Interesting! When I worked for a coffee roaster, there were two kinds of people looking for the Silvia: home espresso enthusiasts with too much money and cheapskates looking to add espresso-based drinks to their businesses.
I'm glad the poster enjoyed the project, because there's no way on Earth it was worth the money.
Breville BES920 XL. Espresso machine done in a modern way. Dual boilers, three PID controlled heaters (boiler, steam boiler, grouphead). Makes excellent espresso with almost no fuss, very forgiving. You still need a good grinder with stepless control, but other than that it's super easy to dial in. This is my third machine and by far the best. I considered an E-61 machine, but that design dates back to the 1960s and controls temperature and extraction with pressure-stats, cams and rods and thermal mass. The Breville is a modern design in that it achieves these goals with micro-controllers, sensors and actuators.
I don't know if it will last the 10 years my Ponte Vecchio spring lever did, but that took a lot of upkeep. The Breville has needed nothing for the two years I've had it so far.
I got a Breville Dual Boiler a few years ago and it was ok if temperamental for 2 years and 4 months. Then it died suddenly.
I had to pay Breville ~$400 for an out of warranty repair and drop it off personally at the local repair centre. The repair took two weeks and it died with the same symptoms a few days after I picked it up.
Breville refused to refund me for the repair attempt and it took escalating to get them to ship me a brand new replacement with 3 to 4 weeks estimated shipping.
I bought a Rocket instead and when the Breville showed up a month later sold it on Craigslist to cover a small portion of the wasted time and money.
The Rocket is much simpler but much more consistent. My wife a chef loves it but hated the Breville.
The Rocket did cost more but with regular home maintenance and an occasional service should last 15 to 20 years.
Sorry to hear that. I understood some of the earlier ones had issues. I'm hoping you were sincere with that "Good Luck!" because I really like this machine and hope it lasts.
If it's any comfort that is still better than the support I got for the Ponte Vecchio. I did all my own work, including soldering a crack in the boiler because that was the only possibility. One vendor would not sell me parts because they claimed to be the only "authorized" vendor and I had purchased it elsewhere. The other sold me a series of parts over years and years, but discontinued that a couple years ago which is what prompted me to get the Breville. I gave the Lusso to my son and found another parts source, so it lingers on. I'd say it was down waiting on parts at least two weeks of every year I had it.
What makes you say that? You can get one for 2-300 euros and it will outlast you since you can replace every single part. I’m pretty sure it’s the cheapest option available if you take a long term view.
Open it and clean it and it transforms things. They get pretty gross inside.
Mine seemed to need tightening periodically or the grind would be too coarse.
I'm from Italy and it's the first time I see this brand. Anyone could explain why it costs an order of magnitude more than a Delonghi with similar specs?
Agree with this sentiment. This machine gets a lot of internet hype. I thought I would buy one but then I got a a Breville Bambino and grinder for half the cost of the Silvia and it takes up half the space and looks nicer. Couldn't be happier.
The cheaper espresso machines have reliability problems, so people spend more to get a better product. The ability to modify and repair the machines is helpful also.
It's more like a hobby than just a coffee maker for some people.
Rancilio primarily make coffee machines for coffee shops. The Siliva is a cut down version of a shop coffee machine. It's targeted for home enthusiast or a place expecting to make the occasional coffee.
If you compare it to a regular home coffee machine the Rancilio contains more metal. The portafilter (the thing with the handle that contains the basket where the coffee grinds are put) is the same as their shop grade machines. It's big and heavy and feels solid like it'll last a long time. While if you compare the portafilter of a regular home coffee machine they often feel cheap and flimsy. The switches on the front feel industrial too. With the exception of a few bits (as noted in the article) the exterior is mainly stainless steel. While other home coffee machines at similar price point (and above) are far more plasticy.
The Siliva is often a good introduction for home coffee enthusiasts and hardware hackers alike. They're often recommended on coffee snob forums as a result. They're fairly ubiquitous so getting parts is straight forward. IIRC The manual contains circuit diagrams. It's easy to open and tinker with too. The most common modification is adding a PID controller to regulate the temperature.
The machine itself is straightforward but fills a niche. The next level up of more expensive home enthusiast machines generally cost at least twice the price. The next level up of coffee machine generally includes a PID and often twin boilers, so you can use one boiler for shots and the other boiler to foam milk. While with the Siliva as it's only got a single boiler you have to do your shots first, then switch it over to steam mode.
If you look after Siliva it can last for 10 years or more (I've had mine that long and it's still going on). I really want a duel boiler machine, but I'm trying to figure out which ones are good at the moment.
It'd say a Delonghi with similar specs is aimed at someone more causal. The kind of audience George Clooney is targeting with Nespresso. While the Siliva is not aimed at someone who just wants a coffee. You have to learn how to make decent coffee and for that it needs to be paired with a good grinder.
I really like my QuickMill QM67 - I use it every day, and have for 6 years. I figure I have close to 5000 shots on it and it has had only about $20 of parts replaced (group gasket, some locktite on the steam nut).
It does, I bought one (new, latest model) recently and was thrilled to see that. I've bought ~'80s amplifiers on eBay and loved that the manuals have circuit diagrams, and thought it was a lost era.
The Silvia's is far simpler (to state the obvious) but a wonderful inclusion.
Even though it's fairly readily determined, given its simplicity, it'd make me more confident in any repair or modification.
The one I have been thinking of is replacing the pump and reservoir with (a pressure reducing valve and) an electronic valve plumbed in, so that I never have to top-up, or risk the boiler running dry.
> If you look after a Silivia It can last for 10 years or more
My DeLonghi has lasted 8 years so far and I didn't treat it too well. I guess I might not be an enthusiast above the level of Clooney, but this feels to me a lot like bikes and dentists :)
As far as which machine to get, I ended up choosing the Rocket R58 v2 ~5 years ago and have been very happy with it. It checks all the boxes: double boiler, E61 group head, timeless/classic appearance, PID, fits under normal residential kitchen cabinets, etc. I'm satisfied with my current grinder, a Baratza Sette 270Wi, but I do occasionally consider upgrading to a Monolith.
The metal content is the main difference, DeLonghi (and every other popular home espresso machine )are almost entirely made of plastic. Boiling water in plastic leaches harmful chemicals into the espresso and add subtle flavors that shouldn't be there. The DeLonghi level machines are built to last a few years and be replaced while the commercial machines can easily outlive their owners.
I had an almost unused 2012 model still lying around and had it tested by a local government lab. I took the water sample myself (so it does not officially count because it's not "certified") but after speaking with the head of the lab about the procedure.
Result: Waaaayyyy over the (German) limits for lead in drinking water.
I wanted to sell it but added to the post that I wanted to wait for the results, and that I would scrap it and not sell it if there was lead. There were several people who still wanted to buy it. As someone who has had to have treatment with chelators, albeit against mercury, I have seen what those academic and abstract warnings "there is no amount of lead (or mercury) that does not do damage" mean in practice: With my (university clinic researcher) doctor's consent I continued chelation far beyond any of the "limits" (i.e. when tested levels had fallen below any official limits in urine or blood I still continued, for years). It STILL had an effect, and it was recognizable in objective symptoms, not just subjective ones.
For almost 100% of people the dangers of lead (or heavy metals or environmental poisons in general) are way too abstract to be taken seriously. I've given up - actually I never really seriously tried, and if so only by short comments such as these and never to anyone in person in order to not ruin relationships - to convince anyone. Those poisons don't make you sick in small quantities, they just, very, very gradually, make you function worse. Since this is 100% correlated with aging, since it takes a long time, all those effects will a) be part of your life, you got used to it gradually, b) attributed to age. Only if you do were to do something really extreme such as what I did (had to, was forced to by circumstances) would you be able to see a difference. For what it's worth, my doctor too thinks this is vastly under-recognized and a much bigger problem than even the vast majority of doctors think. The only reason I now it was not "stress" or "age" is because a long list of quite common ailments is completely gone now, from occasional small localized short cramps to psoriasis to warts to only mention three common ones.
I would not buy that machine. There are lead-free alternatives. I have a Vibiemme Domobar (with PID). This particular machine uses copper everywhere, even all the small parts of the E61 brewing group, which I've only ever seen with brass parts everywhere else. I had its water tested too, no lead whatsoever, but elevated copper - which is a non-issue (the body has far better mechanisms to handle copper, since it's an essential metal, reflected in the official limits in drinking water, which are several orders of magnitude higher for copper).
> Result: Waaaayyyy over the (German) limits for lead in drinking water.
Is this a sensible comparison to make? You will likely be drinking at most 120ml (4 shots) of rancilio espresso per day, which is around 4% of your daily ~3L recommended water intake.
This is a myth. You're supposed to have around 2 l of water, from all sources: meaning that you'd have to eat only freeze-dried food to actually need that much water.
My Delonghi has a fair share of metal, has lasted me 8 years already and doesn't seem to show much in terms of wear.
Now let's suppose it dies now, it would have cost me 10 euros per year. I would have to keep a Roncilio for 64 years to get the same bang for the buck. I'm starting to think that maybe it's a volume problem, you need to make coffee for at least 10 people daily and then you might see a difference.
Also I think that living in a place where a good espresso costs less than a euro makes it kinda hard to justify a coffee machine that costs almost as much as a used car... :)
> If you look after Siliva it can last for 10 years or more (I've had mine that long and it's still going on).
I inherited an early model one from a family and have passed it along after it’s first and only professional service ($30US). It’s made approximately 15k coffees in its time.
I'm biased because it's Australian, but I'm in love with the Breville Dual Boiler. The portafilter has non-standard dimensions which vexes me a little, but it pulls phenomenal shots; I've found the quality to be similar to the La Mazzocco GS3, while being literally one tenth the price.
I had a Ponte Vecchio Lusso spring lever machine for ten years. It made lovely coffee but required a lot of maintenance, replacing piston seals, pressure stats, sight glass seals, pressure guage. I also had to remove and cap the ports for the low water sensor due to leakage and to re-wire it a couple times due to burned switches and connectors. It caught on fire once.
The build quality was "rustic", panels with sharp edges, blobby solder, rust under the chrome, cover that had to be leaned on to make fit when reinstalling it.
I had a love-hate relationship with it, the group head design was very forgiving, it required almost no technique to pull a very good shot, could be left on for a long time and be instantly ready, powerful steam, heated up fast etc. Really an ideal home machine except for being a total POS.
Every few months when I had to repair it I thought about replacing it but there really wasn't anything out there with the combination of shot quality and ease of use and small kitchen practicality. The E61 machines are large, require good technique, use a lot of water, generate a lot of heat and probably are not that much more reliable as they are also sort of craft workshop built. The Silvia is overrated and very fiddly, it can make great shots, if the stars are just so. Manual levers are fetish objects for collectors, coffee hobbyists, and masochists.
What I really wanted was a modern design built with modern processes, ie a Tesla, not a Fiat 124 Spider from the 60's.
Enter the Breville 920XL dual boiler. It makes better coffee and is even more forgiving and consistent than my old Ponte Vechio. It heats up fast and steams well. I don't love the tamper as much as my old rosewood and brass one for the Ponte Vecchio, but the magnetic tamper holder is one of those tiny details that makes me happy every shot. Two years in it's been perfect, except for just the tiniest steam wand valve leak recently. Time will tell, but since I got it at Costco, I'm out nothing if it's a problem.
"The Silvia is overrated and very fiddly, it can make great shots, if the stars are just so."
The Silvia works perfectly every time. But you need to know something about making coffee i.e. roast, grind, dose, tamp, temperature, time, yield, steam, pour etc.
The Lusso and the Breville will make great shots if your grind and tamp are even close. My wife and child both could regularly make great shots after a few minutes demo with either of those. I do adjust the grinder from time to time as the coffee ages or when we get new beans, but that's it.
I don't think that would be possible with the Silvia.
I'm not familiar with Rancilio, but it looks like the Silvia uses a group head that is at least compatible with ther professional machines. That gives access to a huge range of parts like filter baskets, tampers and also easy access to replacement parts like gaskets.
I inherited a consumer DeLonghi, that basically looks like most of their espresso machines and it's nothing like a professional machine. They use dual wall instead of single wall filter baskets, the steam wand differs a lot and my machine shoots a couple of jets of water into the coffee, preventing even extraction.
I did however happen to find beans that got decent results on that machine, so it's not like there's a strict total order of quality that leads to a one dimensional result. Professional machines are much more pleasant to work with, though.
> it looks like the Silvia uses a group head that is at least compatible with ther professional machines.
It is. A 58mm tamper fits perfectly from memory. The early ones shipped with a weird little aluminium one that should be avoided.
All the bits in them are easily replaced. My best upgrade was refitting the mesh screens screw with a nut so that you weren’t trying to unscrew it with a tiny screwdriver, upside down.
The main difference is in the way it makes espresso.
Traditionally espresso is extracted with high pressure (9 bar) water. That pressure is build on top of the coffee. When the water passes the coffee and its pressure drops it foams up. This foam is the only way most people can tell they've got an espresso and not some other coffee drink.
To be able to build up 9 bar of pressure the coffee has to be fairly fine ground and, most importantly, fresh. Most people do not want to bother with grinding coffee and buy pre-ground. Pre-ground coffee cannot build enough resistance to create any significant foam. So the appliance-level machines, targeted for pre-ground coffee, come with a valve in the portafilter after the coffee. That valve creates espresso-like foam in the resulting drink, which is not much different from a regularly brewed coffee otherwise. Using these machines with a fresh grind is also problematic - they usually miss overpressure valve before coffee and sport a standard 15-20 bar vibro pump. This results in pressure building up way above 9 bar and fracturing the coffee layer, directing all water through narrow channels and missing most of the grounds.
tl;dr it's pretty hard to make proper espresso with a Delonghi.
Persistent foam (crema) forms due to the presence of trapped CO2 in the grind, rather than just the high pressure.
Espresso grind is special. It's not just fairly fine grind, it's a mix of fine, moderate and coarse grinds that are packed together. If you are to try and use just an uniformly fine grind for espresso, the machine will have very hard time extracting from it - literally a drop a second instead of a flow.
>Persistent foam (crema) forms due to the presence of trapped CO2 in the grind, rather than just the high pressure.
If this had been true, you could just toss coffee grounds into hot water and it would foam up.
> If you are to try and use just an uniformly fine grind for espresso, the machine will have very hard time extracting from it - literally a drop a second instead of a flow.
Really? Any uniformity in grind will block machine? Could you explain physics behind such phenomenon please?
I wouldn't trust coffee makers as your source of physics and chemistry data. Instant coffee "blooms" too, it's not espresso foam and it's not caused by "captured CO2". Highly uniform ballbearings do not restrict flow any more than other particles of comparable sizes. And, not mentioned by you yet, but my favorite coffee people "fact" - distilled water does not cause more corrosion than tap water.
Agreed. Check out homebarista or coffeegeek for some hardcore and interesting restorations. My first thought was, wow, a Mrs. Silvia can not even be old enough for a restoration yet. How about a 1950s Faema?
I have an E61-based machine that feels like it's at the end of its life. I think the cam and push-rods are so worn down that the valves aren't opening fully anymore.
I wish there were more resources dedicated to fixing stuff like this because it feels terrible to throw it away and buy a new one (especially when a new one is $1500 or more).
You could always send it off for maintenance. Way cheaper than buying a new machine. E61 machines are built like tanks, and should last generations with maintenance.
The pushrods in the e61 grouphead are easily replaceable parts that are expected to be replaced as part of maintenance, as is the cam. The only complexity is that "e61" covers a bunch of groupheads from different manufacturers that require slightly different lengths, so you need to get the right ones for your exact machine.
You don't necessarily need the exact ones for all the parts, for some just having the same length is enough. If you pull yours apart and measure things you can contact someone like espressoparts.com and see if they have something that will fit.
Yeah? Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to take my machine apart and come up with a list of stuff I need and see if it's worth fixing. I bought it in 2011 and used it almost every day since then, so it's definitely in need of some attention.
I've had one of these machines for ~10years and she's still going strong. Combined with a good grinder the RC makes great coffee. The design is simple but elegant and the end result very satisfying.
Nice work to OP. There's so many super high quality espresso machines out there that will outlive me. When one of those classic machines is paired with a quality grinder and fresh beans, you will be brewing coffee better than many coffee shops (especially the chains).
Around 5 years ago I restored a La Pavoni Europiccola manual lever espresso machine to working order. I bought it off of a "parts only" ebay listing for $200. It turns out it just needed new grouphead and base gaskets, some rustoleum, and some simple electrical work (new power switch and thermostat). After getting over the initial learning curve, this machine has consistently given me some amazing espresso shots, all while on a tight budget.
If you're interested in seeing more of these kinds of restorations, check out these videos from the Orphan Espresso guy, who is incredibly skilled:
La Pavoni Europiccola is a great machine. I have a modern one (I didn’t feel like restoring a classic one), but it’s still great. I have replaced the factory steam nut with a single hole end that I made myself, but otherwise my machine is stock.
I love espressos, machiattos, lattes and have gotten to the point where I’m consistently producing both espresso and lattes (with art!) that I prefer to many reasonably good coffee shops.
It took me some time to learn the machine and how espresso works, but I got to geek out in the process. Highly recommended for people who are more interested in the journey than the destination.
I got my first taste of manually-pulled espresso at Bright Coffee in Monterey. It was fantastic, but I could never be sure if it was induced by watching the barista pull the shot, or if the flavor was in fact better. I've had my mind made up to get a manual pull since then, and found a hand-made brand that looks promising.
The quality of grind tends to be the weakest link in most home barista situations. It's easy for most people to justify buying the expensive espresso machine, or buy a kilo of beans from the last cafe they got a great coffee from, but the grinder is often neglected.
For the nerds on HN, the difference between a good grinder and junk is the consistency of particle size. There's an optimum particle size that will result in the greatest amount of desirable flavours being extracted; most cheaper grinders will spit out a wide gamut of particle size.
One of the most important jobs of a barista is to manage the grind fineness to optimise for the beans.
The reason that perfect espresso isn't made by a robot—the reason why the process is so variable—is because the source material (the beans) are volatile. They're constantly changing, each batch is slightly different, their properties change as they off-gas every day from when they're roasted, and they're greatly affected by storage and ambient humidity. Some of these variances can be compensated for by adjusting the grind.
Thanks for this - sounds like you're pretty knowledgeable on the topic - don't suppose you have any recommendations for books or other sources for further reading?
It's not about grinders but it spends a few chapters on how coffee is produced and how different factors/regions can affect its flavor. It's an excellent primer on coffee in general, and of course on roasting at home (though the chapter on machines at the end is a little outdated).
That’s marketing to rich hipsters. “Handcrafted” machines aren’t better. They’re crap. You want a precision assembly line that makes consistent, replaceable parts.
Maybe you're right, I don't know much about this particular machine, but espresso machines (especially levers) are simple machines that are frequently hand-built, yet very serviceable and high quality. See for example the Londinium R, which has a lot of fans and is basically designed and built by 1 guy AFAICT: https://londiniumespresso.com/store/londinium-r
In contrast, consider the Breville espresso machines. They make great coffee reportedly, but I understand they're next to impossible to service or fix yourself. I heard that a technician is required to merely clean it, much less repair it (maybe a machine owner can chime in).
So I guess you gain some and lose some with economies of scale and espresso machines.
My Europicolla is almost 20 years old and going strong. Maintenance or replacing parts is simple, you can kit it out with all sorts of upgrades, and its espresso is comparable to that of super expensive pressure profiling machines. It's my favorite thing I've ever bought.
As the owner of an older europiccola and a quick mill qm67, I've been eying this: https://www.flairespresso.com which seems really need. the europiccola always struggled with managing steaming/overheating issues when doing multiple beverages. (Boiler was small), so I got the QM67. But this seems like it might be perfect for the times when you want to make just one shot.
I have a flair, a temperature controlled kettle, and a bellman stovetop steamer. The grinder I have was good for pour-overs, but isn't really up to espressos, but even so the espressos and cappuccinos I've been able to produce make my kitchen my favorite place to go to get caffeinated.
More often than not I'll make multiple beverages with it in a row. It's good enough that I'm frankly worried that when I finally upgrade to a proper machine it won't feel worth it. I had been looking forward to getting my fancy espresso machine eventually, so this is weirdly disappointing.
Went from a Gaggia to a Flair and can only recommend it. For me, the Flair only falls short when you want to make >2 espressos at a time. Love the control over every parameter and that you don't need to preheat for 15 mins
I have two Saeco Vienna Plus machines. These have what appears to be a pretty decent grinder built in. The machine brews a decent shot, but the electronics are probably not very precise (who knows the temperature, and the brew length is controlled by a basic potentiometer that seems inconsistent). ]I wonder if these are good candidates for some interesting hacks...Does anyone have any experience with these? I'd love to get a Silvia but I like the idea of the built in grinder.
No big hacks, but I've brought a couple of those Saeco superautomatics back from the dead. One of them had a crazy power fault that caused the dosing solenoid to emit a very loud and scary buzz as soon as I gave it power. It was so jarring that the first time I heard it, I thought I was somehow electrocuting myself. Traced it down to a bad triac on the controller board. 58 cents from Arrow.
I've always liked these, but if I were to hack one up, I'd probably want to see if I can achieve higher pressures. It has a really narrow regime of operation, and it doesn't quite achieve a high enough pressure to operate with true espresso fine grind. You have to set it to a slightly coarser grind, and the result is that it makes a fairly weak shot. But it does so with great consistency.
Definitely don't buy the newer Saecos with the BMW design bullshit. They are choc full o' nutty sensors and control circuits that make me very angry. (Too many faulty sensors is a BMW specialty.)
I've been using one for 3 shots daily for 5 years. Paid $150 cad for it used when it was 8 years old. Had a proper service done once. It is leaking quite badly now, time to crack it open and find out where from!
I agree with other poster that if the grind is too fine it doesn't have the pressure to get water through it. To be fair a super fine grind and packing a shot in to the stove top unit also results in a lot of steam coming out the safety pressure release valve.
Try a different roast too if you haven’t already. Really dark ones seem to clog up more. I like dark roasts and lots of crema and became expert at clogging the machine.
Hah - I just yesterday spent an hour disassembling my Pasquini Livietta to figure out what was wrong with it. Replaced the group head seal and now the thing seems to be happy again. The thing is surprisingly trusty as long as you take care of it, and I had a thought that I bet I could keep it running until I can pass it down to my kids.
Funny to see that the problem was a faulty switch. My own Rancilio Classe 6 has had at least two different switches spontaneously short/blow out. Electro-mechanical switches are like 1930's technology...is Rancilio pushing the make-it-cheaply effort 5% too hard?
I think it’s the use they get. An early one would be 20+ by now I think. Similar age grinders from Mazzer also seem to burn out their switches. This suites me fine as they then get sold as having burnt out motors, which I don’t doubt can happen, but I’m yet to see it and have bought several dead.
Repair, respray and then they usually just sit in a line for months as I like them too much.
I had one of these and it's built like a tank and produced amazing coffee. Sadly it couldn't come with me to Japan. Would definitely consider getting another one at some point in the future...
I did a PID mod on mine when I bought it around 5 years ago and love it. Built like a tank, and looks more commercial than similarly priced machines if that means anything to you.
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[ 6.8 ms ] story [ 179 ms ] threadI'm glad the poster enjoyed the project, because there's no way on Earth it was worth the money.
I wouldn’t call the Silva expensive. Probably hard too find something cheaper that feels better, quality wise, than even a Nespresso-machine.
I got a Breville Dual Boiler a few years ago and it was ok if temperamental for 2 years and 4 months. Then it died suddenly.
I had to pay Breville ~$400 for an out of warranty repair and drop it off personally at the local repair centre. The repair took two weeks and it died with the same symptoms a few days after I picked it up.
Breville refused to refund me for the repair attempt and it took escalating to get them to ship me a brand new replacement with 3 to 4 weeks estimated shipping.
I bought a Rocket instead and when the Breville showed up a month later sold it on Craigslist to cover a small portion of the wasted time and money.
The Rocket is much simpler but much more consistent. My wife a chef loves it but hated the Breville.
The Rocket did cost more but with regular home maintenance and an occasional service should last 15 to 20 years.
My Silvia paid for itself vs. $5 coffee shop lattes in under a year.
It's more like a hobby than just a coffee maker for some people.
If you compare it to a regular home coffee machine the Rancilio contains more metal. The portafilter (the thing with the handle that contains the basket where the coffee grinds are put) is the same as their shop grade machines. It's big and heavy and feels solid like it'll last a long time. While if you compare the portafilter of a regular home coffee machine they often feel cheap and flimsy. The switches on the front feel industrial too. With the exception of a few bits (as noted in the article) the exterior is mainly stainless steel. While other home coffee machines at similar price point (and above) are far more plasticy.
The Siliva is often a good introduction for home coffee enthusiasts and hardware hackers alike. They're often recommended on coffee snob forums as a result. They're fairly ubiquitous so getting parts is straight forward. IIRC The manual contains circuit diagrams. It's easy to open and tinker with too. The most common modification is adding a PID controller to regulate the temperature.
The machine itself is straightforward but fills a niche. The next level up of more expensive home enthusiast machines generally cost at least twice the price. The next level up of coffee machine generally includes a PID and often twin boilers, so you can use one boiler for shots and the other boiler to foam milk. While with the Siliva as it's only got a single boiler you have to do your shots first, then switch it over to steam mode.
If you look after Siliva it can last for 10 years or more (I've had mine that long and it's still going on). I really want a duel boiler machine, but I'm trying to figure out which ones are good at the moment.
It'd say a Delonghi with similar specs is aimed at someone more causal. The kind of audience George Clooney is targeting with Nespresso. While the Siliva is not aimed at someone who just wants a coffee. You have to learn how to make decent coffee and for that it needs to be paired with a good grinder.
Check out the Brewtus (Expobar Minore IV). Double boiler, E61 group head, PID. God shot territory every pull.
It does, I bought one (new, latest model) recently and was thrilled to see that. I've bought ~'80s amplifiers on eBay and loved that the manuals have circuit diagrams, and thought it was a lost era.
The Silvia's is far simpler (to state the obvious) but a wonderful inclusion.
Even though it's fairly readily determined, given its simplicity, it'd make me more confident in any repair or modification.
The one I have been thinking of is replacing the pump and reservoir with (a pressure reducing valve and) an electronic valve plumbed in, so that I never have to top-up, or risk the boiler running dry.
My DeLonghi has lasted 8 years so far and I didn't treat it too well. I guess I might not be an enthusiast above the level of Clooney, but this feels to me a lot like bikes and dentists :)
And Niche Zero for grinder.
Result: Waaaayyyy over the (German) limits for lead in drinking water.
I wanted to sell it but added to the post that I wanted to wait for the results, and that I would scrap it and not sell it if there was lead. There were several people who still wanted to buy it. As someone who has had to have treatment with chelators, albeit against mercury, I have seen what those academic and abstract warnings "there is no amount of lead (or mercury) that does not do damage" mean in practice: With my (university clinic researcher) doctor's consent I continued chelation far beyond any of the "limits" (i.e. when tested levels had fallen below any official limits in urine or blood I still continued, for years). It STILL had an effect, and it was recognizable in objective symptoms, not just subjective ones.
For almost 100% of people the dangers of lead (or heavy metals or environmental poisons in general) are way too abstract to be taken seriously. I've given up - actually I never really seriously tried, and if so only by short comments such as these and never to anyone in person in order to not ruin relationships - to convince anyone. Those poisons don't make you sick in small quantities, they just, very, very gradually, make you function worse. Since this is 100% correlated with aging, since it takes a long time, all those effects will a) be part of your life, you got used to it gradually, b) attributed to age. Only if you do were to do something really extreme such as what I did (had to, was forced to by circumstances) would you be able to see a difference. For what it's worth, my doctor too thinks this is vastly under-recognized and a much bigger problem than even the vast majority of doctors think. The only reason I now it was not "stress" or "age" is because a long list of quite common ailments is completely gone now, from occasional small localized short cramps to psoriasis to warts to only mention three common ones.
I would not buy that machine. There are lead-free alternatives. I have a Vibiemme Domobar (with PID). This particular machine uses copper everywhere, even all the small parts of the E61 brewing group, which I've only ever seen with brass parts everywhere else. I had its water tested too, no lead whatsoever, but elevated copper - which is a non-issue (the body has far better mechanisms to handle copper, since it's an essential metal, reflected in the official limits in drinking water, which are several orders of magnitude higher for copper).
Is this a sensible comparison to make? You will likely be drinking at most 120ml (4 shots) of rancilio espresso per day, which is around 4% of your daily ~3L recommended water intake.
How high were the results, anyway?
There is no such thing as "safe lead exposure limit".
This is a myth. You're supposed to have around 2 l of water, from all sources: meaning that you'd have to eat only freeze-dried food to actually need that much water.
Now let's suppose it dies now, it would have cost me 10 euros per year. I would have to keep a Roncilio for 64 years to get the same bang for the buck. I'm starting to think that maybe it's a volume problem, you need to make coffee for at least 10 people daily and then you might see a difference.
Also I think that living in a place where a good espresso costs less than a euro makes it kinda hard to justify a coffee machine that costs almost as much as a used car... :)
I inherited an early model one from a family and have passed it along after it’s first and only professional service ($30US). It’s made approximately 15k coffees in its time.
I'm biased because it's Australian, but I'm in love with the Breville Dual Boiler. The portafilter has non-standard dimensions which vexes me a little, but it pulls phenomenal shots; I've found the quality to be similar to the La Mazzocco GS3, while being literally one tenth the price.
Oh and the steam wand is lovely.
I had a love-hate relationship with it, the group head design was very forgiving, it required almost no technique to pull a very good shot, could be left on for a long time and be instantly ready, powerful steam, heated up fast etc. Really an ideal home machine except for being a total POS.
Every few months when I had to repair it I thought about replacing it but there really wasn't anything out there with the combination of shot quality and ease of use and small kitchen practicality. The E61 machines are large, require good technique, use a lot of water, generate a lot of heat and probably are not that much more reliable as they are also sort of craft workshop built. The Silvia is overrated and very fiddly, it can make great shots, if the stars are just so. Manual levers are fetish objects for collectors, coffee hobbyists, and masochists.
What I really wanted was a modern design built with modern processes, ie a Tesla, not a Fiat 124 Spider from the 60's.
Enter the Breville 920XL dual boiler. It makes better coffee and is even more forgiving and consistent than my old Ponte Vechio. It heats up fast and steams well. I don't love the tamper as much as my old rosewood and brass one for the Ponte Vecchio, but the magnetic tamper holder is one of those tiny details that makes me happy every shot. Two years in it's been perfect, except for just the tiniest steam wand valve leak recently. Time will tell, but since I got it at Costco, I'm out nothing if it's a problem.
The Silvia works perfectly every time. But you need to know something about making coffee i.e. roast, grind, dose, tamp, temperature, time, yield, steam, pour etc.
The Lusso and the Breville will make great shots if your grind and tamp are even close. My wife and child both could regularly make great shots after a few minutes demo with either of those. I do adjust the grinder from time to time as the coffee ages or when we get new beans, but that's it.
I don't think that would be possible with the Silvia.
Professional coffee machines are just tools. It's the barista who takes responsibility for making coffee.
You can get perfect shots every time with the Silvia. It's not difficult. You just need to understand what you're doing.
If you enjoy your Breville though, that's great!
Holy moly $7k?!
I inherited a consumer DeLonghi, that basically looks like most of their espresso machines and it's nothing like a professional machine. They use dual wall instead of single wall filter baskets, the steam wand differs a lot and my machine shoots a couple of jets of water into the coffee, preventing even extraction.
I did however happen to find beans that got decent results on that machine, so it's not like there's a strict total order of quality that leads to a one dimensional result. Professional machines are much more pleasant to work with, though.
It is. A 58mm tamper fits perfectly from memory. The early ones shipped with a weird little aluminium one that should be avoided. All the bits in them are easily replaced. My best upgrade was refitting the mesh screens screw with a nut so that you weren’t trying to unscrew it with a tiny screwdriver, upside down.
Traditionally espresso is extracted with high pressure (9 bar) water. That pressure is build on top of the coffee. When the water passes the coffee and its pressure drops it foams up. This foam is the only way most people can tell they've got an espresso and not some other coffee drink.
To be able to build up 9 bar of pressure the coffee has to be fairly fine ground and, most importantly, fresh. Most people do not want to bother with grinding coffee and buy pre-ground. Pre-ground coffee cannot build enough resistance to create any significant foam. So the appliance-level machines, targeted for pre-ground coffee, come with a valve in the portafilter after the coffee. That valve creates espresso-like foam in the resulting drink, which is not much different from a regularly brewed coffee otherwise. Using these machines with a fresh grind is also problematic - they usually miss overpressure valve before coffee and sport a standard 15-20 bar vibro pump. This results in pressure building up way above 9 bar and fracturing the coffee layer, directing all water through narrow channels and missing most of the grounds.
tl;dr it's pretty hard to make proper espresso with a Delonghi.
Espresso grind is special. It's not just fairly fine grind, it's a mix of fine, moderate and coarse grinds that are packed together. If you are to try and use just an uniformly fine grind for espresso, the machine will have very hard time extracting from it - literally a drop a second instead of a flow.
If this had been true, you could just toss coffee grounds into hot water and it would foam up.
> If you are to try and use just an uniformly fine grind for espresso, the machine will have very hard time extracting from it - literally a drop a second instead of a flow.
Really? Any uniformity in grind will block machine? Could you explain physics behind such phenomenon please?
Jeez, dude... That's EXACTLY what happens. It's called a "bloom". Here, first hit in Google - https://www.roastycoffee.com/coffee-bloom/
>Really? Any uniformity in grind will block machine? Could you explain physics behind such phenomenon please?
Yes, really. Give it a try. Better yet, read a book on a subject. Something like Blue Bottle's intro into coffee making.
I wish there were more resources dedicated to fixing stuff like this because it feels terrible to throw it away and buy a new one (especially when a new one is $1500 or more).
Here is one guide http://coffeetimex.wikidot.com/e61-group-servicing but there are also videos on youtube.
That's my problem. I have a Nuovo Era Cuadra and it was never a very popular machine.
Around 5 years ago I restored a La Pavoni Europiccola manual lever espresso machine to working order. I bought it off of a "parts only" ebay listing for $200. It turns out it just needed new grouphead and base gaskets, some rustoleum, and some simple electrical work (new power switch and thermostat). After getting over the initial learning curve, this machine has consistently given me some amazing espresso shots, all while on a tight budget.
If you're interested in seeing more of these kinds of restorations, check out these videos from the Orphan Espresso guy, who is incredibly skilled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Ymz8YJpcE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_k-08sVlPw
I love espressos, machiattos, lattes and have gotten to the point where I’m consistently producing both espresso and lattes (with art!) that I prefer to many reasonably good coffee shops.
It took me some time to learn the machine and how espresso works, but I got to geek out in the process. Highly recommended for people who are more interested in the journey than the destination.
I'll be saving for a while:
https://www.pullespressomachines.com/about.html
For the nerds on HN, the difference between a good grinder and junk is the consistency of particle size. There's an optimum particle size that will result in the greatest amount of desirable flavours being extracted; most cheaper grinders will spit out a wide gamut of particle size.
One of the most important jobs of a barista is to manage the grind fineness to optimise for the beans.
The reason that perfect espresso isn't made by a robot—the reason why the process is so variable—is because the source material (the beans) are volatile. They're constantly changing, each batch is slightly different, their properties change as they off-gas every day from when they're roasted, and they're greatly affected by storage and ambient humidity. Some of these variances can be compensated for by adjusting the grind.
It's not about grinders but it spends a few chapters on how coffee is produced and how different factors/regions can affect its flavor. It's an excellent primer on coffee in general, and of course on roasting at home (though the chapter on machines at the end is a little outdated).
In contrast, consider the Breville espresso machines. They make great coffee reportedly, but I understand they're next to impossible to service or fix yourself. I heard that a technician is required to merely clean it, much less repair it (maybe a machine owner can chime in).
So I guess you gain some and lose some with economies of scale and espresso machines.
I put the cylinder (~= group head) in the water as I bring it it up to temperature, and get extremely consistent results.
I have a PID controlled kettle, and a high end burr grinder. The setup compares favorably with high end manual machines at work.
I usually make two batches (2 double shots) with the flair, fwiw.
More often than not I'll make multiple beverages with it in a row. It's good enough that I'm frankly worried that when I finally upgrade to a proper machine it won't feel worth it. I had been looking forward to getting my fancy espresso machine eventually, so this is weirdly disappointing.
I've always liked these, but if I were to hack one up, I'd probably want to see if I can achieve higher pressures. It has a really narrow regime of operation, and it doesn't quite achieve a high enough pressure to operate with true espresso fine grind. You have to set it to a slightly coarser grind, and the result is that it makes a fairly weak shot. But it does so with great consistency.
Definitely don't buy the newer Saecos with the BMW design bullshit. They are choc full o' nutty sensors and control circuits that make me very angry. (Too many faulty sensors is a BMW specialty.)
I agree with other poster that if the grind is too fine it doesn't have the pressure to get water through it. To be fair a super fine grind and packing a shot in to the stove top unit also results in a lot of steam coming out the safety pressure release valve.
In case you're in the UK, http://www.myespresso.co.uk. (I bought mine there new, but noticed they sell parts, refurbs, etc.)