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La Marzocco single group.

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  • La Marzocco single group.

    Hey, are these LM Linea "one groups" any good? I sometimes wonder if they perform like the 2-3 or 4 group ones. Is temp stability and steam power compromised enough to make it less of a machine?

    Just curious...

  • #2
    Re: La Marzocco single group.

    I am no expert on LM machines but as far as I am aware all commercial or prosumer machines get the same build quality standard applied to them

    So they should perform to similar parameters

    KK


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    • #3
      Re: La Marzocco single group.

      Hi,

      A few years ago, Corey Diamond, who now owns Epic Espresso, had a great little hole-in-the-wall type cafe in Perth called Core Espresso. Corey had evidently decided that LM Lineas are like pokemon - "gotta catch em all" - so he had a single group for home and a two and three group machine at Core. I headed over to Perth for a conference and asked Corey if he could give me a few shifts at Core to help me extend my trip a few days with a little working holiday. The espresso that we drank at his house was probably marginally better than the espresso that we were producing at Core that week, although espresso at both places was great.

      Steaming will usually be different on different sized machines of the same series, but thats not to say that steaming will necessarily be worse. I dont remember doing much steaming on it, but with a rather large dedicated brew boiler, its really just a matter of finding a pressurestat and steam nozzle setting that you like. Presumably, if you put the single group linea head-to-head with a two or three group linea, the bigger ones would do better in a torture test of infinite litre jugs of milk in a row, but the single group has more than enough power for any use that could reasonably be expected of it.

      I cant see why the single group linea would have temperature properties any different from a multiple group linea, temperature controlling devices being equal. This means that you need to do a heating flush to heat up the flowmeter on the AV version and there is less need to do so on the EE version. For this reason alone, it would be worthwhile saving a few hundred bucks and getting the EE version.

      All of that said, the new crop LMs (FB80, GB5, Mistral, GS3), IMHO, are better machines than the Linea and FB70, though the difference is probably slight. For home use, I would buy a GS3 over a Linea, though the GS3s fit and finish is not as good. Kees van der Westens second generation Speedster also looks interesting.

      Cheers,

      Luca

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