Originally posted by Crema_Lad
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Your sympathy is quite misplaced.
SB do not make single boilers (and as for the "too small single boiler" machines I don't believe anyone else should either).
SB and Breville make a range of "toy thermoblock" machines which cannot possibly make a decent coffee. I don't believe anyone should make those things at all - ever. IMO they have set proper coffee back for years and they probably opened the door to pod machines. I keep hearing that Breville make a "proper thermoblock" model however I have never seen or played with one - or in fairness looked too hard I guess, it is not really on my to do list.
For some bizarre reason thermoblocks are derided in CS circles (due to the toy ones mentioned above? Who knows?). Thermoblocks are actually widely used in chem labs (and some large scale manufacturing) to control temperature precisely & accurately - and they are a lot better at it than boilers. They have far less thermal lag and as long as they are sized and powered correctly they are also way more efficient in terms of power. Hence my "toy thermoblock" comment above - too small makes them completely useless.
SB make the 6910+ machines with "proper twin thermoblocks" - they will make as good a simultaneous "coffee with frothed milk" as most low end commercial machines (and a few high end ones for that matter). They should - Paul Bassett (world barista champion at the time) got hold of SB's existing 6900 (not a particularly good machine), gave it a massive workover and got it up to standard circa 2006. I used to swap between a friend's cafe LM Linea (w the traditional "single nozzle milk wand", not the 4 nozzle) and the early 6910's fairly often. For a busy cafe the "far more tolerant to any grinding, dosing etc stuff ups" Linea wins hands down, for home save 10k-ish and get the "much less tolerant" 6910... Take your time and set the 6910 up well and the difference in the coffee is minimal - if there is any difference at all. I actually bought my own first 6910 based on my experience at the time (being flat broke immediately post USA divorce was another key factor - budget of "nil").
BTW, the skills picked up using a 6910 are easily transferable to the mythical "traditional Italian commercial espresso machines" which is another reason I like them. Any small boiler machine (i.e. not just the "too small ones") needs a fairly different technique to make the jump.
The other home issue is warm up time (and to an extent power consumption). I usually have a coffee about an hour after dawn and then a second cuppa around 6pm. Warm up time is critical unless you routinely leave the machine on all day (and in my case kill a 7000 steam thermostat every year or so doing it... the 6910 has no such issue). The 6910 / 7000 / 7100 warm up in <90 seconds. A quick preflush and the first proper coffee is started at the 2 minute point. They only heat up the water you need, not a whole boiler - which clearly wastes a hell of a lot of power. What about a decent sized twin boiler? My 2 group La Pav takes 35 minutes at 20 amps before you then preflush it and finally get to the point of using the machine - i.e. the first coffee. Admittedly after that the La Pav just pumps them out and is fairly tolerant of dosing / grinding issues but it is designed for cafe use and it shows.
My own personal comparison between the Breville DB and the SB "later 6910" / 7000 / 7100 based solely on the quality of the coffee - perhaps the DB by the slimmest of margins as it has a smidge more tolerance of stuff ups (although they vary a fair bit). Not enough of a "coffee difference" to overcome the extra cost & excessive warm up time of the DB. The earlier 6910 - trounces all of them by a wide enough margin to be significant - and yeah, they vary a bit too.
Back to Mattm14 - the only sympathy he needs is the hard cold fact that a rock bottom minimum budget of $2k+ for a basic manual lever is the only way he will not go backwards. The semi-pro machines around $3k+ will not give him a better cuppa, so in semi autos he will have to go some way up market from there. Of course he can always do a big upgrade by picking up a Strada for a mere 20k+...
TampIt

She needs to appreciate that for your coffee making abilities to expand so does the size of the machine, just a tad
. And it's no wider than a toaster but produces something much better than toast 
).
.
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