so many friends and relatives, because everyone will give feedback, so he is very objective in the "check" point.

Even for the Geisha beans that he bid for this year at Panama Emerald Manor, he brewed them directly after roasting. This is incredible, after all, it is common sense in the eyes of many people that coffee beans need to be matured after roasting. He explained: "Of course, you have to taste the beans after roasting. If they taste good, you should keep them. If they are not good enough, you should give them to friends as soon as possible!"

This Italian diamond machine is crowned the most beautiful machine in the world

A super antique machine that can only be exchanged

Although these coffee roasters cost millions, Joe's favorite is still the various Italian coffee machines, and almost every model is the only one in Taiwan or Asia. "You can't buy it even if you have real money." Joe said, pointing to a La Pavoni diamond-shaped slot machine in the corner of the living room. The back is inlaid with various colors of celluloid, mirror glass and painted metal trim. Experts around the world nicknamed it the "Diamond Machine". It has a bigger origin. It was the champion of the most beautiful machine in the "Concorso in Italian" in 1956, which was participated by important architects and design magazines. This model was not a mass-produced custom model at the time, but Joe actually got several over the years. This is really not because he is rich or greedy, but collectors of his level around the world rarely spend money to buy precious old machines in recent years, but use the method of exchange. "Really good machines have been sold at sky-high prices in the past few years. Now the ones sold on the Internet like eBay are not considered good." Joe explained that he had previously exchanged a diamond machine with a European and American collector for a machine that was also in the single digits of the world.

There are less than 10 La San Marco's Lulu coffee machines left in the world. When Joe got it from Italy, it was already very old. After it was sent back to Italy for repair, it can make good coffee again.

Another rarer La San Marco, produced in 1955, was inspired by the big breasts, wasp waist and beautiful buttocks of Italian porn star Gina Lollobrigida. It is nicknamed the Lulu machine in the industry, and there are less than ten left in the world. "Now they are all collected by museums, and only mine is still in use." Joe explained proudly that he worked hard to acquire it from Italy, but after unpacking it after shipping it back to Taiwan, he found that the electroplated printing surface was oxidized, so he flew it to Italy without saying a word and asked local craftsmen to re-electroplate it. Now it looks really beautiful.

As for the current king of espresso machines, La Marzocco, foreign coffee machine industry insiders saw his Instagram and thought he was the brand's Taiwan agent. Joe actually thinks this brand is just okay, the only amazing one is the GS model ancestor machine from the early 1970s. The curve on the back of that machine is beautiful enough to knock over all the espresso machines today, but Joe still answered: "In fact, before the launch of GS, the most important brands of espresso machines were Faema and La Sa Marco. At that time, the mainstream of industrial design was space age aesthetics, and the back of the machine had a beautiful shape of flying saucer curves."

These thirty or forty precious machines are placed in the company guesthouse on the top floor of Joe's factory. Several important customers or senior executives visit every day, so Joe treats the large bar as a traveling exhibition hall. The four or five machines on the counter are constantly rotating, although he still uses the hand-brewing method to brew the top-quality estate beans.

Not only are there many ways to brew coffee, there are also three coffee grinders on the table. The Fuji that experts use is just the basic model, and there are also Swedish and French machines. "The coffee roaster and Espresso were already very well developed 50 years ago, only the coffee grinder is getting better and better." Joe used a lot of terms to explain the various models, most people probably wouldn't understand, but he used his usual nonsense again: "It's actually very simple, it's the PDCA principle, much simpler than writing an article!"

There is a glass cabinet 3 meters high and 7-8 meters wide. There are at least 200-300 wooden manual grinders on display, including more than a dozen grinders produced by French Peugeot in the mid-20th century. "These are just the ones I have sorted out and can use. French manual grinders are the most beautiful, with the best craftsmanship and materials, but these collections are not enough. I hope to collect all the models produced in France decades ago!"

Play hard with the most expensive toys

Although such skills and collections are enough for Joe to open a coffee museum, Joe really just likes to play and take care of his children while playing. He taught his children very well. For example, when the whole family went to visit museums in Europe, his youngest son, who loves art and humanities, acted as a tour guide and could tell the stories behind each painting very well. His daughter, who is in high school, has never taken tutoring. A while ago, she took the TOEFL English test with her class and won the gold certificate. She is now an exchange student abroad.

"It's very hard to treat coffee as a business, and you have to consider the cost of everything, but if you treat it as a hobby, you can have fun like crazy." Joe explained that the green beans he bought from abroad are often more than 1,000 yuan per pound, and he doesn't know how to price them. Especially for Jade Geisha, he needs to bid 120 kilograms at a time, and the price is several million. "Good coffee is made for yourself or your customers, and everyone is very happy. It's hard to drink it outside, but if it becomes a business, how much should it be sold for? What if it can't be sold? What kind of equipment should I use? Why do I have so many machines in my collection?"

The Danish Caravel automatic grinder was considered a heresy in the coffee world decades ago, but now many buyers are looking for it in the second-hand market.

If you know about Joe's Lee Ming Machinery business, you will probably know his thoughts. Lee Ming has factories in Taiwan and China. Its reducer products are not only the leading brand in the industry, but also have entered the large-scale automation industry 4.0 market in recent years. The latest factory in Taiwan has just been completed, and a whole row of machines cost hundreds of millions. "Compared to the company business, the money earned from the coffee business is really small!" Joe explained leisurely.

Because he only treats coffee as a hobby, Joe really uses the spirit of a PhD student to study. In the past, he has always been playing with the third generation of coffee with light roasting, but recently he has gone back to playing with the first generation of coffee. During the summer vacation, he took his children to study in Germany. He specially visited Van Gulpen, the oldest coffee bean merchant in Germany, and also made a lot of arrangements to buy the family's old machines. It sounds like he is really going to march into the world of heavy roasting. Let us wish him all the best in advance!

Source: GQ