His comments:

“Is this the same espresso blend you used before? Wow, this tastes so much better.”

“If all espresso tasted this good, I [...]]]>

This morning I had a friend over for some espresso. He’s the first person to try espresso from my new machine who has also had espresso from my old machine.

His comments:

“Is this the same espresso blend you used before? Wow, this tastes so much better.”

“If all espresso tasted this good, I wouldn’t need to have steamed milk or flavor shots.”

Yay!

Shiny!

It’s very shiny and pretty and makes kick butt espresso.  The very first shot I made was at least as good as anything I’d gotten from my PIDed Rancilio Silvia.  I’ve owned the Silvia [...]]]>

I bought an Alex Duetto by Izzo from Chris’ Coffee Service as a winter solstice present to myself.

Shiny!

It’s very shiny and pretty and makes kick butt espresso.  The very first shot I made was at least as good as anything I’d gotten from my PIDed Rancilio Silvia.  I’ve owned the Silvia for 9 years and had periodically considered upgrading to a real E61 group head machine.  The Silvia was (and still is) a great machine, but it wasn’t really a professional quality machine.  It has a relatively small boiler and can not brew espresso and steam at the same time.  The Duetto has seperate brew and steam boilers and can brew and steam all day without skipping a beat.

The Duetto is also incredibly stable as far as both temperature during the shot and consistency of temperature between seperate shots.  Temperature stability during a shot is important to keep the shot consistent from beginning to end.  Temperature consistency of temperature between seperate shots gives you repeatability.  A guy named JimG did a temperature study on homebarista.com and the stability is quite remarkable.  That’s all well and good, but how does it taste?  Great!  I’m completely happy with it.