My Pavoni Stradivarius!

Evening all!

It was my annual review at work today. Loadsa prep for that and not much else done. I was excited about yoga tonight as I've not been most of the summer and I miss the brilliant Christine's teaching at Manchester Buddhist Centre. My review ran over by several hours as I was on my soap box so no way of making it into the city on time! Poo

Richie, my only follower on blip suggested that I picture my Pavoni coffee machine, so here it is.Thank goodness for digital photography! I'm still not happy with this pic but its the best outta about 30! Light was incredibly difficult due to the reflection from the chrome, I couldn't get the background right, then the cup was squint, a big finger mark.......It woulda been easier getting a decent shot of a blackbird in a coal cellar!

The Pavoni is such a stylish machine, but incredibly challenging to use. To pull a perfect espresso takes about 14 separate variables to be spot on too: quality of bean, roasting, grinder, grind, size of grind, dose, tamp, water quality, temperature, group head temperature, pull up of lever, infusion time, hand lever pressure and heating of cup. Even a small deviation may result in a sub-optimal shot and if it's a single origin bean at £8 for a bag, then errors cost a bit!

There are more consistent machines that are less dependent on operator error but they don't look as nice and you don't learn much from them!