DIY Espresso (2020)
fourbardesign.com
fourbardesign.com
First, CO2 -WILL- enter the brew. There is no way to stop it. This will create carbonic acid and elevate the pH. Which absolutely will impact the flavor. Part of the extraction "dialing in" process is determining the dose, temperature, grind, and duration for a new bean (and as it ages). The last thing you want it so add more acidity to the flavor. Some people do like sour espresso, I do not, and I think I'm in the majority.
Second, consistency of pressure. A CO2 canister output pressure changes with temperature and volume. An espresso machine uses a pump (and some a PID) to regulate this.
Third, this thing will probably explode after a few weeks. You can't subject plastics to this type of pressure. But OP did suggest using metal in the next version.
Fourth, health. Plastic + hot water is bad, add extreme pressure and it is even worse. Kick it up a notch using 3D printed plastic, which is a nowhere near food safe. I'm not too far into the "don't eat out of warm plastic" group, but i'm close. This would concern me.
I think it is a cool build. But a Bialeti is sufficient if you don't want to drop thousands on espresso machinery. Also in the running, the early Nespresso designs, not the rotary one. Both will get you into "americano" territory.
Temperature yes, volume, not really. The CO2 is in liquid state, maintaining its vapour pressure. Although if the starting volume is low, then the liquid could substantially cool down during the extraction and lower the vapour pressure that way.
All of this is irrelevant though, as the pressure is regulated down to espresso extraction levels during the extraction. It looks like it's done by hand by eyeballing the pressure gauge, pretty wild.
Also not much CO2 enters into a hot liquid, CO2 solubility is drastically down at this temp, as the article notes.
It doesn’t look like the coffee or water touches the plastic, it goes into a metal Cafelat Robot basket then is tamped with a metal screen on top.
It's very hard to find a non-sour coffee where I live, and not much easier to find a non-sour espresso.
Or 9barista/cafelat robot
If I were doing it, my design would consist of:
(1) A bike pump (goes up to >200 PSI)
(2) A pressure tank
(3) Two valves
I would pump up the tank to ~130PSI, getting my morning exercise in. I would exhaust it through the coffee. If I wanted to get fancy, I might have an extra intermediate stage so I can use fresh air, rather than air which has been through my bike pump.
I'd like to be able to buy something like (any) of these. My requirements:
- Cheap
- Reliable
- Makes good coffee
Nice-to-haves:
- Compact
Anti-requirements (which should make this possible):
- Fast to use and practical in a fast-paced environment.
I make one cup of coffee a day, and it's a ritual. I'm okay with this taking a while, needing to work a bike pump, or whatnot. Slow is okay.
It's an espresso machine that's fully manual. You create pressure by using a lever. Water is manually poured in.
Cheapness is hard to have in a product that's big, heavy and involves big chunks of metal, but on the good side a well made one should last forever -- nothing much that can go wrong, and it's a purely mechanical device that can be taken apart.
As long as you're willing to invest a bit of effort in the learning curve of literally pulling a shot, it's the perfect machine. I've made 3-6 shots a day on mine for 4 years now, and I know people who have used their machine daily for 20+ years.
These days you can get a very good one (Flair Flex) for $99! That, some good beans and a bit of knowledge and you'll make coffee on par with any shop out there.
They are also not going to last you very long especially if you use it a lot.
https://www.handpresso.com/en/handpresso-pump-black-351.html
Still hand pumped, looks a bit less like a bike pump though!
Recently on prime day, the nanopresso and minipresso had great deals, but not the nanopresso, or I would have picked one up for myself.
On the other hand, a Flair Neo works fine
You’re ignoring the grinder, which in my opinion is the most important part of home espresso making. Add at least 200USD for a good quality manual burr grinder.
Out of the box it's not perfect for espresso because the grind level is in steps that aren't short enough to easily dial in. There's a "stepless" mod and that makes it much easier to work with.
You may also like the Espresso Forge, which manages to go even more reductive than what you propose, forgoing the pumping, or any sort of leverage, in favour of a piston for you to push on with a basket on the end.
Temperature was interesting though. I assume it partially because the hot water was mostly in contact with metal rather than plastic. I don't know what he printed it from but ABS's melting point[1] is only just above water boiling point. We've got a UV cured 3D printer at work (projet) which has some much better temperature properties.
[1] Technically "glass transition temperature" if you want be all materials-science about it
That said, making this out of steel would be much safer. Seems like the person that wrote this is pretty uniquely frugal, and doesn’t value their time, so I’m going to wager that will give them a happy chance to redesign the part.
They could have done some contract design work in the time they spent on this and bought a nice espresso machine plus had some money to stick in the bank, but I suppose that isn’t the point.
I cannot know from the opening page, what coffee machines the mod is for, but I can see that an STM32 or an arduino nano and some other parts would be needed.
Not really informative, no pictures on the opening page to show something like before/after, to showcase the benefits, etc.
Yet there is a rickroll...
This is not really sympathetic, but yeah, I can see the begging icon (support paying for a professional technical writer)... but this is also really backwards in my opinion. First you should sell the project to me, then ask for donation.
While the engineering contents might be great, the presentation is very low quality, to put it politely.
I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to someone else - and if I was doing it again I'd probably spend a few hundred more (than the gaggia + parts cost) and just buy an off-the-shelf machine with the same feature set.
If you're looking at manual flow control, basically any E61 group machine can be outfitted with a needle valve for flow control, and a bunch of machines come with one installed from the factory, like the Lelit Bianca. There's also machines like the Slayer 1 group and La Marzocco GS/3 MP.
Gagguino is very cool, and if you're just pulling espressos and not too many back to back, it should be plenty of machine. If you're doing more than a couple of milk drinks, or pull lots of shots back to back, or want to connect it to plumbing, it's not as great of a machine. The fact that you started out with a small single boiler with a vibration pump starts to show.
This is so vaguely written as to seem far more daunting than it probably should, it's unclear how much money or time it would cost me, I don't even know where to start with it. Cool idea, but totally unapproachable to someone without extensive related background.
https://www.auberins.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=6&s...
But the recommendation was more for budget purchases. Breville also do a dual boiler with 58mm which is more expensive but if you live in Australia is amazingly good value (often $900AU which is about $600US). If you have more money still get a La Marzocco or whatever :-)
My taste is to avoid fiddly things that need too much skill like heat exchangers etc.
Meanwhile, one can also get a temp-controlled kettle, a V60, a years supply of filters, and a hand grinder for ~$80. Skip the temp control and hand grinder and you are down to $30 or less.
It is better than daily takeout, sure..but lets not pretend it is just a randomly affordable purchase for most when brewing non-espresso is far cheaper for good quality. Trust me, I know, I spent the money on mine. Love it, for sure...but is every bit a luxury good.
Now for really affordable (almost-)espresso there's always the blade grinder + moka pot, of course.
(anyway "affordable" is highly subjective ofc so what does it even really matter :))
Finally got a used Delongi bean to cup for less than $200 and my god what I've been missing. I also discovered that, for me, reducing the amount of water that passes through the coffee puck for each shot makes the coffee so creamy and less acidic.
Also, the ristretto shot is often used in flat whites - one of the main differences (the other lesser one being milk texture)
There is uniform espresso at every corner, with quite dark roasts that cover up potential differences in flavor for the beans/crops. That's a side effect of expecting coffee for ~1 Euro, regardless of quality: quality generally goes down. We Italians are used to that (you could say we don't know better), and dislike any variation from the norm, so that doesn't bother most people; in actual coffee countries you have places that do care about coffee quality and experiment with single-origin, different roasts, etc. In Italy these places are a tiny minority, and for the rest is the same burnt expresso everywhere (and, if you're unlucky, very acid).
It might be different in big cities like Milan, but I doubt it.
So yes, when people praise Italian coffee it's because you're pretty much guaranteed it will be ok.
I’m also in NL and tbh while it goes sometimes horribly bad (also when visiting people, they offer you a coffee but you end up with a kut senseo…) it’s on average actually quite ok… but I only drink a regular “koffie” here unless it’s a fancy coffee place, so maybe that’s the secret :)
I learned to appreciate the fruity coffee of light roasts, but it is an acquired taste. If you want bitter roasts that tastes like burnt ash, get any Starbucks.
Agreed on Starbucks being roasted too hard, though. I suspect that’s because most of their coffee will be diluted by large amounts of milk and sugary stuff and this way some of the bitter flavor people associate with coffee.
However, in the US, even at the fanciest hipster coffee places, the espresso is incredibly bitter and astringent/acidic. Is that on purpose? Do Americans actually want their coffee to be super bitter and astringent/acidic? The other thing I've noticed is that in Rome and Madrid, most coffee drinkers are just drinking the coffee. But in the US it is rare to actually see someone drink a coffee without milk. So I just assumed that the reason for the bitterness and astringency was because the people making it never actually drank it as espresso.
So - American espresso drinkers - tell me - do you actually prefer that super bitter taste of the thin espressos that you get at supposedly good coffee places like, e.g., Blue Bottle over the rich and frothy espressos of Rome?
Honestly even Nespresso is better than that shit. And Lavazza Blue pods are an order of magnitude better than Nespresso, so that's what I drink daily when I need a quick fix
Haha, yeah. The new "hipster" coffee I'd tend to say leans more on the side of expressing the acidity of the bean through light-roasts over the chocolate-y flavors from dark roasts.
> But in the US it is rare to actually see someone drink a coffee without milk.
I think this is true with espresso, but not with pourovers. I think the people who like to drink espresso by itself won't go to a cafe to get an espresso since they'll likely get a better shot with their own machine than a cafe's machine.
The reason being is that cafes don't have time to re-dial in their shots midday, and they don't need to be as detailed with their shot-pulling since most customers order milk-based espresso drinks (so most bitterness/sourness from over/under extraction gets masked with milk).
There is a 'fourth wave' coffee pushing back on this trend that anchors more to big dark espressos sometimes even using robusta beans for extra creama and caffeine.
I'd say you can't generalize who uses milk or not, either. Also the super thin third wave espressos are more acidic than bitter. Read up on third wave or Nordic espresso. I don't think you have a full grasp on that aspect of coffee outside of Southern Europe...
The reserve locations are better seen as flashy celebrations of coffee and basically ignore the entire Starbucks Corporate supply chain, in that way they are: 1: Vastly better quality coffee with actual light roasts available. 2: Absolutely not Scalable.
I'm not saying they aree somehow better than other high-end roasters but
Hmm. I roast my own beans and I feel like I know good coffee when I drink it.
For me Starbucks (I've tested in US, UK, and Japan mainly) provides a) a reliably consistent quality that is b) about 80% of ideal.
To me this is the killer feature of Starbucks, and it's why I'm a stockholder. When I buy coffee at non-Starbucks coffee shops, it's a total crap shoot what I get. Perhaps 10% of the time I get a stellar cup. But perhaps 40% of the time I get undrinkable crap.
Starbucks solves this problem for me by giving me an experience where I have perhaps a 95% probability of getting a pretty decent cup of coffee.
Disclosure: I drink mostly their Latte drinks with extra shots (depending on size and regional variations in base shot count).
Well seeing you are a stockholder you may want to know my experience.
I'd say Starbucks at least in my city in Canada has degraded mainly due to the talent or workload of its staff. They got too fancy and also try to make orders too fast. Getting it fast but junk is pointless. It seems to have started when mobile orders became a thing if I had to guess when it began.
I used to like their flat white when they actually made it correctly. They used to bang the pitcher to get out the big bubbles, it had a nice uniform beige with a white dot of milk on the top. It had a nice astringent taste from the ristretto shot.
Then the workers started (told to?) pouring milk ending with a leaf on the top for every cup. I felt like saying who cares or don't worry just pour it and move on to the next person. They don't seem to bang the pitcher to remove big bubbles. The look of it is mostly white not beige as if someone dropped their latte picked it up and gave it to you.
What a mess! And it's 100% time. I ask for a flat white now and then but realize there no way they'll ever make it right again.
I've found Indy hipster coffee shops can rarely deliver a consistent cup at their single location on any two days. I don't know what I actually like from those places. Sure Monday's cup made by Alex in the morning was good but Sam's cup of the same roast on Wednesday was a waste of money.
It's impressive that a chain with thousands of locations can provide such a consistent experience. It's definitely not as bad as most people claim provided you like a roast they sell.
Starbucks completely failed the first time they tried here, and are having a second shot (there must be at least a dozen stores in my 2.5M population city now). They seem to be relying mostly on fashion (seeing people with Starbucks cups in the media) - while I don’t like to stereotype, there do seem to be fairly clear demographics of people I see in the one I go past a bit - apart from some that look like tourists, you mostly see the late teens to just below middle age female crowd and a few of their partners there.
Really? I use the hario switch for my medium roasts and I brew 2 min tops, usually a hybrid immersion/pourover, but I can do just straight pourover in that time.
Then I have a friend who is an ex-high-end-barista and gigantic coffee snob (like coffee snob's coffee snob) and insists that once you have a good grinder it's more important to get a reverse osmosis filter than a high-end espresso machine. Make of that what you will, but if you want to investigate that he swears by this book[1] and having drunk coffee at Colonna and Smalls in Bath (owned by one of the guys who wrote the book) I can say he might be on to something. Certainly every cafe that does amazing coffee has an RO filter.
I have an ECM entry-level machine and it's great. I dont' need (or ever use) the frothing parts unless we have guests but they do the thing they are supposed to and the main coffee bit works great. I wish it could get a bit more pressure but it makes a good cup of espresso if I tamp well and use nice beans (which, you should always use nice beans. There's really no excuse for that one).
In the UK you can get great home coffee equipment as well as advice from Bella Barista[2]. Probably most countries have a place like that but even if you're not in the UK I would look at what they have as being a good starting point.
[1] https://www.waterstones.com/book/water-for-coffee/maxwell-co...
Edit to add: Actually I just found this resource which you might find helpful https://dailycoffeenews.com/2018/08/15/a-practical-water-gui...
I’m going to brew some with this profile and see if I can taste the change, and if not I’m just sticking with my filtered tap water because it’s honestly pretty darn close. Just needs the chloramine taken out.
Assuming you mean the "notify when back in stock" on that website, unfortunately the book is now out of print.
If anyone else has an alternative source for it, I would be interested in reading it, and it seems like it would make a great gift for my coffee-geek friends.
Frowned upon I'm sure, but for espresso a machine like Nespresso or L'Or has worked fine in a pinch.
I bought a HG-1, probably overkill, but now my mid-range breville puts out coffee that is way way better than most cafes, and it’s dead consistent. I have to adjust a little as my fresh coffee adapts to the world once the bag is open, but that’s it.
I’m sure you could find calibrated screens for espresso somewhere, but my bet is they would cost more than a new grinder. If it’s consistent, tastes good, and you have fine enough settings to adjust your extraction, I’d say it’s good.
I don't own one myself but have seen the Kruve Brewler used, a metal ruler-like device with calibrated meshes drilled into it of varying sizes. They also make the Kruve Sifter, a calibrated sifter set, but that is considerably more expensive.
Also note that Flair 58 is compatible with regular-sized generic espresso accessories.
The Robot made great espresso, and I was just about to buy one for myself but then the Meticulous Espresso machine (https://meticuloushome.com/) was announced on kickstarter and I splurged on that instead (deliver by end of year, or so they say.)
If for some reason that doesn't work out, I'll get the robot
The Kamira appears to be a moka pot, not an espresso machine.
That one optimises for minimum hassle per cup of coffee at the expense of up front and running costs. No regrets.
I’ve had a ROK manual for 10 years and have given several as gifts. Upgraded/replaced most of the parts outside the frame.
I had a part break earlier this year and they sent me new ones for free.
But yeah, definitely don't discount manual grinders. But note grinding for espresso with a handgrinder is... an exercise. lol.
Although I would like to discourage anyone from getting a Eureka (Silenzio). grind retention is insane on those, and the higher priced models are the same flawed grinder with more LCD screens.
It had a volleyball size spherical steam chamber heated by a propane wok burner. I’m fuzzy about the connection to a smallish brew chamber with a foot long lever arm. It was all a play on scale. The whole setup was somehow a unified whole out of a Miyazaki anime.
DIY meets art. Would be thrilled to see that device again compared to my memory palace.
Alternatively there are standalone milk frothing devices that might suit your needs while allowing you to buy a cheaper espresso machine.
The tradeoff is less consistent temperature from shot to shot, but if you are diluting your coffee with milk anyway...
Entry-level machines are as cheap as 100 euro, for 200-300 you will get semi- or fully-auto, plus some features like milk frother. The primary advantage here is reproducibility and ease of use: insert the capsule, check the water level, push the button, and here you go.
Some espresso aficionados with 1000 EUR machines and 400 EUR grinders tried to impress me with their setups. Still, I honestly cannot taste the difference unless they use special Arabica roasts with unbearable acidity, which sadly has become increasingly popular nowadays.
after much research on YouTube, https://www.home-barista.com/ et al
here are my notes should this be of use:
Adventures with manual espresso to improve upon restriction from Fellows Prismo + body weight atop yoga brick (https://youtu.be/OMuDiq-Tvaw):
All 3 methods employ tampering but no WDT, I do subscribe to a bottom paper filter in the basket (https://youtu.be/lPAel26Cw_A)
These 3 gave great satisfactory results as judged by family when compared to cafe bought
1. https://www.joepresso.com/ with pressurized basket + body weight atop yoga brick Best in terms of short workflow and Americano, love the 'crema', fastest workflow and variety of experiment in and out of basket.
2. https://www.wacaco.com/products/picopresso :-( preheating basket for best results, too small volume, good for travel, many small parts and steps = longer workflow
3. https://espressoforge.com/ True excellent espresso, 58 mm baskets, uses more coffee than above methods 19g but clumsy with gasket adjustment, the greasing maintenance and need to preheat :-(, get the stainless steel, American made.
1. Joepresso is the daily driver, the cup is more fuller bodied with increased dwell time, more variety to mix light and dark roasts a la Philz 2. EspressoForge - true espresso, nuff said Weekends or more time = EspressoForge 3. picopresso - more for travel and sometimes not enough to unseat Aeropress Go for work EDC yeah, i gotta go to the office
To this day James Hoffman has only one crappy video about the Cafelat, which is not even a polished review and rather a first look. But he has a few highly polished flair videos and discusses their ridiculous electricly preheated pro versions to death. (Without ever really seriously comparing it against the Cafelat)
This is what marketing, sales, and brand outreach do: they connect customers with products. People get sold Flairs, they like them, they tell others, people consume content for Flairs, Robots occupy the same niche and once you get a Flair you don't really have a reason to go with a Robot.
Scientists have a hypothesis and then test that hypothesis, this isn't what he does. You want a scientific approach try these guys https://socraticcoffee.com/ they do a reasonably good job.
I was thinking how much I'd like a really open and hackable machine... although I'd prefer one for pourover or siphon extraction. It doesn't seem there is any project like that, but there seem to be a demand for it.
The manual control makes it possible to do flow profiling with something like a Timamore Nano scale, by adjusting pressure in real time according to the flow rate reading on the scale. I've been making and drinking espresso for a long time and nothing comes close to the flow-profiled spro I've made using this method.
To the original author of this post, I'd definitely recommend using whip cream chargers instead of CO2. They're usually cheaper, and you don't have to worry about the acidity concerns you bring up in your post.
To me, the lever machines are really neat. It was the lever machine that started the trend in Italy, and the moka pot that made "espresso at home" a thing.
Still, extraction is only one variable. The time a person spends agonizing over temperature and pressure could also be spent learning how to select, blend and roast beans, which can be done cheaply at home using a hot air popcorn popper.
i couldn't disagree more. there are many many differences between a cheap (100$ is cheap) machine and an expensive one. first of all, what is important is the pressure at the portafilter, not on the pump, you would say that those are the same, but they are not. second, it's important for that pressure to be stable.
other things that are important:
- temperature stability. even small things like a colder portafilter chan affect this, but what's most important is to control a fixed temperature and deliver that across the entire process.
- the quality of the filter basket (a precision filter from companies like IMS & co). this helps with consistent extraction and minimises the chance for channelling to occur.
- having a way to do a pre-infusion
- being able to change the temperature and pressure in order to accommodate various kinds of coffee and tastes
- etc (i can go on for ages with differences, like dual vs single boiler, milk vs no milk, rotary vs vibration pump etc). it's like saying a ferrari and a ford are the same because both of them have 4 wheels.
yes, you can make espresso without any of those, but saying there are no differences is not true. with skill and an expensive machine you can do a great espresso (or buy a Decent, you can do that without the skill if you don't want mess with changing variables, but still the output is great. with skill, the sky is the limit)
how hard is for someone else from your household to do a shot with your machine?
by a very simple technique (measuring the time to run a very specific weight of output coffee) you can do great espresso on a semiautomatic machine. doing that on a manual one is much harder, but not impossible.
the sum of all of these small details is what makes the difference in pricing. what i dissagree is to put an equal sign between a cheap espresso machine and a prosumer one (like Lelit Bianca for example). don't get me wrong, i think flair makes awesome manual machines, i've sunk in the espresso rabbit hole a few years ago and i'm still not out of it :), but we have to see that these machines are for people who have this as a hobby and really love doing it.
I don't have the heated brew head, but my process involves preheating the brew head while I'm "packing the bowl" (so to speak), so there is no "down time".
I brought out the stopwatch this morning, the general breakdown is as follows:
0:00: Fill up kettle, put on stove
0:15: pour beans into commandante (measure by acquired knowledge of how 15g looks in the device coupled with bag-specific fine tuning)
0:30: Begin grinding
1:15: Grinding complete, begin to disassemble and clean equipment, restore plunger position to top of brew chamber
2:00: Cleaning complete, pack bowl while waiting for boil to finish (main bottleneck/downtime).
3:00: Boil complete, pour water into upturned brew chamber placed on granite slab for watertight seal
3:30: Preheat complete, transfer chamber onto device, begin main pour/press procedure.
4:15: Espresso complete.
The nice thing with this setup is that it's so simple to clean that there's no time at all dedicated to long-term cleaning or maintenance. With the daily washdown which is already integrated into my workflow while waiting for the boil, I keep the machine in pristine condition. Compare that to larger equipment which needs occasional breakdown/descalding/etc. procedures.
That said I do prefer more acidity in my brews, so I only opt for a single flush of preheating water. Some people do 2 or even more, which would obviously take more time.
And the effect of a single one of those variables can be the difference between a god shot and something that tastes rather off. I am not saying you need a machine that allows you to control all of this to get good shots, but the effect on the result is still there. Something like a Decent DE1 can actually control a lot of this, a lever machine actually allows a lot of control as well. 100$ pump machine to an expensive espresso machine is a huge difference in many regards. Consistency being probably the biggest one.
So no, I do not thing your assessment on complexity of espresso making is an accurate representation. I concede however, that if you know what you are doing, good espresso can be had on cheap-ish machines, it's just much harder and less consistent.
There is, actually, a lot of differences. Expensive machines have that cheap ones don't:
- multiple (2+) boilers so you can pour 2 caps/pour cap and steam/etc
- a lot less noise
- more consistent temperatures
- preheating
- as mentioned, more consistent steamers, but also precise control over them
- built-in grinder (most of the times mediocre one, but better than none at all, albeit most people who follow this hobby just buy a separate one)
- sometimes they can be controlled remotely
- other smaller things
Most importantly, they're usually a lot more reliable and well-built.
But yes, taste-wise difference will not be substantial, its more like paying for your own comfort if you really want to invest in coffee. Hand lever brewers can be just as good for a fraction of a price if you don't mind to take extra steps. Makes it more fun for some people actually.
Also: absolute endorsement for anything and everything James Hoffmann
All that said, every day I drink pour overs and aeropress brews--I don't want to drop the $1k+ on a proper home espresso setup.
Espresso is going to be more intense, probably sweeter, and stronger.
Pourover is typically brighter and less intense, but obviously you drink more of it. When I make filter coffee, I prefer pourover.
I do not care for Aeropress coffee or its sibling French press; for me, the mouth feel and flavor are inferior to other brewing methods, but obviously this is a preference thing.
French press as pure and basic as you can get coarse ground coffee a bit of water wait 5 minutes and pour.
But yes it all depends on your taste and what you like.