Anyone have links to reviews, test, images of Kees van der Westen's machines  .

The official website is limiting..

Any pricing on these units in AUS - vendors?

Thanks in advance.

I don't understand how they don't fall over backwards.  

The idea of foot-operated steam wands is tre cool!  

Yeah I watched that machine like a hawk, I'm not gonna lie. I was hoping someone on here would have picked it up, just quietly.

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Well, there are a few good photos on Fabien Schmidt's La Potenza site.  It's in German, but you'll be able to feel your way around if you don't speak it.  I checked my blog and I don't have an entry up on Rio Coffee, but I'll try to get it up in a few weeks.  They have a Mirage.  Morgan's coffee also has a Mirage; I'll try to attach a photo to this post.  For some reason, I have had a bit of difficulty getting photos loaded up on my blog using this mac.

As for reviews ... well, I can give you a few quick notes from a few quick uses.  The bastone style actuator is basically a big switch that has a little spring to it, so it gives fantastic feedback and is really easy to use.  The lever steam pedal opens a solenoid and you can throttle the steam knob up or down.  The legs make it easy to wipe under the machine.  Espresso-wise, the Mirages lean towards the thick and gloopy end of the spectrum, but I can't really remember what I thought about clarity of flavour.  At Rio, the shots were quite good, from memory, but I was using a Robur with it and a rather nice blend that Dom had brought back from Japan, where they have access to a lot of coffee that we don't, so there were certainly a lot of other factors contributing to a great cup.  Kees' groups look like very highly modified E61 groups.  One nifty feature is that he has redirected the three-way discharge into the body of the machine and through there into the drain tube, which means that he can then have an adjustable height drip tray.  The new models have a cool mixing manifold in them that helps to keep all of the various things at the temperature that Kees wants them at.  On the bad side, the Mirage seems to have a relatively small boiler and it doesn't hold a lot of cups on top ... I'm not sure how it would handle a massive and sustained rush, but you never know.

As for the Mistral, I'll try and snap a shot of Mecca's next time I'm there.  If past experience is anything to go by, you won't have to wait very long ;P

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Which generation was it?  Legend has it that Douwe Egberts bought a dozen or so over a decade ago.  Andrew and I tracked down a few of them that had been refurbished and we explored the possibility of getting one of those for Maling Room.  Although they were very cheap, we ultimately decided against it.  These machines were built around early Lineas.  I got in touch with Kees and it would have taken a fair bit of money and effort to soup them up to current specs, so without the ability to actually see them in person we thought it was more prudent to pick up something that would hopefully be a bit more reliable. ... even if only by a little ;P

At that price, the machine is a decent buy, but it would be wasted on someone who wasn't going to pimp it out properly.  Absolute bargain is probably an overstatement.  The glass isn't cheap to replace ... don't even ask how much the canopy costs!

Cheers,

Luca

was in a cafe in Sydney on Wedensday that had two of these mirage machines.  dead sexy, from the back look like a synesso, barista (nice bloke) mentioned that the problem with the foot steamer was that if the pedal failed, you couldnt fall back to using the tap, therefore rendering the wand redundant