La Pavoni Europiccola. Currently it's in storage and broken due to a rust issue ( I have to replace the boiler at some point) , but it was a fun machine to learn on, the lever action really informed my understanding of pressure. Now my current machine has a PID and is much less susceptible to wild temperature swings, and as a result is more consistent at making better coffee.
Not all of those things are true for all lever machines, only for the ones with no boiler... I got our first-born a La Pavoni Europiccola when they moved out and they are very happy with it.
A certain amount of practice on my Elektra was of course a pre-cursor to that.
When I got mine, the foot was brown but started rusting around the boiler, so I replaced the whole foot and upgraded the electrics at the same time. Nice thing is that the electrics are very easy to get parts for and replace yourself, even if you're not an engineer.
Interesting categories. I'd probably go with
* Manual levers (Flair, Robot, etc.)
* Semi-automatic levers (La Pavoni Europiccola, Olympia Cremina, etc.) (some call this "classic lever")
* Spring levers (Profitec 800, Olympia Cremina SL, etc.)
* Pseudo-levers (Decent, Wendougee) (i.e. non-levers but digital controls to simulate lever profiles)
* Programmable Levers (or whatever the Meticulous is)
Top Espresso Machines on Reddit
1
Breville
Bambino Plus
77% positive of 1,081 users
Fast heat-up, easy for beginners; inconsistent shots, annoying cleaning.
Its-not-jackie-chan
