I’m a little irritated by Lance Hendrick’s casual mention in his review that the Vostok operates at a peak pressure of around 9.5 bar. Given that the machine has two springs, this would be a bit surprising, especially as I was told otherwise by someone from ACS, but I must have simply misunderstood Lance’s review. After all, it also depends on the density of the puck, as the machine does not always reach maximum pressure.
I also read in another thread that the Vesuvius Evo Leva operates at 11 bar. So I assume the Vostok uses the same springs.
This was just something that puzzled me because I started to wonder why the spring pressure of home lever machines is usually lower than that of commercial lever machines, or am I misinformed?
As far as I know, a commercial LSM group uses a spring with a max pressure of 11 bar, so the question that comes to mind is why do home lever machines operate at a maximum of around 9 bar?
It probably has nothing to do with that, but could it be because traditional commercial lever machines were designed for much darker roasts? There was no market for light roasts back then. Or am I completely off the track here with my wild conspiracy theories?
I could not test this with my hand lever machine as it does not have a pressure gauge. However, my experiences with pressure profiling show no better results with a higher pressure for dark roasts, but that does not mean that this is not the case for actual lever machines. As we all know, the world of lever machines is a mystery in many aspects.
