A bit of lever action

[John F]

I'm heading out with them right now to buy gloves and foot-gear. Maybe this way I can pull shots and not worry about the blood loss quite as much. ;-)

It's really hard to cut somebody when wearing those puffy red pads from Century....unless you are planning on going hard core and getting them 4oz UFC's. 

[staylor]

Got them both setup with some leather 6oz gloves and some muay thai shin/foot guards. Let the games begin.

[mp]

Got them both setup with some leather 6oz gloves and some muay thai shin/foot guards. Let the games begin.

Muay thai espresso freaks.

 

[staylor]

Got them both setup with some leather 6oz gloves and some muay thai shin/foot guards. Let the games begin.

Muay thai espresso freaks.

 

Sounds like a decent lifestyle choice. ;-)

[BoldJava]

This thread has been much too quiet for too long.  I have an inkling to begin saving for a lever machine.  I am chunking away a five-r now and then, with a 3-year timeline.  Why?

Tactile is appealing to me.  There is something about moving back rather than forward. I would like to have the lever-look adorning the "retired person's" kitchen.  Right now, I pull two doubles on Sat/two on Sunday.  Down the road, I would probably pull a double a day.  Period.  I would be making espresso for 1-2 people; never a mob.  

Downside?  How steep is that learning curve? Once familiar with the machine, the process, the touch, will I be pulling too many sink shots?  I don't have the depth of espresso knowledge that most of you 'presso heads do.  I am a PID'd Silvia boy and enjoy it but think a lever would work into my retirement mode.

Have I lost it?  Thx, B|Java

[peter]

The levers certainly are gorgeous!  And the involvement of the '4th M' would be more appealing than pushing a button, especially to someone like you B|Tactile.

Just a guess, but you may never get ahead of the learning curve at 2/day.  Not only that, but will the ability to fine tune the shots for greater nuance of flavor be truly appreciated in milk drinks?  Just thinking out loud, since I know little about levers.

[BoldJava]

Just a guess, but you may never get ahead of the learning curve at 2/day.  

Agree with the question.

Not only that, but will the ability to fine tune the shots for greater nuance of flavor be truly appreciated in milk drinks?  Just thinking out loud, since I know little about levers.

I believe so, or at least I experienced it in the macchiatos we were drinking at that drinking spree at your home with Chad and LCL.  I still fix lattes for the Czarina.  I have gone over to macchiatos for myself since LCL laid hands on the Silvia.

B|Java

[Warrior372]

Yes, you can pick up the nuances through milk. Depending on the lever you have though your shot draw might be smaller, i.e. Ponte Vecchio, Elektra, Olympia, etc., so your entire drink would have to shrink or you would have to put more shots into it. There is definitely a learning curve and experience is really the only thing to counter it. I am sure you would eventually get the hang of it, but with one double a day, as Peter said, it would most likely take quite a while to get great at pulling shots on one.

Do you want to buy the lever new or used? I would push you heavily toward used. The only electronic parts in a Lever machine are the heating element and the pstat. As far as working on machines goes they are very easy to work on, fix and maintain. If you peruse craigslist / ebay enough you will run into an elektra or ponte vecchio, even an occasional commercial lever for $500 or less.

[BoldJava]

... I am sure you would eventually get the hang of it, but with one double a day, as Peter said, it would most likely take quite a while to get great at pulling shots on one.

Though you haven't met me, you know me.  It takes me quite a while to catch onto everything.

Do you want to buy the lever new or used? I would push you heavily toward used...

Immaterial to me, as long as it was well maintained. I am in no rush, with a timeline way out there.  I have just begun to read through some posts at the Lever Forum at HB and reading through Shaun's posts here. 

[Warrior372]

The thing you have going for you is that you have consumed amazing shots of espresso at one time or another, so at least you would be able to compare the shots you were pulling to something and judge their quality / how well you are doing. The main thing I think makes levers a challenge is also the same thing that makes them so great, your ability to manipulate the shot. You can grind and tamp a million different ways and compensate for those parameters by pre-infusing for longer or shorter periods of time, you can pull the lever down again anywhere throughout the shot to alter flow rate and you can even push, ever so slightly, up on the lever if the shot is pulling too slow for you.

If you are looking for more layers of flavor and more nuanced flavors I would tell you to look at the machines with smaller groupheads / portafilters. They tend to not be the best machines for entertaining a lot of people, with Staylors 2 head Ponte Vecchio being the real exception, because of their small boiler size and the time you have to wait for the group to depressurize after pulling a shot (1-2 minutes). With what is available right now I think Staylor has the most versatile machine in that group on the market. All together, the small group levers are steam monsters. My Elektra Micro Casa a Leva was an absolute animal. I have had somewhere around 10 levers and can without a doubt say that the most unique shots came from the Elektra and Olympia. My girlfriend consistently reminds me of how much she like the small milk drinks I made for her with the Elektra.

I have pulled my fair share of horrible shots on lever machines, but at the end of the day I personally enjoy the end results as well as the overall experience on a lever so much more than a semi-auto. I still enjoy shots from semi-autos, but just for different reasons.

[staylor]

Yes, you can pick up the nuances through milk. Depending on the lever you have though your shot draw might be smaller, i.e. Ponte Vecchio, Elektra, Olympia, etc., so your entire drink would have to shrink or you would have to put more shots into it. There is definitely a learning curve and experience is really the only thing to counter it. I am sure you would eventually get the hang of it, but with one double a day, as Peter said, it would most likely take quite a while to get great at pulling shots on one.

Do you want to buy the lever new or used? I would push you heavily toward used. The only electronic parts in a Lever machine are the heating element and the pstat. As far as working on machines goes they are very easy to work on, fix and maintain. If you peruse craigslist / ebay enough you will run into an elektra or ponte vecchio, even an occasional commercial lever for $500 or less.

Agreed on all points.

[staylor]

The thing you have going for you is that you have consumed amazing shots of espresso at one time or another, so at least you would be able to compare the shots you were pulling to something and judge their quality / how well you are doing. The main thing I think makes levers a challenge is also the same thing that makes them so great, your ability to manipulate the shot. You can grind and tamp a million different ways and compensate for those parameters by pre-infusing for longer or shorter periods of time, you can pull the lever down again anywhere throughout the shot to alter flow rate and you can even push, ever so slightly, up on the lever if the shot is pulling too slow for you.

If you are looking for more layers of flavor and more nuanced flavors I would tell you to look at the machines with smaller groupheads / portafilters. They tend to not be the best machines for entertaining a lot of people, with Staylors 2 head Ponte Vecchio being the real exception, because of their small boiler size and the time you have to wait for the group to depressurize after pulling a shot (1-2 minutes). With what is available right now I think Staylor has the most versatile machine in that group on the market. All together, the small group levers are steam monsters. My Elektra Micro Casa a Leva was an absolute animal. I have had somewhere around 10 levers and can without a doubt say that the most unique shots came from the Elektra and Olympia. My girlfriend consistently reminds me of how much she like the small milk drinks I made for her with the Elektra.

I have pulled my fair share of horrible shots on lever machines, but at the end of the day I personally enjoy the end results as well as the overall experience on a lever so much more than a semi-auto. I still enjoy shots from semi-autos, but just for different reasons.

And agreed again.

The only thing I would caution you on (as I'm now experiencing it myself) is the rabbit hole of lever possibilities. Not the kind of rabbit hole stuff we've discussed earlier but the idea that's been forming in my pea brain for a couple of months now... "what could I do with other levers, more capable levers, better levers, different levers, older levers?"

I, like you, appreciate 'the romantic and the tactile' side of coffee, the ability to engage in process and create paragraphs in the moment rather than sentences. It is a strength and a weakness. If you can balance the beauty of lever with it's opposite, an impersonal and analytical nature (it's what I try to do) you will progress faster along the lever curve. And so to the problem, for me at least...

I like the PVL, I do. But I also want to see what the G3 of levers can do, or at least somewhere in the middle between the PVL and a Kees lever. I also wonder about the old Italian levers. I wonder about some of the stuff Warrior372 has pulled on and I wonder what's holding me back from 'better'. And that gets to the crux of my lever dilemma... what is 'better' or more correctly what is 'lever espresso'? Of course the path is long and winding and I've only just crossed the threshold but already I'm staring off into the distance and wondering what's over the crest of that hill. If you know yourself and you know you might eventually be thinking the same thing, you might want to start chunking away a couple of 5'ers every now and then, enough to buy your first machine and enough to start saving for the next one. ;-)

[grinderz]

[staylor]

That's a big lever. ;-)

[BoldJava]

... I, like you, appreciate 'the romantic and the tactile' side of coffee, the ability to engage in process and create paragraphs in the moment rather than sentences. It is a strength and a weakness. If you can balance the beauty of lever . . .

Oh, I know that side of you.  Earlier, before you posted, I was perusing this thread this morning (I think for the 3rd time in the past few months), I stumbled upon some of your early thoughts about a lever shot:

The single pull, as you can imagine, is more intense and satisfying like wrapping a heavy robe around yourself, like a ristretto off a vibe pump... but not really, haha. The double pull is 'more open' and still satisfying but showing more breathing space and stage presence. Kind of like comparing a small chamber concert in a non-reflective surface antechamber vs. a larger concert with a three row stage setup in a taller ceiling space with maybe a window or two open to let a cross-breeze through....

B|Java