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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   4633 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Thanks for the kind words and for sharing your experience, pour-overs with fresh coffee are on a whole different level than regular automatic drip coffee! May I ask what kind of lever machine you're using? Espresso is actually my favorite way to enjoy coffee but my machine is ready for a full tear-down and a fresh set of gaskets, so I need to get going on that project now that I've done the deep cleaning on my roaster.

Growing one's own coffee would be amazing, though probably work intensive to get good coffee out of it. If you ever do so, please post about it here!

What machine do you have? I'll mention I replaced a ful set of gaskets in my Breville Dual Boiler last year. It took an hour or so, which I consider pretty great for a famously less repair-friendly machine. It's been chugging around now with some aftermarket upgrades for 6 years.

I've been using a La Pavoni Professional for the last several years, it's not terrible to take apart but I might be a little excessively concerned that I'm going to mess it up trying to pry the gaskets out of the grouphead, even though my rational brain knows it'll be fine. Never tried the Breville but I've heard really good things about them, and especially that dual boiler system.

I don't know a damn thing about hacking a Breville, but I'm curious as to what you'd hack on one. PID would be the obvious first stop, but doesn't the dual boiler have one in both the broiler and the grouphead?

The "upgrades" are trivial: A gasket/showerhead/holder set (the plastic holder fails very quickly on these) and a naked portafilter from Normcore. The dual boiler uses a 58mm grouphead, so the aftermarket is rich on that front.

I replaced all the internal gaskets as well, which was the job I talked about. One failed, and so I just went ahead and did the whole set. Very fiddly work but straighforward, the newest models all have upgraded maintainability (down to descaling).

If I become a cash millionaire, I'll sell it for something much more Italian and better looking, like yours.

Yeah, that makes sense, Breville just wasn't a Thing back when I was chugging along with a Rancilio Silvia and daydreaming about the one-armed bandit. NGL, said one-armed bandit was hands down one of the best scores that I ever made on an Amazon Warehouse deal back when they were actually deals and it was more common to get stuff that was better than advertised, if not NIB, instead of worse. That said, I did find the imperfection they had talked about by accident one day when I was cleaning it. Still, I regret nothing on that particular purchase!

I was looking into the various La Pavoni machines when I was searching for a lever espresso maker. They look gorgeous and must be a pleasure to use. If they made a scaled-down version I would've strongly considered getting one, but the capability of the machine was just too much for the occasional espresso drinker like myself.

They definitely live up (and down) to their reputation, I'll say that. The Europiccola is well night unusable IME, it barely had time to pull a shot before its thermal fuse kicked out. The Professional, OTOH, has been a dream in terms of maintaining steam/pressure, but finding the sweet spot in terms of tamp has always been tricksy for me in the sense that there's little wiggle room between a nice shot that requires some, but not too much, force to pull, and a shot that's a little too tightly packed and can't really be pulled at all! As you can imagine, that kind of workout hasn't been kind to the grouphead gaskets...

I ended up getting the Flair Go, mostly because the missus didn't want another device on the kitchen counter and this model folded into a neat package. It takes a few iterations to get the technique right, but so far I'm pretty satisfied with it.

I didn't like the idea of an automatic espresso maker, having to tear down the machine every so often for cleaning and replacing soft parts. Then again, I'm just cleaning the Flair Go every time I make espresso, so there's overhead involved either way. And I'm sure in 5-10 years the O-rings will wear out too, but that's probably a lot less difficult to replace than a typical consumer machine.

We will see whether coffea arabica ends up in my back yard! I need to level up on my gardening skills first, but it's certainly on my radar.

Cool, the Flair Go is a fascinating little machine, part of me wants to buy one for portable espresso but the other part of me is reminding me that the decision to just go with the flow and take the opportunity to check out the local scene was already made. Thing about an espresso machine in particular is that the pressure required for espresso is going to blow out the gaskets sooner or later, and next thing you know, your espresso is coming out the sides of the portafilter as well as from the portafilter and, well, you're ready to replace the gasket!

flair go

It's hilarious that this comes in a coffee pod version. Who is the target demographic for that?

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