Back in 2000, I went on holiday to Torquay, which is a canny drive from Newcastle! At the time, I am embarrassed to admit I was a Birds Mellow Man. On the journey down, I used to stop and dispatch the kids into the service station shop where they always had a BTC of some sort. They would come out brandishing 2 large take away cups of some milk based beverage for me. I thought it was delicious! So, on return, I started to ask around on the internal forum at work, and people suggested things like Delonghi machines and the like. Somehow, I found my way to a Gaggia seller somewhere near Leeds that was one how authorised by Gaggia to refurb all of their products. Money was tight in those days and the next problem was how to get a £150 purchase past the Mrs! I solved that and soon had a Classic with a plastic tamper. I used to buy tins of Illy thinking I was somehow superior to everyone else now! I then spoke to a friend at work without knowing that he was another coffee buff. He told me I had to get a grinder now…….more expense! Luckily it was Christmas and Santa brought me his recommendation, a Starbucks burr grinder costing circa £40. Now there was no stopping me. At the same time I got a proper tamper (or so I thought). Illy ground became Illy tins of roasted beans. I was in seventh heaven! His next suggestion was to research coffee roasters and with his help I started buying a kilo of roasted beans from Bay, called Bella Roma. Soon I found @"DavecUK"#1 first coffee forum, then the fun started. I bought a Fracino Heavenly and a Cunhill Tranquilo! But that is the door to further stories! So, come on. Tell us in as much detail as you like, how you got into espresso based drinks and what your early kit was……and no lying!

I do not remember the name. It was one of the unknowns and not a popular brand costing £75-£80ish machine from Amazon. Used it with a Braun coffee grinder. We have a had a few of those unknown brands until I stopped buying cheaper ones when the last one broke in Oct 2020. Then the beautiful Evo happened!

Many years ago I was looking at Gaggia coffee machines in the Trafford Centre. The young salesman (I'm almost convinced it was James Hoffmann) made me an excellent cup of coffee and we chatted until my wife returned. I wanted a Classic but it was far too expensive for us with four kids to feed. The following Christmas my wife bought me a Gran Gaggia from a local kitchen shop, it came with a bag of ESE pods and a free set of illy espresso cups and saucers on a rack. When the pods ran out I bought a bag of Lavazza pre ground. Couldn't make coffee to save my life. The machine only came out of storage occasionally. Finally, when the internet arrived I learnt about grind size, pressures and timing etc, I got the machine out once more only to discover it was totally seized up and full of corrosion. It went in the scrap and I continued with stovetop moka pots. I still have the cups and saucers!

I started off as a teenager in the 90s with what might have been a Russell and Hobs machine. Pre ground coffee went in but it didn’t really matter by the time I steamed my milk and put 2 tons of sugar in it. When I left home I got a Gran Gaggia in a sale and received a blade grinder as a Christmas present one year. Unsurprisingly I never made anything that good and being in London, surrounded by coffee shops, I stopped making coffee at home. Like a lot of people I got a Nespresso machine when they came out and used that for a few years before reading forums online and deciding I needed a new hobby and a decent set up. 6 years ago I took the plunge and bought a Pavoni Euro and a La Cimbali Magnum. The Cimbali was swapped for the Niche when they launched and I have since acquired and restored a few more Pavonis.

My start was with a small Krups coffee maker, the most simple one that allowed me to froth milk and prepare cappuccinos. This happened in the early 1994. It was only ground coffee for quite some time. A few years later I came across a Saeco Via Veneto de Lux combo machine. It is needless to say that I have never managed to get good grind with the grinder but back then a separate grinder was not an option. In 2007 I joined the toomuchcoffee forum and managed to buy a Fracino Heavenly combined with a Cunill grinder. For the first time I could see the importance of the grinder however imperfect some might find the Cunill (it did the job for me). Appetite comes with eating and things have quickly developed since. One thing I have realised over the years is that the people participating in the coffee forums are quite special breed, helpful, inspiring and good willing. There are not that many places on the net where one can go and share and get help. When I saw the title of the thread I thought that as a subtitle it could read: "we have all sinned" 😊, i.e. Krups, DeLonghi (no offence intended to owners), the list can be continued.

my first bit of coffee kit was a plastic Melitta pour over cone some 43 years ago, and I still have it today!

My first coffee set up, which wasn’t an espresso set up, is the Indian filter, which I had purchased 30 years ago. We still have it and is in use.

many years ago, I sent you a small Vietnamese filter thing. It came in several parts and sat on a cup. Did you ever try it?

@"dfk41"#p2196 I did…it sort of worked so well, I gave it to someone who liked it and promised they would use it. It's called "forwardcycling"….I just made that term up actually

40 something years ago it was a French Press. Espresso started in 2003 with a Sunbeam EM7000 which, wonder of wonders, could pour coffee and steam milk at the same time. Honest to God, I thought it must surely be the best espresso machine on planet earth.

I was basically into cafetiere coffee first, but met a fellow contractor who introduced me to Aeropress and the other forum. About the same time, my landlady was given a combination drip/espresso thing which had a steam wand. She only ever used the drip side and I used the espresso side. When I moved out she gave me a little Krups thing that looked like the aliens off the Smash fake mashed potato granules advert! That was technically my first "espresso" machine. Having found the forum I quickly got a Gaggia Classic with PID and an Iberital MC2. A visit to Dave's resulted in a grinder upgrade closely followed by me 'helping to declutter the garage' by purchasing the R58 he'd reviewed. Happy to report that it has done me proud and is still doing so.

What was your first piece of espresso kit

mathof2

La Pavoni Europiccola in 1999, from John Lewis. I chose it because I liked the old-fashioned appearance and the thought that there was less that could go wrong with it than a pump machine. I was lucky because, as everyone here knows, once you figure them out these machines make excellent espresso.

DavecUK

HensTeeth If you discount a small Bodum cafetière (which I still have, though possibly not the same glass), my first espresso machine, which I still have, was a Gaggia Baby Millennium. 21 years old this year - I’ll never part with it. Knowing nothing much at all at the time, I bought a Gaggia grinder to go with it, and even with Illy beans, it barely any better than the Illy ground, which was a bit disappointing.

I think 21 years ago, we had very limited choice in this country, It was pretty much a Gaggia or a Gaggia and they were expensive (or seemed so). Things have really changed. Welcome to the forum as well, hope you have a good time here.

Elcarajillo

Pompeyexile what is the new machine ? or have you already said and I missed it

dfk41

The usual route for me! Gaggia Classic……no grinder……tins of Illy until I bought a Starbucks burr grinder for £45! I then joined Dave’s original forum, upgraded to a Fraction Heavenly with a Cunhill Tranquilo (I started the concept on CFUK of pay it forward by giving it to a chap who subsequently turned out to be a roaster who then sold it on Ebay, but we caught him out!) and have never looked back since!

JonC

A Gaggia Coffee was my first bit of kit, probably 15 years ago. Picked it up 2nd hand someplace and it needed a good descale, then upgraded to a Classic that needed some TLC but was cheap. Fitted a PID to that and have used it for 5 years. I did get a RR45 grinder fairly early on and converted that to a smaller hopper and got rid of the doser.

logjames

Doram

Hahaha…I had the same Krups…it was awful

Krups Steam “espresso” machine (4-5 years) -> Krups XP4000 (5 years) -> Gaggia Classic (10 years)-> Lelit MaraX coming up on one year

The Krups machines were gifts

Grinders

Bodum -> some grind disc “Burr” grinder -> Krups Bur Grinder -> Capresso Infinity Grinder -> Baratza Vario-W -> Eureka Mignon XL

I bought the Baratza shortly after getting the Gaggia when I realized I needed a real grinder to use a real portafilter basket.

dndrich

My wife has to have her daily latte. When the pandemic hit going out was basically gone. So, I did a bit of research and bought a Breville Barista Express, and learned to be my own barista. The machine does a very respectable job for the price. It has been completely reliable. It is well designed, easy to use, and has lots of nice features with the programming, maintenance, back-flushing, decalcify modes, filters…

It has been terrific for what it is. But, it was time to up my game, so I recently bought a Niche Zero and a Lelit Elizabeth. I plan to give the Express away to my office administrator, along with some basic lessons. The Express was definitely a great place to start.

SiblingChris

I acquired my mum’s stove top percolator. It was typical 70s vibe, ceramic outside but with metal base and interior parts, I used to love the way it gurgled away and you’d see the coffee bubble up in the glass lid. It got me though my degrees’s exams but unfortunately eventually the ceramics went crazy, then cracked and came apart.

This is an electric version but it kind of looked like this, it was similar style glaze but brown with square shapes. My mum still has the coffee mugs, milk jug and sugar bowl that came with it.it was the size of a large jug kettle, maybe a little bit bigger.

nickr

Like many others, I started of with a Krupps. I quickly realised that the more coffee I could get in the basket the better. I found Lavazza coffee to be the most finely ground. With a full body weight tamp, locked and loaded, it was a dangerous machine. My wife and son cowered in the far corner of the kitchen every time I fired it up. I then bought a Dualit, my choice was made purely on looks - it was terrible, really couldn’t take a full basket of Lavazza and a heavy tamp, leaked everywhere. I took it back to John Lewis - for more or less the same price I had a choice of a Pavoni or a Silvia. I brought the Pavoni and a Rocky. I few years later, I brought a Gaggia Classic for £10 from a car boot sale. I was horrified to find that it was far easier to produce good espresso than the Pavoni - rubbish at steaming though. Eventually I sold both of these and brought a Quickmill Andreja, I’m afraid this was again brought entirely on looks. It had the wonderful property of every cup of coffee tasting entirely different, non of it terrible. I realised that HX machines take a lot of skill to produce consistent coffee. Next I brought an L1, which I still have, and am still happy with. In the words of a friend of mine “It will see you out”, but perhaps I will get bored with it before then.

Systemic

Began with a cafetiere drinking very dark stuff - Sumatra and Java. First espresso machine was a Classic paired with a Dualit grinder and Monsoon Malabar beans. Had that set up for many years and put one in my office which made me quite popular. Briefly moved on to a Silvia before settling on a lever machine - Mk I Londinium which was a light and day step up. Grinder was a Vario which did not impress and didn’t last long before needing major surgery (PCB replacement).

Was intrigued with Matt Perger’s 2013 WBC performance which saw him use a 1980’s bag grinder to wow the judges. Thought he was onto something so I bought an EK 43 - everyone thought I was mad. It was huge, noisy and with coffee burrs fitted couldn’t grind fine enough for espresso with light roasts. So I changed the burss to Turkish and from there on in everything was fine. I could switch from pour over grind to espresso with no fuss and the coffee was great.

Moved on from the LI to the Londinium R when it came out. With the L1, PI was set to 1.5bar whereas the LR was factory set to 3bar with the option to after fit a module that allowed the user to vary PI from 0-6bar. Decided against it as the upgrade was very expensive and I wasn’t convinced it would make a lot of difference. I felt there was more potential to get more out of the bean by looking at other lever options - was lucky to get on board with the ACS Evo whilst it was in design and testing stages thanks to @DavecUK and got my Evo March 2021. While, for me, the LR was very good, the Evo has taken espresso a noticeable step further. So I don’t anticipate any changes in the future, or at least, hope not.

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