The new La Marzocco
I got the chance to play around with the new La Marzocco machine today. I brought a bag of Aricha #28 and the results were stunning. The machine is basically all you want in an espresso machine. Here is what is new:
1. One boiler per group. PID controlled. More accurate than ever.
2. Individually programmable or manually controlled pressure profiling on each group. The brew water pressure is either controlled by a pre- programmed computer (you can dial it in after your desire with a lap top) or you can adjust the pressure easily by pulling the paddle controller like a throttle up or down. The pressure will follow your movements on the paddle (throttle). This means you can brew at any desired pressure. You can monitor the pressure on the pressure gague over each group head.
3. One digitally controlled integrated pump per group. The pumps are serviceable and inside the machine this time instead of outside. (Saves space) You can also run them as you like without interfering the other groups’ pressure.
Everything beautifully wrapped inside a FB80 body.
I have to say that this is by far the best espresso machine I have ever tried. All other machines on the SCAA trade show became uninteresting after playing around with this today. It really opens up a whole new world in espresso brewing.
I got to taste 4 shots of the Aricha I brewed and I did different pressure profiling on all of them. (all the other shots were handed out) They were all very good but all very different in flavour, texture and balance. It was very interesting to monitor the pressure gagues as well, because the dosing and grind setting would directly influence the pressure as well as the throttle / paddle setting. You just can’t get away with inconsistent dosing with this machine. (Especially when you have 10 baristas watching you making shots)
I guess it is going to take years before we master this new technology. Imagine all the discussions on the various forums that will occur. (For instance: What pressure to do for pre infusion, what pressure do you flush the group at in order not to ruin the dispersion screens :-), etc.
(The white box to the right is controlling the pre programmed pressure profile for one of the groups on this machine)
The machine will probably be for sale in a year or so. I can’t wait to try one out for a longer period of time. Congratulations on a job well done to Jacob at La Marzocco who is the brain behind this new machine. The only thing missing now is technology to programme temperature profiling, and it will all fall in to place.
Who knows, we might have to invent a whole new brewing system after that happens…
April 19th, 2009 at 2:23
Hi Tim,
can you compare the new La Marzocco to the Slayer Espresso machine which has its debut at the SCAA show? I follwed the development of the Slayer for quite some time now and wonder if the La Marzocco would deliver one additional step (true pressure profiling, the Slayer has two pressure setpoints to play with).
Cheers,
Wolfram
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:38
Jacob is truly an amazing talent. Much of what he does is in his garage. Many of his friends stop by just to see what he is creating. As his Dad, I’m a little biased.
April 23rd, 2009 at 22:59
The new LM machine allows variable pressure from 0 through 9 (or whatever you set the max to be) bars. Imagine a graph with pressure vs. time, and you can manipulate it however you wish e.g. S curve, bell curve, and anything in between. Once you find the optimal pressure profile for a given espresso, you can then program it and repeat it exactly as you had pulled. Also, the display shows group temperatures as well as shot chronographs. This machine will ultimately have a new housing, designed by an artist.
Slayer is functionally very much like a Synesso except that, in addition to variable soft preinfusion to line pressure, there’s 2 pump pressure presets at 4.5 and 9 bar. Furthermore, there’s a nifty angled piece of stainless steel that runs behind the length of the drain tray that allows the barista to see the extraction as it comes out of the basket (in a naked portafilter). More discussion on Slayer on Coffeegeek’s forum.
April 30th, 2009 at 21:47
Hi, just to clarify
Slayer has one boiler per group, PID controlled + a dedicated pre-heat boiler (vs the HX pre-heat system that Synesso & LM use). Pre-infusion pressure is adjustable (per group) from 0 to 9 bar (or whatever you have the pump set to) and can operate independently, unlike the Synesso. Slayer only uses one pump per machine.
One last thing…Slayer is available now vs a year from now on the LM ;-)
But ultimately – its all good. Competition breeds innovation & better coffee for everyone!
Cheers
Jason
April 30th, 2009 at 22:13
Thank you JAson.
But from what I undersand there is no way of playing precisely with the pressure on the Slayer yet. There is only 2 settings on the pump right? Like half pressure and full pressure. If I am wrong, then how do you adjust the pump pressure during brewing. It seemed on the SCAA show that the paddle on the group only had 2 settings with the pump activated.
The marzocco can also be programmed to do whatever pump pressure profile we desire. Can or will the Slayer do that?
April 30th, 2009 at 23:31
There are 3 brew actuator positions: 1=pump off, 2=pre-infusion pressure, 3=full pressure.
You can set pre-infusion pressure anywhere from 0 to pump pressure on each group. These are easily adjustable, however you are not adjusting pre-infusion pressure ‘on the fly’ on each shot. When prototyping, we discovered that pre-brew pressures under 2 bar are simply too slow – no one is going to wait 30 seconds for this phase to pass. Anything above 4 or 5 bars and you loose the benefits of the low pressure pre-brewing cycle. Therefore an ideal working range is 2-5 bars.
One thing to keep in mind. There is really no comparison between “pre-infusion” and what we’re calling “pre-brewing”. Pre-infusion is a pre-wetting of the coffee grounds to prepare them for extraction. This is done with a pulse of the pump (GS3) or various other methods. There are a lot of mixed feelings on whether ‘pre-infusion’ actually makes any difference in the cup. I tend to agree. This is probably also why people who own Synesso’s typically just slap the actuator to full pressure.
If you’ve used an old Lever machine, you were likely taught that you pulled the lever down and waited till coffee started pouring from the PF at which time you let the lever go. This first stage of the lever extraction is happening at the pressure of the steam boiler (say 1.5 bar) then the spring pressure kicked in somewhere around 12 to 14 bars and declined over the shot. This is where we got the pre-brewing concept for Slayer. However, we found that increasing this pressure to say 3 bars allowed us to use much finer coffee than you would on a lever machine and this finer ground coffee results in more colloids & oils to be extracted into the shot (TDS & refractometer measurements are identical to regular espresso shots) . This then results in an espresso that has a much silkier mouth feel, more sweetness, less bitterness, etc. This has been experienced by hundreds of people now and they’ll confirm that there IS a difference in the cup. Even Kyle Glanville talks about this here: http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-intelligentsia29-2009apr29,0,7990950.story
We began with the quality of the cup and engineered backwards till we had the Slayer – then we refined & simplified it to what was shown at SCAA. Believe me, if we felt that we needed 50 pumps to properly pull the perfect shot…thats what would be on the machine. However, they’re not needed. With the Slayer system we could easily replicate most pressure brew curves (which we talked about on our blog). The Slayer system doesn’t need computers/laptops and any skilled barista will grasp the concept of how to use the machine within 2 – 3 shots. We had many pro baristas compliment us on how easy it was to replicate shot profiles on the machine. Keep in mind, coffee extraction is constantly changing through out the day…barista to barista…group to group. How often are you adjusting the grind, dose, tamp, temperature, etc due to changes in humidity, Air Conditioning, Grinder Temp, etc. When you use the Slayer, the barista is watching their shots form and will kick in the second phase of extraction WHEN the shot is ready…NOT based on time within a computer. When you’re running a fine ground coffee and you kick the high pressure phase too quickly, you’ll lock the puck up and extraction will take forever. Remember, the most intelligent computer is a human being.
Slayer wants to empower the barista…not dehumanize them ;-)
However our nature is to constantly be developing new things and when we come up with an intuitive, infinitely variable mechanical pressure system…it’ll be backwards compatible with the Slayer you buy today.
Thanks
Jason
May 1st, 2009 at 2:46
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May 1st, 2009 at 8:57
Thank you for the insight Jason.
The Slayer seems like a great machine too.
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October 17th, 2009 at 2:22
I’m guessing that the new LaMarzocco machine will probably put Slayer Espresso quickly out of business after its debut. Because of Slayer’s much hyped development process for their machine and touting “pressure profiling” throughout all of it, in the end the Slayer turns out to not differ a whole lot from one of its closest competitors – the Synesso Cyncra. Let’s see, you have “off”, “pre-infuse”, and “full-on pump” pressure… that hardly lives up to all the hype put forth on it during the much blogged about development phase.
Very nice and beautifully engineered machine the Slayer is, I just feel that they could have gone about marketing it a little differently as the whole “pressure profiling” thing surrounding it has most certainly blown up in their face.
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the initial entry fee for LM’s new machine will be in order to determine just who this top-tier segment of the market will ultimately be going to!
October 17th, 2009 at 16:55
Word..
October 26th, 2009 at 12:33
As an amateur I’m not qualified to comment directly on the Slayer vs. LM debate. However as a software engineer who does a fair bit of usability stuff I really think that the way of thinking pressure and temperature as plotted against time is just too complicated. There is too much information for the barista to handle. I would be amazed if coffee of identical quality can not be achieved by carefully condensing all this into a couple of controls that are easy to work with and understand. I would consider fully profiling machine more of a laboratory instrument than a quality coffee maker.
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