This is yet another Pasquini Livietta.  I think this will be my 4th one excluding the Maximatic that is soon to be on its way to has found a new home.  It’s a 49mm group, which I have been looking for a while.  It’s in decent shape over all, although the boiler is encased in asbestos, the group’s chrome is flaking, and the tank is a strange yellow color.  The funny part is how and from whom I acquired it…

It started out like any other local eBay purchase.  I paid, contacted the seller to pick it up locally, and then drove out to get it.  The fun started when I had to drive through heavy Friday rush hour traffic to what I guess might be southern Chatsworth in The Valley.  It was a long and tedious drive to a rather unremarkable business-park.  At first I wound up in the wrong unremarkable  business-park, but eventually I got there.  I opened a plain door just like the others next to it only to find myself in a long, smoke filled room lined with shelves of DVDs.  Sitting at a desk was a rather portly man in an un-buttoned shirt busy sucking down a pack of cigarettes (I live in a part of SoCal where you can’t smoke in your own rented apartment, so I don’t encounter this particular situation very often).  I walked what felt like the long length of a fish-eye lens down to the desk,  and told him I was there for the espresso machine.  I was invited to sit and wait while an assistant was summoned to retrieve the machine from somewhere beyond a door that occupied the only break in walls lined with shelves, filled with DVDs.  So I sat, and waited.   I looked at the shelves and, yes, confirmed that those stacks of DVDs where in fact porn DVDs.  Then I looked closer and discovered that is wasn’t just porn, it was – I’m not sure of the proper name – large women fetish porn with titles like “Baby Fat Something Something”.  This took about 10 seconds.  I then proceeded to wait for what seemed like an eternity in this tiny, dimly lit hallway of a room, surrounded by wall to wall shelves of a rather specific fetish porn genre, choking on the first indoor cloud of cigarette smoke that I’ve encountered in SoCal in over three years.  Eventually the summoned assistant returned with the Livietta.  I looked it over, confirmed that the PF and basket where there, thanked the open shirted smoking man, smiled when he reminded me that the boiler needs to be filled before use, walked back down the porn lined hallway-room, and returned to my car – disoriented and with a headache.

I certainly had fun…but I always do.  I felt a little bad having to encourage people to taste some really sour and some really bitter shots, but it was all in the name of enjoying those good shots even more.  I hand’t really planned on being the one to deliver the actual “Espresso 101″ talk, my professional barista career is limited to a few months.  I hope that everything I said was helpful and accurate.  For me the emphasis when making Espresso, or any other kind of coffee, is on making something that’s enjoyable to both make and drink.  It’s easy to get lost in the metrics and technical details behind pulling a good shot, but I think that doing a little bit of espresso making out in the wild with some other people is a healthy reminder of what really matters and why coffee is more than just a beverage.

If anyone has ideas on how the whole experience could be improved I would love to hear them.  I would of course also like to know what was really working, that stuff is always nice to hear.

See y’all at the next Charrette.

-Russ

Espresso 101 Charrette @ Cafe Demitasse
Sunday, November 4th
10:00am to 12:00pm

Special thanks go to Cafe Demitasse and Astra

A few days ago I sold my much loved ’96 Olympia Maximatic to a good coffee loving friend.  I know well it’s going to a better home where it will be both used and appreciated more, but it’s still sad to see so special a machine depart.  If you are familiar with the Maximatic then you can stop reading here, you know what I’m passing along and just how special it is.  If not, then keep reading…

The Maximatic is (was) the perfect home espresso machine.  It’s built the way a small commercial espresso machine is built, but in a tiny package that can sit on a kitchen counter and actually look like it belongs there.  Furthermore, it’s innards are the right size for the home, heating up completely in under 15 minutes.  The quality of the components and design is excellent; the best that I have ever encountered in a consumer machine (none of that “prosumer” stuff in this discussion).

The only problem with the Maximatic is that the current price new of almost $4000 makes it impossible to recommend to anyone.  The nice thing is that Olympia Express (or some incarnation of it) has been building Maximatics by hand for over 35 years, and, although the quality has increased over time, it started out so high that little is sacrificed when buying used.  My pristine ’96 Maximatic cost just under $1000 with the addition of an adjustable OPV.  This is rather high, but it’s in perfect condition with all of the little bitties that often get lost on older machines.  For quite a while the Maximatic was also sold as the Coffex and the Pasquini Livietta.  I have restored 3 Liviettas, all purchased in at least aceptable working condition for $300, $400, and $450.  At $500 there isn’t anything that can be purchased new that performs half as well and whose build quality is even remotely comparable.  I have machines that do better, but they cost more, take twice as long to heat up, and are easily three times as large.

So I’m sad to see my Maximatic go.  To me it represents the true spirtit of home espresso machines;  easy to use, easy to own, and capable of tremendous quality in the cup.  And it will carry that spirit on for decades.

Links

1. Maximatic info @ Olympia-Express.ch
2. Maximatic available for purchase @ Orphan Espresso

I think we managed to roast about ten 1/2lb batches of green coffee and there was more than enough for everyone to take some home.  By now that coffee should be more than ready to open up and start grinding.  I hope that it’s making some tasty cups.

The Charrettes are a complicated thing.  They’re a strange mashup of a coffee geek meetup and a consumer coffee education workshop.  My hope is that we can find a way for these two things to compliment each other seeing that coffee is as much about community as it is about the liquid that end up in your cup.  I think that this one went pretty well.  There were a number of participants that had never roasted before, and I think they got to see that roasting coffee isn’t too complicated and got hear what first crack sounds like.  I’m afraid that in the rush to roast as much as we could, they didn’t get  to actually take charge of roasting a batch from beginning to end.  This kind of hands on engagement is one of my primary goals for the Charrettes, and I think that making sure that everyone gets the oppertunity or at least the invitation to actually make something (that is what this is about) is worth having to impose some extra structure on the otherwise free wheeling proceedings.

The beans pictured about were roasted using a Poppery II air popper.  The batch size was small, and the consistency isn’t really there, but the fact that a $5 device from Goodwill can roast coffee is just really cool.  It was great to have it at the Charrette – thank you Brian!

I’m going to do my best to get all of this roasted before the Charrette winds down.  That means there is going to be a lot of free freshly roasted coffee for everyone to take home.  Come and roast some with us!

The plan is to gather home-roasters and non-roasting-but-still-interested parties on the porch at Demitasse and roast some greens.  Greg from Trystero Coffee is going to be there to provide some professional insight and guidance, and also generously kick in some greens.  We will be playing with a Poppery II, some Behmor 1600s, I think a Hottop, and whatever else can be wrangled up.  I know a lot of the home roasters I’ve talked to are really excited about this, but I’m also hoping that some people who just have a budding interest will stop by and share the burn-toast smelling coffee roasting fun.

I’m working on getting some local green sellers to bring some of their wares to the party.

I have to give a huge shout out to Cafe Demitasse and all the staff that participated in the Brew Charrette.  It says a lot about their commitment to the LA coffee community and about their love of coffee that they took the time to share their personal experiences and insights into various methods of preparing coffee in the home with just about anyone who cared to be there.  Thank you Cafe Demitasse.

When brewing:  25g coffee / 350g water

My general takeaway from the charrette was that I like siphon coffee a whole lot more than other brew methods, and that the Vario W is a killer brew tool.  It also seems difficult to make people feel comfortable making a cup of coffee on the spot.  It was the same at the Espresso Charrette.  Making coffee seems to be more like a culinary activity than a mechanical process, which is nice but does present a barrier to spontaneous participation.

I really enjoyed the public nature of this charrette.  I’m a creature of the online coffee forums, but they represent only a small slice of the coffee loving world.  It was good to meet some people with a different relationship with coffee.  My impression from talking to charrette attendees is that there either aren’t a whole lot of public coffee education events going on in LA or, if there are, there isn’t a simple way of finding them.  I would love to find a way to centralize or aggregate information about such events.  If you know of someone keeping track of public coffee events please put me in touch.  In the mean time I’m trying to think up a way track them  that I can actually keep updated…

This brought to a head something that has been nagging me for a while now.  I make a lot of espresso.  I’m very good at rebuilding and restoring the related machinery.  I’m pretty good at dialing in and pulling a shot.  What has worried me is whether or not my palate is capable of really picking apart the flavors hiding in the cup.  I think I have an improving sense for espresso, it being what I drink 90% of the time.  I’m somewhat sympathetic towards those who take SO espresso to task for being  the simple-palate’s espresso drink (but as a home roaster I disagree with the negative spirit of a lot of that particular line of criticism).  I’m hoping with more cupping, tasting, and drinking I will see some improvement in the near future.

UPDATE – I spent a weekend in Denver around the 16th Street Mall and was reminded of how really awful most generally available espresso is.  Nothing was good.  I have to say that this particular area is rather touristy and not, I would think, indicative of the good coffee that a larger city like Denver probably has to offer.  It was just a reminder of how niche really good coffee still is.  And what burnt beans taste like.

From what I have gathered, this general formulation the the Europiccola was in production for about 15 years, starting in 1974 with the bolt on group, and ending in 1990 when the pressurestat from the Professional was added (1).  There are countless amalgamations of the basic Europiccola components (0.48 Liter boiler, two stage heating element, relief valve regulated boiler pressure), and no hard and fast model distictions seem to exists, largely thanks to factory alterations that where likely made to accomodate the demands of a foreign market.

My collecting impulse is screaming at me to put this sucker on the shelf next to its 2010 counterpart for some serious lever machine cred.  But my common sense is winning

1. La Pavoni Europiccola by Francesco (http://www.francescoceccarelli.eu/lapavoni_ep_eng.htm)