Europiccola

I have a la Pavoni from 1971 and it works really incredibly well. I’d be pissed if I had to replace something like that every 10 years even.

lol this thing always getting hate on here. I preordered mine as soon as I saw it mostly because of how great the Aiden has been for us. My first espresso machine was a vintage dual switch La Pavoni Europiccola. Bought it on eBay in 2018. It’s the only espresso machine I’ve ever owned. I learned how to make espresso with it. I’ve always wanted a fancy newer machine to go next to it but it’s just always worked fine and I didn’t wanna spend the money. It should be noted my wife flat out refuses to use it lol. I never had any kind of coffee machine. I just made pour overs, French press, siphon, etc. When the Aiden was first announced I did some research and I took a chance. I was really impressed watching the devs talk about how it actually worked. I read all the same garbage on Reddit about build quality or whatever from Fellow. Not only do I use it daily but my wife does too. We both love the thing. And we have never had a single problem w it after over a year now of daily use. I mean I’m not discounting the people who have problems but like, who goes on the internet and touts about how the product they bought works as expected? lol. Maybe I’m wrong for that. I thought because of how much she also loves the Aiden, maybe my wife would use the espresso series 1 machine too so I figured it was time to add it to the mix. So I’ll just be enjoying my vintage lever machine until whenever the series 1 finally makes it here. But I mean everyone’s situation is different. That’s just my story w the fellow machines. I haven’t used their grinders so I can’t speak for those either.

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.

La pavoni europicola (used)

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)