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April 2004
Newsletter
Launching an appeal is
usually done for charitable reasons, but
I'm afraid there's nothing particularly charitable about this one. I'd like to appeal to my customers and readers to send me their expired, burnt out, dead and otherwise unusable pump espresso machines, instead of chucking them in the bin. I'm trying to organise a bit of "forensic" work on the main causes of machine failures, which will be the basis of a later article. Of course I'll reimburse
the postage for any machine sent, and
also throw in 500g of free coffee of your choice for your trouble. Please email me before sending your machine, if possible outlining the reason it no longer works. Note that I won't be sending machines back, since I plan on disassembling down to the last nut to find out what goes wrong. I've had it in mind to do
this for some time, but going to
"Celebrate the Bean" (part of the Melbourne Food Festival) last Sunday really pushed it along. The level of ignorance displayed by the so-called "expert" machine demonstrators was simply appalling. I could only bring myself to watch about half of the presentation on domestic espresso machines; if I'd spent any longer listening to the drivel being spouted I reckon I would have exploded! It was pretty clear that
the people involved were more concerned
with sales than performance, and had no idea of what a REAL espresso looked and tasted like. Sort of "never mind the taste, look at the (artificial, pale, thin) crema." One exception was Paul
Bassett, current World Champion Barista,
who was pulling quite reasonable shots on the Sunbeam stand from their most expensive thermoblock machine, backed up by his own coffee blend and a $6000 commercial Ditting grinder. Overall, however, the level of misinformation given to the public by appliance sales people trying to sell espresso machines borders on criminal. **************************************************************
There won't be a "special" coffee this month as I'm off to Atlanta for the SCAA conference. I leave on Thursday 22nd April and return on Wednesday 28th April. ************************************************************** Combined with the upcoming
Easter weekend there's not much point
in trying to sell a new special. I still have some Dominican Soliman left, but the last 10kg of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe will be roasted on Monday 5th April, so I'll be out of stock in the next few days. Hopefully arriving mid-May
will be my first shipment of Heat
Exchanger consumer espresso machines from la Scala in Italy, see www.lascala.it . The la Scala Butterfly features a 2l. boiler with all the right furniture, as well as the standard E-61 group and "plumb-in" capability. I did an article for Coffeegeek about HX machines last year (http://www.coffeegeek.com/opinions/alanfrew/05-24-2003) where I said "My Ideal would be something with the Isomac's body and the Brugnetti's insides, with the Brugnetti's price and a hot water tap. I'll just have to keep on searching!" Well, it looks like my
search is over! I won't know the exact
pricing until after the shipment lands and I get all the GST and shipping bills, but the basic model will definitely be sub $2000.00. I'll need a couple of weeks to completely test them, but they should be on sale in June. Remember if you're ordering
coffee this month that I'll be
offline while I'm away in the USA, so no orders will be filled during that time. Alan
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