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**>decentespresso** · 26 October 2021, 04:46 PM

Originally posted by PhatBoy View Post

Wondering if anyone has tried the filter 2.0 just using Aeropress papers and results. I haven't ordered mesh screen yet, wondering if its 100% necessary.

People do use paper filters instead of metal, with different results. Better than nothing.

**>decentespresso** · 26 October 2021, 04:47 PM

Espresso with smaller baskets, learning from Lever machines

Looking back at the history of espresso machines, and especially with lever machines, you find that the 58mm basket used on 9 bar machines, is not so common. Smaller diameter baskets are really common. And lever machines are known for making ultra-smooth, easy-drinking espresso.

I long thought that 53mm baskets (such as those on Dalla Corte machines) was something I wanted to experiment with. I asked Ben Champion Ben to draw me a design for a 58mm->to->53mm basket, but in the word of COVID, no manufacturer wants to play with pure R&D with us.

Last week, from our tamper supplier, in arrived a variety of 58m baskets that they make, that have smaller output diameters. We measured them at 37mm, 41mm, and 52mm.

Going from 58mm to 52mm may sound like a small change, but this presents a 25% reduction is surface area of holes. Holding the dose weight constant, you get a correspondingly thicker puck as well. Going from 58mm to 53mm with a 15g dose, gives you the same thickness puck as if you'd gone to a 18.75g dose in the 58mm basket. That's a big change.

Theoretically, thicker pucks should channel less. I've definitely noticed that our 10g basket is almost impossible to make good espresso in without channeling, and I've been wanting to work on that. My assumption is that the puck is just too thin and tends to fall apart very easily.

I asked my in-house coffee expert Paul Chan Paul to work with my engineer Alex Alex , and do some experiments. Alex previously designed a 3D-printable tamper specifically for our 7g basket, and I think special tampers will be needed for the baskets above too.

Initial tests gave us the results we kind of expected: the 52mm vs 58mm basket gave us a thicker shot, and much, much smoother, both at a 15g dose and the same grind. I've asked Paul to perfectly dial in the grind for each basket, and come back to me, as I think the 58mm basket will need a finer grind in order to be optimized, than the 52mm needs. I'll report back what we find.

Has anyone here also done comparisons of baskets that fit 58mm portafilter, but have a smaller bottom hole surface? What have you found?

We've absolutely found that how close the shower screen comes to the puck, greatly affects espresso thickness and the risk of channeling. I would expect that puck thickness would also have a strong effect. Thicker pucks should be easier to make, and smoother in flavor when using low doses.

However, if you move to 18g doses, I suspect that the 58mm basket is a more appropriate size. The puck would get too thick. Or will it?

Would love to hear from you on this, if you've tried these sorts of baskets, dialed in the grind, and compared.

-john

**>decentespresso** · 26 October 2021, 09:30 PM

Wondering if anyone can come to any conclusions based on the difference in grind size required from the Decent 58mm basket versus the Izzo 54mm basket? Is it simply a matter of a narrower diameter and greater depth of the 54mm basked needing a coarse grind? I guess so. But if so, then what is the likely effect on the body and flavor of the coffee in the cup?

Even though a coarser grind is needed, I experience
1) thicker body
2) noticeably muddier flavor
with the 52mm basket. If I were using a medium dark or darker roast, that might be preferable. On my medium-light, it's not.

**>decentespresso** · 27 October 2021, 05:52 PM

Some DE1PRO now available with special edition front panels

Before I explain the title, I need to explain a bit about the front panels on our espresso machines.

We used to have two kinds of front panels:
- 100% mirror
- 100% brushed

In the past two years, we ordered samples made from 12 different suppliers, of the 100% mirror model. We even imported mirrored metal from Korea, but we never got failure rates with the 100% mirrored better than 50%. That's way too high. It's just really difficult to cut and bend mirrored sheet metal without causing a hairline scratch on the mirrored material.

We eventually settled on making 100% brushed panels, and then gluing a die-cut mirror onto the lip. The advantages of this design are:
- actually possible to manufacture
- if your scratch the mirror (it happens!) it's cheap ($29 https://decentespresso.com/c?filter=mirror) to replace your mirror.

We call these brushed-with-mirror-lip "Hybrid" panels.

However, while we tested the various approaches, we did get have a small quantity of successes:
- some 100% mirrored panels
- some hybrid panels that do not have a glued on mirror. We hand-brushed mirror panels that had scratches not-on-the-lip, so the lip is still perfect.

The "limited edition hybrid" panels are what we have some of now, for the v1.42 DE1PRO line. Mostly 220V, some 110V. Here is a photo of that:

We will also, shortly, have about 60pcs "100% mirror" v1.42 DE1PRO machines available. I believe those will all be 110V. Here's a photo I took just now, of the 110V 100% mirror DE1PRO machines being tested. They'll be in inventory, available for choosing by those who bought one, in a few days.

Naturally, all these special models are first-come-first-serve. And, we're not charging anything for these.

We have no v1.43 of these, as the front panel design has changed, and now has a notch cut out for the tablet stand to slide into.

-john

Attached Files

**>decentespresso** · 29 October 2021, 10:59 PM

New video: how pressure profiling changes flavor

I know that this video will seem oddly "retro" as it *only* has 3 steps: preinfusion, hold, decline, but bear with me! Understanding this stuff is the knowledge foundation you need before you go modifying those wizardly profiles from Stéphane, Gagné, Damian, and JoeD.

Away from the Decent and fully-controllable direct levers, 3 steps of programming is still "cutting edge, state of the art" from other companies, with (for example) the new San Remo machine being a 3 step machine. And, there's a reason: this is very classic espresso, really excellent with medium-light to dark roasts, and you should master part of history, this before you venture to more complicated profile programming.

The 3 profiles in this video only differ by the end pressure, which also affects the appropriate grind to use, and the running time of the shot.

I really recommend that you try this exercise. There is this gravitational pull toward more complexity with Decent profiles, and that's fine, but these simple profiles have very distinct flavor and texture, and I think they should be in everyone's arsenal.

I've seen criticism of these 3 step profiles that "they're all basically the same", to which I answer: Yes and No. Yes, they're quite similar, but no, they don't taste at all the same.

The "classic italian' profile has preinfusion, and then holds at 9 bar:

From there, I hand-edit the profile in the video you but can simply choose the "classic lever profile"

and finally, the middle ground, what I probably could have called "the classic pressure profile" ,which you can find as the "best overall" profile:

Careful eyes might have noticed that the temperature also declined in each profile. That's because 9 bar Italian espresso tends to be brewed fairly hot, lever machines less so, and those with profiling control tend to go between 88C (for dark/medium beans) to 92C (for light roasts).

In this video, I used a medium-light roast from Fineprint.hk, by Australian champ Scottie Callaghan https://fineprint.hk/ and that roast level to darker, is where these profiles perform best.

I don't think the profiles above are the best choice for ultralight beans, but if you like how light roasted beans taste on traditional machines (a bit thin, a lot of brightness), then you should give this exercise a try.

And thanks to Paul Chan for playing along with this exercise, as I think this the first time he'd tried these profiles seriously, and was quite surprised at how good they tasted.

-john

**>decentespresso** · 29 October 2021, 11:20 PM

New: temperature changing of all steps

Probably the single most requested feature, is to make it easy to change the temperature of all the steps in a shot. Simple pressure & flow profiles could, but the Advanced profiles could not.

The reason: I have not programmed this because I could not see an elegant design solution. The “Advanced profiles” page is very complicated already and every "solution" I dreamt up made it even more so.

For some reason, looking at the problem again today, I saw a nice design solution that had never before occured to me. And so I programmed it, and it’s in the nightly de1app version now.

The main PRESETS tab now has +/- buttons on the thermometer icon, that work on all profile types.

The video above is a demonstration of how this works.

-john

**>decentespresso** · 3 November 2021, 03:40 PM

Lockdown prompts Decent Scale escape plan

On monday, a team for four salaried Decent staff few to Shanghai and descended on the factory that builds our Decent Scale. Their mission: to hand-test 2140 Decent Scale v1.1, with batteries, with the de1app. Yes, they really do bring tablets and connect to each one. This scale, for instance, appears to work, but... no bluetooth light, and no bluetooth connection can be made:

My staff take a video of every single failure, both to prove it to the supplier, and also to document every different problem.

At the end of each day, they post to our internal Basecamp discussion, the results of each day. Here's the start of the 1st day report:

For Decent Scale v1.0, we did the testing once we received the scales, and that turned out to be a mistake. 30% of them had light scratches, for instance, and had to be discounted. Others had problems.

That's why for v1.1, I decided to send 4 people, put them up in hotels, and really be a pain-in-the-neck, so that the supplier feels the pain of any quality problems. As the rules of the contract are that we only pay for scales that get shipped, with v1.0 we paid for all of them, but for v1.1, the supplier will not get paid the full amount until all problems are resolved.

But all that went to hell this morning, when 1 case of COVID was discovered in the factory district where the scales are made.

The entire area is under lockdown now, and only people with a negative COVID test in the past 48h are allowed out of the area. I'm worried that even that will get revoked shortly, not be able to go home on Friday, so I'm pulling my employees out right now. They're at the hospital getting tested right now, and then on the first flight out.

The good news is that 432 Decent Scale v1.1 passed the tests on monday and tuesday, and we'll get those to Decent HQ shortly, and send them to customers. As we have 446 pre-orders, most people will get their scale soon. But, we won't be able to send everyone one, and it'll be a bit longer before we have stock to send to new orders.

Such is the world of manufacturing.

I'm writing this to explain a bit what things are like, but also so that those of you who email me, angry about the delays, understand better why.

-john

**>decentespresso** · 5 November 2021, 07:19 PM

Playing with Lasers

We just received a large-format laser etching machine, with the intent of making custom DE1 chassis with artwork burned into them.

Above are a set of photoshop mockups of what we think we can do.

A happy coincidence is that customer Jeremy Clark recently made a set of Monochromatic Screensavers for the de1app, and because he drew them as grey scale art, they work well within the limits of what the laser can do. The photoshop versions above on the black DE1 are all from Jeremy's artwork. I've pinged Jeremy to see if I can get Illustrator versions of his artwork, and if he wants to make artwork specifically for this use case.

Arabic calligraphy looks great, and we're trying two sample. However, I'm not yet sure we can pull off the watercolor artwork on the top right, even though it is quite grey scale. We'll see.

Because the chassis is easily replaceable, customers can try ideas out, and if swap the covers out themselves.

-john

**>decentespresso** · 7 November 2021, 04:38 PM

The amazing accidental physics of coffee grounds

We sell two different 'puck simulators', which are just portafilter baskets with a tiny, tiny hole drilled in them by an electron beam drill.

A single hole at 0.2mm in diameter lets through about 0.8ml/s (similar to a thick espresso) while a 0.3mm hole lets through twice as much as that, similar to what you'd want from making espresso with a light roasted bean. https://decentespresso.com/basket

Let that sink in for a moment.

A typical espresso puck lets through the equivalent of a 0.2mm to 0.3mm hole of water. That's over a 58mm size, which is 26 square cm, almost exactly 4 square inches.

Think of how amazingly effective coffee are at resisting water under great pressure. Only the equivalent of a 0.2mm of water makes it way through all that coffee. Not that many materials work so well.

Another mind blowing thing about espresso is to appreciate just how much pressure is on those coffee grounds. 9 bar is about 140 pounds of pressure per square inch. As there are 4 square inches of area on a coffee puck, that's about equivalent to 3 adult male ballet dancers "en pointe" on that coffee puck.

It's truly amazing to me that this tasty roasted fruit happens to optimally give its soluble material up at these low flow rates, and can this same material can create these flow rates under these tremendous pressures. Change the pressure down to (say) 3 bar, with a coarser grind, and espresso isn't as tasty.

Try to make a tasty extraction from ground cocoa, powdered cinnamon, or .... anything else.

Espresso blows my mind sometimes.

-john

**>decentespresso** · 8 November 2021, 06:15 PM

The Sniff Test

Our most recent batch of heaters arrived two weeks ago, and we noticed a plastic smell, that seemed to also permeate the steam. That got us very worried.

Every time we get a new batch of water heaters delivered, we do the sniff test. In the past, that's been running steam and several members of staff smelling the steam as it comes out of the machine. Our concern is that some cleaning product, solvent or other chemical used to make the heaters, might remain. We do run each machine for 2 hours before it leaves the factory, but the sniff test has always been part of our process.

In order to figure out where the smell was coming from, Decent Engineer Alfred did two things:
- built a hot water recirculation device, sending water from each heater through a fine mesh filter, and turning each area into a aeroseoling device, to make smelling defects easier.
- completely dismantled the heater into its parts, and heated each individually on a commercial warming plate.

We found the main culprit of the smell. Though the heaters are made for us, they have needed some reworking, and part of that has been us (at Decent HQ) putting high temperature shrink tubing around red-cable electrical connection. That's been fine, but with this batch, we asked the heater maker to do that for us, and... they didn't use the material we approved, instead swapping in a rubber that smells terrible when heated. That's the black tube on the right. So, we're going to cut them off the 6000 heaters we received, and put the correct shrink tube material on ourselves.

Alfred also found that a slight plastic smell comes from the insulating rubber ring right below the electric terminal, pictured above with the left arrow. Unfortunately, that's difficult to replace, and that has a very specific role, is glued in, and we would have trouble replacing it. On the positive side, we could only detect the smell when we put this part practically inside our nostrils.

Getting to a point where the Decent can get warm, without generating any smells at all, is my goal. Given, however, how many different materials are used (we worried about that cable tie, for instance, in the middle of the heater) it's an ongoing process, or of swapping out every part with another, until we slowly reduce all parts that give off smells when warm.

We do find that the warmth-caused smells drop off massively after a few hours of warm use, which has always been the case, and after 2h at the Decent factory, the machines have mostly lost their smell when warm. But... still, I do think that for a few days, after you get your Decent, you might notice a smell if you put your nose directly to one of the vents on the espresso machine. I'd love to achieve zero-smell, but perfection is hard to achieve. We'll keep working at it....

-john

**>decentespresso** · 9 November 2021, 02:56 PM

Brian C, a Decent portafilter stand customer, reported the the vibrations from his Niche grinder with our portafilter stand https://decentespresso.com/portafilter_stand mounted to it, were causing loud rattling between the portafilter basket and funnel. Also, a groove was appearing in the paint of the handle, from the rubbing, where the stand meets the wood.

I suggested to Brian that he buy a bit of rubber tubing, as another customer had previously posted that mod. He did it, found it solved his problem, and then posted to Decent Diaspora about it. The two photos on the top right of the collage show Brians' own mod.

Quite a few people chimed in, indicating that more folks than I thought, were concerned about this, especially the part about a groove forming in the portafilter paint.

So, Decent engineer Alex has been working on implementing this improvement in our product, for the past month. Alex has been trying different types of tubing (different densities, thicknesses, and materials), and we think we finally have figure out the right tube, that can optionally be placed on the portafilter stand "fork" to prevent scratching and dampen vibrations.

The tube does slightly elevate the handle, and thus change the level of the basket, but the effect is not too great. If your grinder doesn't vibrate much, it's unlikely you'll have the groove form on your portafilter, so

We're ordering 2000pcs, enough to include with all future portafilter stands, for those that'd like it on.

And, we'll send one for free, upon request, to any existing Decent portafilter stand owner, as part of any other order they make with us.

I'll post here when they are available.

Many thanks to customer Brian C. for pushing this issue forward, so that it ends with this happy conclusion.

Note that the tube we settled on is thinner than Brian's, and likely thus more flexible. That thin-ness raises the portafilter less, and also means the center-cut isn't needed to hold it in place around the bend.

-john

**>decentespresso** · 12 November 2021, 04:40 PM

Decent Transparent Cases

Years ago, we made a one-off transparent acrylic case for use at trade shows. It was very popular:

We later made the cover available as an optional thing people can buy:
https://decentespresso.com/c?s=310+1

but few people buy it, because:

it's hard to find on our website
we don't have any good photos of it
most people probably would prefer that their espresso machine came built like this, so they didn't have to do the assembly themselves.

In an effort to resolve those issues, we've taken clean, light-box photos of a real machine with the transparent case:

and then applied those 2D images as textures on our 3D renders.

In a few weeks, I'll be updating the https://decentespresso.com/model page so that there's a "clear" color option on the DE1PRO, with images, and a price. We'll then start shipping machines pre-built this way.

At the moment, this case works best on the DE1PRO model, which is 4cm shorter than the DE1XL. If this extra work we're doing increases interest in this clear case option, I'll have some DE1XL versions of this case made too.

I'll post more info about this once we're ready. In the meantime, if you're already a DE1PRO owner and like the way it looks, you can buy it now https://decentespresso.com/c?s=310+1 but be sure you also get the matching 3-screw tablet stand for it (the render above shows the incorrect stand type).

-john

**>decentespresso** · 14 November 2021, 03:00 PM

I mentioned that we recently bought a laser etching machine, and we're trying out various art concepts on the Decent with it.

As it happens, Decent customer Jeremy Clark posted monochromatic art for the de1app, and I thought it'd work well with the laser etching. Jeremy sent me the line-art (Adobe Illustrator) source to this latte art stripe, which was one of my favorites.

Decent engineer Alex has been trying different laser power, laser speed, and.... angles of etching. This was not something I expected but the angle of the etch has a huge effect on the resulting color. Makes sense, since color is reflected light, but still...

It turns out that etching at 45º angle, at high power, causes aluminum to go light brown, quite close to the color of a latte. And this color persists at various viewing angles. All the powder coating is burned off, giving it a crisp edge.

On the right is my photoshop mockup of the idea. On the top is our most successful laser etch on a real chassis.

This week we're going to make a full scale etch of this design.

I'm quite pleased that Alex managaged to get something with a nice color, and high contrast, as most of our experiments have come out grey, like the test you can see above the middle stripe.

More tests to follow...

-john

**>decentespresso** · 20 November 2021, 09:26 PM

For how long will a specific Decent model be in stock?

For the first time in our history, we're managing to build machines faster than we can sell them, which is great.

This is mostly because I handed over factory management to Nicole a few months ago, and she's doing a better job at it that I did. I was managing to get 200 to 250 Decents made per month, but she's cranked it up to 250 to 300 per month. You can see real monthly numbers of factory here: https://decentespresso.com/batch_chart

Because we're now in stock for all machines, I've rewritten the "Queue" page to focus on what we have, instead of .... what we don't have! You can see it here:
https://decentespresso.com/queue

it also displays what machines we sent sent out, and which machines are just about to go out. A happy face will appear next to your machine on the queue page (on the "about to go out" or "just shipped") once you buy from us.

For each v1.43 model we make, you can see how many we have, and an estimate of how many days of inventory that represents. I'm extrapolating based on the past 30 days of sales, which is also there.

Note that v1.42 machine inventory and sales are not included, as they used a now-obsoleted tracking mechanism, which assumed "we build them as fast as we sell them", and thus didn't worry about tracking inventory.

I've also obsoleted the "Showroom" concept for v1.43 machines, where each buyer would get invited to Basecamp, and then browse 360º videos and still photos of our inventory, and pick one. As virtually all our machines are the same now, this just introduced an extra (and confusing for many) step.

Machines that do have a cosmetic defect, or are just plain different in some way, will continue to get listed in the Bazaar (email me if you want an invite to that)

Next week, I'll finish programming a replacement for the Showroom. If you want to, you'll be able to browse 360º videos at 4k resolution, of every v1.43 machine in stock. And, you can tell us you want a specific serial #. You will NOT need to have purchased from us to browse all this detailed info.

But, crucially, you won't be required to browse videos of our machines any longer. We'll send a machine automatically, the next working day after your order comes in. More about that new process soon.

-john

**>decentespresso** · 21 November 2021, 03:30 PM

HELP ME ANSWER: "Why did (or would) you buy a DE1?"

My friend Stephen Barnes is the "Hong Kong Visa Geeza" and has a strategy very similar to Decent: sharing information freely, transparency, and a focus on customer happiness. He's sharing his marketing wisdom and I'm trying to learn from him.

In his "how to build a monopoly" video: https://intelligentcontent.marketing/ he says that first do some deep thinking about what people are really buying from you. For Stephen's visa business, he realized it was "peace of mind" and he then re-oriented his business to provide that.

I don't have a clear idea, at all, of why people buy Decent. It feels like there are lots of disparate reasons.

We made the v1.0 DE1 as the machine I personally wanted, heavily educated by Scott Rao and Home Barista. But after we shipped v1.0, everything that followed for the past 5 years, has been guided by you.

If you own a Decent or want to, can you do me a favor?

Write below, very, very succinctly (one sentence is best) why you (would) chose to buy a Decent.

I think that some of the common ones are:
- High tech: I wanted a high tech espresso machine
- Best espresso: I thought Decent would make the best espresso possible
- Frustrated: I was frustrated by my existing machine and wanted something better
- Trust: I trusted John to guide me to making good coffee
- Business practices: I just liked the way Decent conducted business
- Software: I like software-based approaches and love the idea of a tablet
- Profiling: I heard that profiling was essential and Decent seems to do it best
- Wanted a hobby: I was always interested in making espresso at home, but it seemed a hard hobby to pick up. The videos and social media made me comfortable that Decent could get me there.
- Size: I have a small kitchen

I'm not doing a poll as I am not at all sure that the list above encompasses the majority reasons.

If one of the above matches your reason, just write those few words. If you have another reason, please tell me.

This exercise is happening on the 3 different owner's forums, but I'm reproducing it here too, both to cast a wide net for responses and to share the conversation with those who have not bought a Decent, but are considering.

-john

Announcement

Decent Espresso Machines (DE1) - Any thoughts?

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