What would you say is THE BEST home machine?
I'm thinking the Strada EP1 would be the best you can get today?
Electronic pressure profiling, with a saturated head and all the high quality you'd expect from a LM machine.
My stove top kettle and French press make better coffee than any machine I've ever used.
That's awesome, if immersion brewing is your favourite tasting coffee, then it's pretty easy to get good results on a budget (except the grinder!)
Unfortunately I'm drawn to espressos and cortados so things get a little more technical and expensive.
Have you tried different filter methods? The kalita/v60/chemex/aeropress etc.
The aeropress is actually what got me away from drip brewers, but I drink way too much coffee for it to be my main method. It was nice to use when I was working out of the office, though.
I'm about to do an experiment on which immersion brewing method is best. My plan is to 5 different brews in 8oz mason jars: boiling water and short steep (normal), boiling water and 24h steep, sun coffee (just letting it sit in the sun all day), room temperature 24h steep, and fridge 24h steep. I'm betting option 2 is the worst.
The other way a french press is best is because on one operation you can make an arbitrarily large amount of coffee
You want coffee for five? Easy. More? The machines are cheap, you can parallel them
The downside - you can't make any of the drinks made of espresso
Cold brew would probably beat the french press, if it didn't need forethought
Best at what? Best filter? Best looking? Most efficient use of space? Best at steaming? Best workflow? Most convenient?
Most flexible? Best turbo-shot? Best traditional espresso? Best light roast espresso?
My 8+ year old Keurig classic (K50?) that occasinally makes panicked struggling noises when the water tank is near full but still usually manages to squeeze out the coffee.
It was free, so obviously that makes it the best.
/backs into the bushes
/would this actually this count as trolling for mod reasons? ;)
Easiest and fastest way for an amazing single cup of coffee is probably the clever dripper. It's utterly fool proof, and combined with good beans and a good grinder makes top shelf coffee. Also it costs almost nothing.
If you are looking for a batch brewer that will last the rest of your life go for Technivorm Moccamaster. I've had mine for 10 years and wouldn't want to live without it! Good grinder and beans needed of course!
I am a big fan of the Clever Dripper. I use one daily at the office.
Two brew heads? That's not a home machine.
What's your definition of 'best?'
The EP1 is one group head.
This suggests it's two or three. But there's an image with only one. Rather confusing.
How many espressos are you making a day with this? As it and similar machines at this price point are absolutely the right sort of machine if you spend multiple days a week dialing in beans doing up to a dozen back to back shots, or other greater weekly high volume loading.
However for someone doing 2 to 4 shots a day and dialing in once a month with new beans its not the best use of the money or the counter space. Something like a decent with its parameter based programs is going to give you more drinkable shots more often first time, which is way more useful than something that still requires a lot of manual work to get a great shot.
Its fun to dial in coffee, but not every day at 6am when you have other shit to do.
Sure, the decent has its problems but most of those remaining problems center around design decisions made to enable flexibility. The fact that it can do a good job of mimicking shots like a londinium or a slayer adds in another layer for those who do like to play around, even if its only occasionally that they do so.
Why would a Strada be worse for dialling in than a Decent? Surely that's a grinder issue, not a machine issue?
The Strada and Decent are very different machines, the Strada by comparison is very basic but can take a punishing workload more suited to a proper cafe, the Decent is better suited to someone who wants to play around. Granted you can buy the more expensive Decents that have a higher duty cycle but even then, for longevity and back to back high volume workload my money would by on the Strada.
If you plan on regularly (more than once a week) switching beans and properly dialing them in till you hit that god shot rather than just acceptable or good level, then that means a lot of shots in a short space of time. If that's what you are into then the Strada is probably the better bet, although even then its massive overkill vs. a Linea Mini or similar. Personally I would rather spend the thousands saved on buying more grinders, the flexibility of having three high end grinders, one for clarity, one for body, one for pour over, without having to swap burrs and re-calibrate would far out weigh any benefit as a home user to having a Strada.
The Decent on the other hand may lose in duty cycle vs. the Strada but it has many additional features that for a home user who only changes beans every few weeks rather than multiple times a week and isn't chasing daily god shots. Parameter based programs on the Decent allow you to work around actual pressure (rather than just flow) and temperature (as it blends hot and cold water, rather than manipulating boiler temp) so the Decent can adjust the program during the shot for you if the beans aren't quite ground right to give you a cup that's somewhere between acceptable and good. When you do not have the time, beans, or money to waste chucking less than optimal shots, that is incredibly useful. Couple that with the ability to mimic other famous machines signature shot styles and the ability to develop your own or just download extra ones and auto play them.
I would wager its that day to day utility that is going to be more useful for more people rather than the ability to do a dozen shots back to back hour after hour with little temperature variance. Sure, some people will want that in a home setting, but outside of youtubers doing coffee reviews, who needs it?
How about the Decent?
I hear it makes a decent cup.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the no-boiler, no-rotary-pump setup, with no hot water on demand, and I've heard some negative things about the UI and the founder.
However, it's extremely intriguing as it would tickle that data/analytics part of my brain to be able to control my shots completely. I'd love to borrow one for a week and compare it to my current E61 machine.
How do you define a home machine? The Strada EP 1 is, from what I can find, priced from €10.000, which I find a bit crazy for a home machine, but then again I'm not at all familiar with espresso machines.
Haha I've seen them for slightly cheaper and it's way out of my budget still, but if I could afford it, it seems to tick all of the "ultimate, do-everything espresso machine" boxes.
I measured, and it's so deep that it doesn't even fit on my kitchen counter unfortunately 😂 I'd need to build a dedicated espresso bar.
The GS3 I suppose would be the closest, cheaper, sane home equivalent, but would sacrifice the electronic paddle in exchange for a manual one or AV.