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Before I say anything else, man that OP is so good; learned a lot while reading it. Man am I glad to see this thread; I just got dumped into this crazy coffee world by taking on a contract to get an old school importer/distributor of high-end commercial espresso products online. They've been selling/servicing since 2000 but a lot of the internet has passed them by. My office is part storage so I'm surrounded by probably $200,000 worth of old school semi-automatic chrome and steel (and an equivalent amount of junky, plasticy super automatics). Will probably post questions here time to time when I don't understand something (e.g. I originally thought multi-boiler machines were so more than one person could use them simultaneously instead of being a coffee/steam/milk thing), and hopefully answer some once I get more up to speed. Right now I'm interested in grinders; the owner here is excited for our shipment of the new Baratza Sette 270/Ws to come in. Everyone's saying they're going to be revolutionary for their price point, are they on anyone's radar? Lastly I guess, I am surrounded by a bunch of this equipment. If anyone has specific questions on specific stuff I can look at like the doser interface on the Mazzer Kold Electronic or something like that. EDIT-In retrospect, that sounds really markety. Sorry guys, the company does like $20k+ plumbed in commercial equipment mostly, and the ecommerce play is for B2B, I won't be insulting you all with sell-hards and links to the site. Though I am trying to convince the owner to buy some of that Royal Mile guys' coffee. Scaramouche fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Apr 14, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 22:41
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Wow this stuff is cool. I was pulling shots off an ECM semi-automatic that they let me goof off on because it was the "cheap one" (around $3k). Used three different grinders and was amazed at what a difference it makes. Also those super automatic machines are lame, we've got some super-expensive ones but all you do is push a button. I've never done this before and I could already tell a difference in crema/froth from me doing a manual wanding versus the super automatic. EDIT-I've also had a loooooooooot of coffee today so some of that might not make any sense.
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Apr 15, 2016 01:09
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Keyser S0ze posted:I've only descaled my Rocket Cellini once in nearly 5 years and it was a huge pita and I probably knocked years off the pump life trying to run enough clean water through it to get rid of the acidic taste, meh. Not bothering with it again. When people come in asking us when they should descale we say "basically never" given how soft the water is here (Pacific Northwest). But that's mostly to head off people who think doing it every six months/year is required; 5 years is probably a pretty good time to do it if NorCal is as soft as ours.
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Apr 25, 2016 18:12
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bizwank posted:I own a repair shop in Seattle; PNW water is softer then most but home machines should still be descaled at 2-4x a year to keep them healthy as scale buildup causes real issues in their tiny boilers and can easily take half the life off a machine. Commercial machines like you're working with are usually hooked up to water softeners so descaling isn't necessary, but they're entirely different creatures from the equipment most people in this thread have and "don't bother descaling" is just plain bad advice. Yeah, sorry. You're exactly right about where I was coming from, though for the record I'm in Vancouver BC and we apparently have the softest water in Canada (I've seen it reported as low as 3mg/l fresh off the mountain, 20-30 from reservoir). Given that metric, for the domestics they'll generally say every six months or if you notice a flavour change. NOTE: I don't know crap, don't take my advice.
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Apr 26, 2016 01:19
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Can't comment on Silvia versus Gaggia, but I was helping unbox some Rancilios we got recently and those things are nutsy. It's laying there in the box lookin like a Braun grinder or something, but I can barely lift it out with one hand the thing is so dense*. After reading up on its capabilities I'm amazed they got that much grinder in that size. Not a lot of walk-ins buy them in my experience, but it's one of the grinders the owner recommends unreservedly, keeping in mind we also stock Mazzer/Macap/Baratza. *this is where you mock me for not being strong
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May 4, 2016 09:18
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Ugh, had a nasty one today. We're trialing a FAEMA Barcode super automatic from Italy (probably like $8k USD) and usually I'll grab a drink off it just to try new ones the head tech programs in (it is super configurable). It's pretty good, and has a wicked self-cleaning cycle. So today I got a mocha and took a big ol swig of... rotten steamed milk.
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May 5, 2016 19:35
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The only thing I've seen branded as Ninja that isn't lame was my Kawasaki ZXR6. Never heard of these guys, but my impression is a low-end consumer machine trying to do too much with too little. It'll probably "work" at doing drip brews, but I'd be skeptical about how good the espresso/ice options are. That said though, 236 reviews, 4.5 star rating, #50 best seller in a relatively competiive Home & Kitchen > Kitchen & Dining > Coffee, Tea & Espresso > Coffee Makers category, generally a trash piece of equipment doesn't review so highly, and if your price point is "free" certainly worth a try. If you're only interested in drip and don't even care about the expanded functionality of the Ninja it'd probably be better to get dedicated drip setup of some kind, since I'm guessing there's tradeoffs with the Ninja. Lolzy moment of the day, the default category for that product according to Amazon: Home & Kitchen › Kitchen & Dining › Bakeware › Decorating Tools › Icing & Decorating Spatulas listing our products on amazon is going to be a tremendous pain in the rear end
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May 11, 2016 22:09
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We're just setting up a crazy commercial pod machine for an office install that's pretty wack. The resulting coffee is quite good for full automatic, and uses those bio-degradable teabag lookin pods instead of k-cups et al. Haven't tried the ice drinks yet but the coffee/latte/mocha etc. are all some of the best I've had out of a commercial machine. Anyway the owner said it was programmable and asked me to poke around. It's one of these thingers: http://www.newcocoffee.com/family-cx.htm (click View CX Touch button to actually see it because thanks Javascript) He asked me to go in to change the logos on the touch screen. Looked at the instructions and realized that it's just a Nexus 7 tablet bolted in there, and the coffee machine "software" is just an android app, that's likely interacting with an internal web server to actually serve up the coffee, with all the settings likely saved in an internal SQLite db. Was pretty weird to have my app/software development past intersection with my coffee present. To change the logo I had to FTP into the coffee machine and upload a file into /data/data/(appname)/cache. I don't know if I want to admire them for repurposing existing tech or blame them for not making a custom board like some of the other high end machines. As an aside you know it's expensive because there isn't actually a price listed anywhere that has it.
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May 13, 2016 01:25
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I'm adding kickstarter darlings ROK Kitchen Tools (manual Hand espresso maker and grinder) to the site today, anyone have any insights or have used them? I'm not sure if it's an egregious gimmick or something really cool.
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May 17, 2016 21:29
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We got the ROK manual thingers in the shop finally. They are... beefy seeming. Substantial heft to them, and the metal parts are real, dense, metal. I've heard tell of it used as a campfire/porta dealy, but between the grinder and the press that's a lot of cubic volume to jam into your backpack, and that's not even counting the beans or the crockery. The grinder:  The manual press:  But Snake, how does it taste? I still haven't had time to pull one off one of these guys yet, I'm waiting for the head tech to do it because he'll do a better job. My only concern so far is that plasticky bit at the top of the espresso press. It's a lot thicker and denser than you'd think based on the picture, but I can see it getting scratched/cracked/fogged over time. It's also the main seal on the pressure chamber as it moves down. I can see why they'd want to make it clear for ease of use but I wonder if that'll come back to bite them.
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May 24, 2016 22:34
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Speaking of roasters, I finally figured out what we're using here, it's a Sonofresco Model 2200, looks like they go for about $3600 new. MasterControl or anyone else, any insight/experience with them?
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Jun 8, 2016 22:51
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Hah, no diss no foul. The actual "commercial" roasting (e.g. what we sell in 2.2 lb bags on the site and in the stores) is done in a more industrial setup, this is just the "in office" one. The sonofresco is more so we have something in the showroom that can roast. Generally it gets used for custom orders for the office coffee supply clients, specifically decafs and green bean runs. I've never seen them run more than 4 roasts a day through it. I've also noticed that walk-ins love looking at the thing while it's running, and the smell is real nice as well. I haven't had to roast on it, but what would be my criticism is that it's not super good at getting rid of the hulls and detritus. They don't end up in the beans, it's good that way, it just seems like they end up.... everywhere else.
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Jun 13, 2016 23:05
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We did a thing for this big auto dealership grand opening where we supplied some machines and barista staff and coffee to people attending, just last night. We brought out a Rocket R58 Dual Boiler, an ECM Elektronika II Profii, and were using a Jura X9 for backup/emergency coffee if the semi-automatics got too busy. I've been on the fence with the Rocket, since they just seem like a (good) high end machine, but they feel pricey and are more trading on their style rather than their utility. But the R58 was a monster, and was in action the whole night without a single hiccup or interruption. What impressed me most is that our people were essentially serving as fast as they possibly could, and the double boilers never had a problem staying hot. Even our imported "latte art" person who works on a pro La Marzocco 4 group in their day job was impressed with the thing. I was always in favor of ECM or Quick Mill machines before but I got to admit the Rocket impressed me last night and I think I'm going to start recommending them more. So if you guys have a couple grand burning holes in your pockets maybe check them out.
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Jun 24, 2016 19:09
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Yeah, don't get me wrong I never thought the Rocket sucked or anything (the internals are pretty industry standard) but I always thought they were a bit overpriced compared to the comparable QuickMILL, ECM, or even Vibiemme. But I've come to appreciate some of the design, all the controls are super smooth, and the big ol steam knob that I thought was gaudy and unnecessary was actually a pleasure to use. There's a real satisfaction to feeling those parts clunk and plonk into place authoritatively that might be worth the extra $250-$500 they command on the others.
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Jun 24, 2016 23:30
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We retired the ECM Elektronika II Profi from active duty last week, had a guy come in saying "I've been getting coffee from you every day for months from that machine and it's the best coffee I've ever had so I'm buying it no matter how much it costs." It was with a tear in the eye and glad hand on the wallet we serviced it, cleaned it, packed it up, and loaded it into his car. Godspeed little profi, godspeed. So now my daily driver is a QuickMILL Vetrano 2B Evo. They're around the same price (roughly $3k CAD), but the Quickmill is a newer revision, and you can really tell. The double boiler makes it chufty as hell, and it's a manual shot (with LED shot timer and independent PIDs) which makes it a bit more interactive than the "push a button" style of the ECM. It's kind of neat to mess around with timings, chasing that perfect over/under extraction and temperature. The ECM was an odd beast, an expensive semi-automatic with pre-defined timings, it almost felt like a super automatic that you have to put a portafilter on and froth your own milk. The QuickMILL is a bit more demanding, but I think there's a reward there with the additional control. It runs hot as hell, with both upsides and downsides. You can get a super hot, distinct coffee out of it with no waiting or mucking about with pressure. You can also burn yourself by touching nearly any part of it, including the "anti-burn" steam wand. It's not a raging inferno danger or anything, but it definitely runs hotter and something you should be careful around. Even the portafilter (which I find a little ... underwhelming? not as meaty as some others) gets hot halfway up the handle after 3-4 pulls in a row. The Quickmill certainly feels like a more "active" machine that you have to engage with, whereas the ECM was just there and would spit out the brown stuff if you pushed a button.
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Jul 11, 2016 21:57
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The ROK manual grinder is p legit but A)probably overpriced B)overkill if you're not doing espresso C)kinda huge so doesn't help with counter space
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Jul 12, 2016 20:54
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I'm not a fan of hand grinder, but if you're doing those cheapy little electric blade grinders you might as well just put a rag over the beans and smack it with a hammer or something, because you're going to get the same inconsistent crappy grounds that will clump and unevenly extract.
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Jul 13, 2016 18:03
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I know cold brew is the neat new thing but really: http://www.joyridecoffeedistributors.com/coffees/page/joyride-cold-brew/ (links to a bro-tastic kegerator cold brew product. For sale, commercially.)
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Jul 16, 2016 01:26
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rockcity posted:I'm afraid to know what they charge for that 5 gallon keg. I've been tasked with lining up a free demo so maybe we'll find out!
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Jul 18, 2016 02:00
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Yeah if you don't care about going into the fine espresso grinds there's not really any incentive to go further up the Baratza upgrade tree. The Encore is perfectly fine for drip. I believe the Virtuoso goes a bit faster, but for home use you probably won't care. If you do want to get into espresso / fine grinds I wouldn't even suggest the Virtuoso, I'd say wait for the Sette or go the Precisio or upwards. (+$$$ depending)
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Jul 22, 2016 21:53
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Hexigrammus posted:Yeah, it's a thing with the naturpathic crowd. Sure sign to ease yourself out of the conversation. And I guess it's a more pleasant experience than shoving crystals up there. I ran into a weird thing lately about pseudo-science too. Apparently (according to the owner) people are asking us about "Alkaline" water systems to feed into plumbed in coffee installs. I'd heard about it in the past as another one of those alt-health scams (which I despise), but it actually made me curious if it would affect the taste/acidity of the coffee. Anyone know? The only suppliers I could find for them were iridologists, chiropractors, and other various flavours of woo so I haven't looked into it much.
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Jul 25, 2016 18:24
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Here's a pretty good takedown of both alkaline and 'ionic' water: http://www.chem1.com/CQ/ionbunk.html I knew it was bullshit healthwise, but I was wondering if it would influence the character of coffee in any way. My guess is from reading that and dim memories of high school chemistry, no.
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Jul 25, 2016 18:48
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Scaramouche posted:We retired the ECM Elektronika II Profi from active duty last week, had a guy come in saying "I've been getting coffee from you every day for months from that machine and it's the best coffee I've ever had so I'm buying it no matter how much it costs." It was with a tear in the eye and glad hand on the wallet we serviced it, cleaned it, packed it up, and loaded it into his car. Godspeed little profi, godspeed. Revisit on this a little bit later: I freaking love this thing. I've got my single shot/double shot timings down just right now and it is smooth as hell, way better than what the ECM was putting out at default settings. Having independent time control really makes a difference since you can adjust up/down based on size of shot, type of bean, type of grind, etc. Still think the portafilter is a little wimpy, but it's an E61 so we can replace it with whatever is laying around, probably a Vibiemme since those portafilters could probably double as police batons.
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Jul 27, 2016 00:22
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C'mon we need the real story here. What kind of machine? Is it made in the USA? I think Slayer is the only big name that manufactures in the US.
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Jul 28, 2016 22:21
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I was joking, but is that actually A Thing? e.g. buying USA made over others? Because it seems kind of silly given Espresso's origins and all that...
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Jul 29, 2016 18:03
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bizwank posted:Dezcal is super cheap, no reason not to use it, but pure citric acid will work nearly as well. Vinegar stinks and I've seen it kill pumps, I would avoid it. Cafiza dissolves coffee oils; it's used for backflushing and cleaning baskets/portafilters. Have you tried the Cafetto "organic" cleaner? We carry it but I'm not seeing a lot of traction against the Urnex juggernaut. Seems to be a mix of citric acid and tartaric acid, and is "phosphate free", "biodegradable" and "certified organic" (note scare quotes).
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Aug 2, 2016 21:19
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Depends on what you mean by worth a drat I guess, reg-year buddy. Are you going to get a good machine for that? Proooobably not. Off the top of my head for mass market stuff that we carry is probably the Delonghi EC702 ($189 on Amazon now) or the EC155 ($99 on Amazon now). These are roughly equivalent to buying a $40 Sears-branded drip machine but for espresso. They're not super good, have tiny group heads and generally they don't last too long because of crap pumps/boilers. A pretty okay entry level jobber is the Capresso Cafe PRO, but it's out of your range ($299 on Amazon now) which is about as low as I'd go while still calling something "espresso". The "real" entry levels guys to me are things like Gaggia Classic or Rancilio Silvia but those are getting upt here price wise >$500
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Aug 3, 2016 19:24
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Oh yeah, in case it wasn't clear, I wasn't really endorsing the Delonghis. Just saying they existed at that price point.
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Aug 3, 2016 20:10
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Guaaah don't even. Some of the higher end models are ok (the ESAM 6900M punches a little above its weight with the integrated chocolate) but everything under $1000 is kinda gross. Mind you that's probably true of any super-automatics though.
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Aug 3, 2016 23:18
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This is an odd question, but have you guys noticed your taste changing after getting hard into this stuff? I had a coffee off one of those Wolfgang puck pod-style machine coffees today which was a "fruity, caramel, light roasted blend". And... it wasn't bad really, certainly flavourful and hot and worked as coffee, and in the old days I would have said "wow that's a good coffee!" But now all I could think was how much better a single origin, just ground by myself, espresso shot would have been. Am I a snob now?
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Aug 9, 2016 21:16
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Looks like it comes from FirstBuild.com, which is kind of a hacker space that comes up with new designs collaboratively. It's the maker community that's backed by GE, and not prisma specifically. Not sure how good a deal it is though; if your invention gets used you get $1000 flat right away, and then 0.5% royalty for 4 years.
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Aug 10, 2016 21:59
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Wasn't there a class action lawsuit over that for one if the k cup makers? The guys made cider and fruit flavour k cups and then tried to branch out into coffee stuff and didn't tell anyone they were using instant
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Aug 11, 2016 02:06
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HappyHippo posted:My new office has a Mr Coffee drip machine and this fancy-looking automatic machine that makes what seems like fake espresso. Even though the machine does actually grind beans before making the coffee I hate the way the resulting coffee tastes. I'll take the bitter-rear end Mr coffee poo poo over it every time. At least it tastes like coffee. I'm curious, do you know what kind it is? We carry just about every automatic worth having and I want to know if one of ours sucks. Also drip is very easy to do "good enough" (for given values of good), whereas the gulf on that for espresso seems to be a bit larger.
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Aug 12, 2016 22:49
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If those are your two options I would grind at home on the real grinder. Blade grinders are a crime against coffee, especially when going into espresso style machines which the Roma is.
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Aug 15, 2016 19:38
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Yeah it's a Jura XJ9, part of their office coffee/high capacity machine line up. We've got two in the showroom right now; we generally lease them to offices, people don't usually buy them new (New about $5,000 CAD). Made in Switzerland. They're... pretty okay? I'm surprised it's as gross as it is there; I wouldn't call them the best, but I wouldn't call them the worst either. The layered drinks seem nice.
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Aug 15, 2016 23:25
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I don't know if it's an endorsement, but the owner where I work (in coffee biz since 2000) was pretty intrigued by them. He's kind of a retail/showroom guy though, so I think his first thought was that they look pretty nice and they'd sell.
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Aug 17, 2016 17:08
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porktree posted:I'd like to see one in 'live action'. A few years ago I was in an upscale training center and they had a similar thing, you'd see the beans get ground, dropped into a chamber and watch it infuse and brew. Took abou 2-3 minutes. An OK cup, better than most other communal solutions. I looked them up and apparently they're in the same city we are. Can't find a way to contact them for love or money though, we'd probably spring for 4-5 in the showroom but not at $399 USD. I guess it says not available until 2017 anyway so speculation is kind of pointless.
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Aug 19, 2016 21:58
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I see a lot of interest in the Silvia. We've sold 3 this month and about 4 last month. We don't carry the crossland cc1 so I have no exposure to it. The problems with the Silvia in my mind are: - No PID - Relatively small boiler (300ml, 500 on the crossland) PID can be worked around, by either learning the machine the hard way through pulling lots of shots through it, or installing an aftermarket PID (super common but extra $$$, we don't do it Bizwank might know). Boiler size less so, but if you're only doing 1 shot at a time and not steaming 2l of milk at the same time it's not that big of an issue. If you're habitually serving 2-4 people at a time it is though. I think there's a reason these machines are still around, and haven't really changed since the 80s. That said, it does wear its weaknesses on its sleeve.
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Aug 22, 2016 20:42
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I don't do drip at all, though there's a list of recommended ones on the first page of the thread, who knows how out of date that is though. That ROK grinder is crazy though eh? Unlike the Hario, Rhinowares, etc. it's not made to be portable or stylish or anything like that so it's just a big ugly hunk of metal that's good at its job.
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Sep 6, 2016 20:35
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Related to nothing, the owner here just came back from a business trip to Bouqet, Panama with a bunch of Panama Geisha, the so called "$100/lb" coffee normally available by auction and special lot sale. It's probably the most expensive I'll drink when we get around to selling it, since I'm not going to drink coffee that was excreted from a weasel's rear end. The greens are very strange, I've never seen raw beans so uniformly sized, which is apparently an artefact of how they grow (larger plant, fruit is spread across it more evenly). I can imagine it affects the grind after roast as well. Now I just have to figure how to sell it.
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Sep 8, 2016 01:16
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