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And the race is on, Expobar Leva, Isomac, Vibiemme and Diadema

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  • #16
    I would love to sit down and chat about ancient greek while having a coffee with you, a game of chess would even top the day off better. I am half way through the Persian Fire, by Tom Holland at the moment. Xerxes is building his forces headed for Greece.

    I am more a fan of ancient rome, got through Masters of Rome series ,by Colleen McCullough, loved all of them and have recently started the Aeneid by Virgil, but it's hard going, also started to learn Latin so I could read, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Caesars Commentaries on the Gallic War. It's funny when I now think back to when I was younger, you would of had to tie me up and torture me to read a book.

    My wife, who is not a coffee drinker, although loves the smell of coffee, is struggling to come to grips with the amount of money I am going to spend, but she came and told me the other day that her garden now has around 600 bromeliads, (not all bought, some are pups grown from a parent plant), but maybe I need to remind her how much that may of cost her.

    Nice work with the review on your machine, very in depth and informative. It will be nice when I can do the same, if , I mean when I make up my mind

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    • #17
      Hi Tony.
      Having recently purchased a new machine myself, I thought I might share a few of the things that influenced my final decision.

      After spending a lot a time researching, I came up with a short list of 5 machines before I started getting serious. I live 2hrs north of Sydney so I dropped in on a couple of site sponsors on different occasions to get up close to the machines. Although the machines I was looking at were of similar quality, I soon narrowed the list down to 2. Just seeing the machines lined up on the bench side by side was much better than looking at pictures on a web site.

      Talking to the guys with experience over a range of machines at different price points was also very helpful. Except for site sponsors and a few others, most of us can only speak about the machine we own without having any experience with a range of others brands.

      My final choice was between the same 2 machines as readeral. I went for the Profitec 500. It really did end up being the toss of a coin, but thought I would go for taps instead of levers for the steam and hot water.

      I'm not trying to talk you into either of these machines as, combined with a quality grinder, I recognise they are both out side of your stated price range. My best advice to you from my own experience is to try to find a way into a specialist retailer to have a look and play with machines on your list. At these prices, it comes down to small personal choices, taps vs levers, size of drip trays, amount of clearance for cups, looks etc. You just can't get a similar experience from a web site no matter how well you research.
      Best of luck.
      Mal

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      • #18
        I set myself a month from my initial research to make up my mind, for two reasons:

        1. I didn't want to go insane
        2. I didn't want my prices to go up too far! I started off dreaming about a Breville Double Boiler, but soon decided that if I was going to drop in the $1000s rather than hundreds, I'd prefer purchase something for the long haul (not only quality, but satisfaction). At that point I knew I'd be in trouble without some time as well as financial limit.

        On the price front, my wife still doesn't quite understand why we had to spend so much on a machine *shrug* What else are tax returns for?! I want to point out that we're spending basically all of our discretionary funds on a USA trip, but decided not to play that game. Experiences will always feel undervalued to me, and equipment undervalued to her. She thankfully does drink coffee, so as soon as she's competent to use it, I'm hoping she'll have more buy in. For your wife - find a roaster that can offer you a really sweet chocolatey nutty Brazilian coffee, and make her a latte .

        Things that a less thought about - being neither looks NOR performance related! - but more important than machine owners might like to admit is things like the volume of the drip tray, how easy it is to remove, the volume of the internal tank and how easy it is to fill, and the footprint of the machine (which you really can't get much sense of without seeing them next to each other). Might make all the difference for you.

        I read Aeneid in my undergraduate - sadly I don't have latin, so was in English. I entirely agree with it's difficulty! Although often comes down to what translation you have to be honest. Homer was far easier in my opinion Hopefully one day I'll read it in the greek, but for now I'm only venturing as widely to learn koine greek. And I'm afraid I'm far better at making coffee than I am at chess (contrary to my detail oriented nature, I haven't bothered to learn enough classic moves).

        I've tried to triangulate where you are, Goondiwindi is my best bet. It's probably wrong, I initially thought you were out West, but if it's not - worth a trip to Brisbane?

        [Edit - just saw in another post you're 30 mins from Lismore.. defs worth doing a road trip to Silipo!)
        Last edited by readeral; 7 November 2015, 06:54 PM.

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