Hacker News Reader

Comment by fellowmartian | Hacker News Reader

This is neat, but I wish we’d move from retrofitting Gaggia Classics to something more modern. Decent Espresso showed us that boiler machines for home use are a dead end, because they have too much thermal mass for rapid switching between brewing and steaming. This is why I initially considered buying a Gaggia and modding it, but ultimately got a Breville Infuser as it basically comes pre-modded and is thermocoil-based, so you can quickly switching to steaming. It’s not the fastest steaming in the world, but I think it’s actually good for beginners to learn how to steam on a slow machine.

View on HN

> Decent Espresso showed us that boiler machines for home use are a dead end, because they have too much thermal mass for rapid switching between brewing and steaming.

I will hasard that most espresso machine owners are like me, just like espresso and never steam. I can count on one hand the number of time I used my Silvia steam wand in the past five years.

I think regular milk drinks are mostly an American thing.

I would be very surprised if that was the case; you'd see much more machines out there that omit the steaming wand entirely.

While _I_ mostly drink espressos when making coffee for myself, I think overall I made more flat whites for my wife and any friends that come over, then I did shots just for myself on my machine.

If you have two machines with very similar price and quality, but one was espresso-only, and the other had a steamer, what do you think the people that only drink espressos would buy?

Zero marginal cost features have some very unusual economics.

They exist. If I was going that route I'd probably get a Flair 58. But I love a steam wand.

Absolutely not. Lattes and cappuccinos were invented in Italy after all.

> Lattes and cappuccinos were invented in Italy

This is a commonly held belief, I'm Italian and I would like to clarify a bit.

- I have worked at a bar (1) in Italy and more than 90% of the coffee drinks ordered during any given day were single shot espressos. Cappuccino orders however were not uncommon in the morning.

- Cappuccino was invented in Austria, however it was popularised in Italy and it still is very popular to this day. It is consumed only in the first half of the morning, for the rest of the day Italians prefer to drink exclusively espresso shots.

- The drink that is known in the Anglosphere as "latte" doesn't really exist in Italy except in some touristy areas, normally, if you ask for a "latte" in an Italian bar, they'll give you a glass of milk.

We have however two drinks that are similar to what you call "latte":

- Caffè latte, which is similar to the French café au lait but the coffee is made in a moka pot. This is usually consumed at home.

- In bars you can order a "latte macchiato" which is similar to what you call "latte" but the coffee is added at the end, on top of the milk, and it is much weaker than a latte (this is reflected by the name "latte macchiato" which means "stained milk" i.e. all milk with just a dash of coffee).

PS Latte macchiato is not to be confused with caffè macchiato which is what is known internationally simply as "macchiato" i.e. almost all coffee with just a dash of milk.

(1) An Italian "bar" roughly corresponds to what English speaking people refer to as "cafe" although it will also serve alcoholic drinks. Actual cafes are not popular in Italy and they are only found in touristy spots.

So far I’ve only visited Italy once, but your account rhymes well with what I’ve read about Italian coffee culture.

One thing I’m curious about:

Is ristretto and lungo popular in Italy? Or is that also mostly for tourist spots?

yes ristretto and lungo are fairly common, the ristretto is more common than the lungo in my experience.

The lungo is not to be confused with an Americano, it's just a slightly bigger espresso shot (I used to make a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio - in other words, I used a single shot portafilter but the amount of coffee coming out is like a double shot) - note that in Italy, shots are smaller than overseas because we mostly use single shot baskets (7-9 grams of ground coffee) whereas in "third wave coffee" the default is to use a double shot basket (around 18 gram of ground coffee). So the Italian lungo would be just as much liquid as you would get by ordering an espresso in USA or Australia (but much weaker due to being made with less ground coffee)

We (Americans) used to call it cafe latte in the early days when it was getting popular in the early 90s but we like to optimize and since latte wasn't taken yet, we just chopped off the cafe part. You can see Kramer order a cafe latte in seinfeld and most stores still have it written as cafe latte, especially hipster ones, but we just don't need to specify cafe to get the point across.

yes, that makes sense! But the American latte is a little bit different than our caffe latte / latte macchiato - for the reasons I mentioned above.

Personally, I actually prefer the American style latte to the Italian style latte macchiato! Italian Latte Macchiato is quite weak while Third Wave style Latte has more punch and you can taste the coffee more.

A shot of espresso and a toasted almond granita are honestly the best way to start the day.

But the flat white was invented in Auckland, New Zealand.

We will fight Melbourne, Australia to the death on that one.

Melbourne's filled with Kiwis anyways - kiwis make the place what it is :p

Bugger off mate, flat whites and pavlovas are ours! Stick with your kiwi fruits ;).

Hello from Australia! Not only are most coffee orders with milk, Aussies drink a load of milk at home. Like I used to easily smash a litre of milk a day (cereal, coffee, tea, just drinking it from the fridge).

I now don’t drink milk at all and have black coffee at home and out and I am not the norm.

I use the steam wand every single morning. It's a cappuccino to start the day, then regular espresso after that.

Cappuccinos are quite popular at breakfast in Italy, which is where espresso is from. I don't know what makes you think it has anything to do with America.

Context of the comment was in modding machines. Are modders more likely to be American or Italian?

These 5k espresso machines (or a DYI project where you spend the equivalent in time) don't really make sense in a country where an average salary is 1.5k and the average coffee is 1.

In case you're looking for advice: I went from being a daily HX machine (rocket) user to a Cafelat Robot at the beginning of the pandemic & haven't looked back. It has zero warm-up time and I make better espresso with it more consistently than I ever could with the e61.

I'm not sure I agree with you about 'most espresso machine owners', but if you do only care about the spro, I can highly recommend the manual approach.

New Zealand and Australia have a lot of milk users.

Hi there, I’m also a Silvia owner. I steam first then pull a shot. Easier to go up to steam then come down.

I grew up in eastern europe and I've been drinking lattes since I was little. (though I didn't know they were called lattes until much later, milk was just part of coffee for me) My Silvia steams a few lattes every day. ymmv

Reading the rest of this thread it seems like I should look into moving to Australia for broader coffee compatibility with my peers.

> Decent Espresso showed us that boiler machines for home use are a dead end.

Do you mean single boiler machines? Many home machines have no problem switching because they just use two boilers, one for brewing and one for steaming.

Yeah, double boiler is very, very worth it IMO.

Our machine has a 300ml boiler for brewing the shot, and a 1 liter boiler for the steam wand and hot water wand, and it's great.

I can pull shots quickly after turning the machine on because the 300ml boiler heats up fast. Steaming takes a few minutes to heat up, but once there it'll keep going for a long time, and I can keep pulling shots at the right temp in the mean time.

Way happier with the double boiler machine than I was with the single boiler we used to use. Much less planning required for my own use and I can actually serve several guests a nice espresso/latte/cappuccino from the machine in a reasonable time.

I agree, having the two parts of the machine working independently from each other makes a big difference even at home.

Dual boilers are more common but the same concept applies to machines with dual thermocoils, like the one I picked.

Jumping on the double-boiler fan train. My family likes lattes and I like espressos. I make them one at a time, and it's nice to go from pulling the shot, to steam, next shot & steam, etc.

I'll be doing this when I need to replace my machine, I went with the Breville Barista Pro which has been fantastic but whenever the families turn up I might end up making 6-8 coffees in a row. The double boiler would have saved me quite some time over the last few years.

Dual boiler machines have been a perfectly fine solution to this problem for a very, very long time.

Decent's offering is good but vastly overcomplicated for the majority of people who don't want a tablet on their coffee machine in their kitchen. I much prefer the tactile experience of using a traditional espresso machine.

Decent has awful software, and the owner is also kind of a backwards-thinking stuck up dude, so...

Could you share more details on the owner?

most of the bad stuff is interpersonal drama caused by the fact that John (Decent Owner) is fully committed to TCL for app and firmware development.

some prominent community members have rewritten a lot of the front end using python and JS.

when disagreements and call outs arose between this group and the owner, well, access to the company Basecamp is controlled by the owners. there are big personalities all around.

as somebody who enjoys a bit of the popcorn but is uninvested in the outcome, it's not a big deal as a consumer of the machine. if you want to hack on the software, his personality is probably going to affect you a little more.

of course, somebody else may step in to give a different historical account.

No, and I do not even know him, but it irritates me to hear him everywhere called 'the Decent'.

He abuses the idea of open source to get free work for his commercial product. They have invested near 0 dollars into development of the tablet application.

> Dual boiler machines have been a perfectly fine solution to this problem for a very, very long time.

A fine, but expensive and mechanically complex solution. Dual boiler machines generally cost thousands even for small home machines. Commercial dual boiler machines will set you back at least $10-30k, easily.

Besides that, there's the warm up time. Often 30+ minutes on a commercial machine, then the electricity cost of keeping several litres of water and heavy blocks of metal at boiling point too.

It's high time espresso machines got a mechanicals simpler, cheaper, more environmentally friendly update. On the home front, Breville and Decent are doing this, while commercially I think some Ascaso machines use the same tech as Decent (not 100% sure on that though and when I reached out to them about it when considering one of their machines they just told me "work with your local dealer". There's exactly one Ascaso dealer in the country and they don't speak English so that wasn't much help).

Not to dismiss dual boilers or even good heat exchangers. Both of them are beautiful technological designs. But they basically haven't changed since the sixties.

> A fine, but expensive and mechanically complex solution

I'm not sure I agree that they're mechanically complex. They're engineering 101. A pump, a heater and a thermostat. They're rather mechanically simple.

> Dual boiler machines generally cost thousands even for small home machines.

The _cheapest_ Decent is $3500.

> Commercial dual boiler machines will set you back at least $10-30k, easily.

You don't need a $10k-$30k machine to get a competent dual boiler. If you look at something like a Lelit Bianca, a dual boiler with preinfusion and flow control while $500 cheaper than the cheapest Decent, you can pull your first shot in 10 minutes. A home brewer making espresso on a Bianca isn't going to notice the difference on a $10k or $30k machine because at that price point what you're paying for isn't the ability to pull a shot, it's the ability to pull thousands of them every day of the year.

> But they basically haven't changed since the sixties.

That's true but I argue they don't need to. We don't need to iterate on everything. Technology doesn't always make things better.

> You don't need a $10k-$30k machine to get a competent dual boiler

Commercially, you do (I own a small cafe chain so I can claim some knowledge here). The Lelit Bianca is a beautiful home machine but you can't use it commercially - first of all, due to safety certs (not sure about the Bianca specifically but most small home machines don't have commercial certs). But also because it just isn't built to handle a morning rush of customers. I don't think you could make more than 10 or so lattes in a row before it would lose steam.

> I'm not sure I agree that they're mechanically complex. They're engineering 101. A pump, a heater and a thermostat. They're rather mechanically simple

I think that list is missing a few of the components that make up an espresso machine :)

https://66.media.tumblr.com/2a1cfb37655e5ddc1dfa820b15eefca9...

But nonetheless I agree, there are far more complex machines in regular use. My complaints are more about warm up time, hard limits on how many coffees you can serve in a row, and electricity use.

> That's true but I argue they don't need to. We don't need to iterate on everything. Technology doesn't always make things better.

I partially agree with this but again, from a commercial perspective I guess I have different goals. Actually at home I use a Flair 58 manual lever machine and a hand grinder. Beautifully simple and I could heat water using a wood fire and make it work.

But commercially, I want the tech I use to improve. I want better efficiency, better reliability, and lower energy use. I don't have the numbers for our yearly electric bill just from the coffee machine, but it's a lot and a good chunk of the day it just sits there reheating water over and over.

It's the same as saying you should never need to upgrade your work laptop. Wasn't the 720p screen you had in 2005 perfectly adequate? Why do you need more than 1gb RAM?

What? The Breville BES920 has been around for almost a decade, takes < 5 minutes to heat both boilers and regularly is for sale for < $1000 AUD (~$500 USD).

You could also use a single boiler (which are better at temperature regulation) for espresso pulls and a thermoblock for steam.

That said, boilers are pretty niche for home use. In order to maintain good thermal regulation you need a decent sized mass of water. That means a long time to preheat and a lot of wasted energy.

This isn't a dealbreaker for some, but for a casual consumer who pulls one or two shots per day, it's pretty lacking in convenience.

I'll admit to being a complete heathen and warming milk in the microwave and frothing it with a $10 hand wand before pouring it over my moka pot brewed expression, but I'm happy with my coffee.

We have a single boiler / dual circuit espresso machine [1], and I think it's a perfect home espresso machine. The only thing that annoys me about it is how loud the vibration pump is, I guess a rotary pump would be nicer.

It's mechanically extremely simple, there are no electronics that can fail, it takes 10 minutes to heat up, and I can pull shots and steam continuously without switching between the modes.

Granted, it doesn't have precise temperature or pressure control, so the only way to control the extraction process is by changing the amount of coffee, or how fine you grind it. If you want to do barista competitions, this is not the machine for you. But if you just want to enjoy good espressos and cappucinos at home, then tech from the 1960s is good enough.

[1]: https://www.dieroester.at/maschinen/bfc/ela

Have you seen: https://meticuloushome.com/ seems to be what you're looking for. Not on market yet.

Not for another couple of days!

Lelit is the counterpoint to that - I have a Lelit Elizabeth which, while expensive, is a fraction of what a Decent costs - So I’m not sure “don’t use boilers” pans out.

Yep, even the Lelit Bianca which is a dual-boiler and has both flow control and a pressure knob is still cheaper than the cheapest Decent despite the much more robust build.

Another vote for Lelit, I have an Anna PL41TEM with the PID controller, have made 2-3 perfect espressos every day, 7 days a week, since 2017 like clockwork.

That's >4,000 shots and counting... A very solid piece of kit.

Switching from brewing to steaming takes about 4 minutes on a single-boiler Rancilio, during which I can prepare the rest of the breakfast or empty the dishwasher. For home use, this is very practical. Besides, a single boiler means less work to descale the machine, and fewer components that can break.

I hope this is more of a proof of concept.

I think this is an example of part of the future of manufacturing.

Some things will be built from COTS parts. Others will be built as custom one offs. Obviously there will be products made with a hybrid of methods of building things.

But increasing there will be an industry of people taking products and modding or rebuilding them. From people who upgrade cars, to modding watches for a unique look. Or taking a common product like an expresso maker and make it open like this, which could end up creating a market for COTS parts instead of modding old products.

As much as people are excited about 3D printing and high end technology for manufacturing, rebuilding and upgrading old junk has huge potential, as companies converting old cars into EVs have found.

I've been meaning to upgrade from a Breville Bambino, but key for me is a machine I can turn on and brew coffee right away on a whim (small footprint would also be nice), but I haven't found any options between the Brevilles and the Decent.

I have my Gaggia Classic connected to a smart plug. Okay, it’s not _instant_, but I can decide I want a coffee, turn on the machine from my phone and it’ll be heated by the time I go and make it.

I know this is how many people do it, it strikes me as surprising that you don't need this compromise at the very low end (Breville Bambino), nor at the high end (Decent), but there's nothing in between

You can get a normal basket for your Bambino. As long as your grinder is decent, should be fine.

>Decent Espresso showed us that boiler machines for home use are a dead end

I don't think this is true. I think what you may mean is that SINGLE boiler machines are not great for people who want to make drinks that involve steaming.

Many people make only espresso, and don't use milk at all. A single boiler is going to be fine for them.

Many people who like milk drinks use double-boiler machines, which work beautifully (e.g., my Rocket R58).

My Gaggia would be too slow for a commercial operation, but, if I flip the switch to steam right after the shot, by the time I go to the fridge and pour out 200 ml milk and walk back to the machine, it’s ready to steam.

And, you need to flip the switch back to coffee right after steaming and then run the brew switch to refill the boiler, which pulls the temp down.

I’d still like a PID control with a readout, though.

Auber instruments makes a PID integration kit for the gaggia classic / classic pro. It also gives you a pre infusion cycle as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com