Indica But we all decide for ourself what value we scribe to progressively greater control over temperature and pressure at the puck.
I agree. For me this is central to making coffee. If I can’t reliably read or control temperature and pressure at the puck, what am I actually controlling?
My view on the Gaggiauino is that it’s something I could never hope to build myself, and so I’m sort of stuck with having to buy an off the shelf product. I’m sure it’s great, but am not sure why you would want a Decent if you have one and it’s already doing everything you want? If you have a friend who owns a DE1, why not take it over and do some more A:B testing?
I really like the DE1, and Decent as a company, as they have provided a platform to drive a lot of data-driven improvements to espresso we were not able to properly measure before. A large part of what I appreciate is that this innovation then fuels improvement in the DE1, which I can then purchase at a pretty low cost if I want to and upgrade my machine. I’m sure the Gaggiauino can also be upgraded, but it would seem as though R&D would have to be driven by the user. I also like the iterative improvements in pressure and flow profiles, and creation of new ones. Happily I don’t need to think about this stuff, I can just download them to my tablet and use them if I want to thanks to Visualiser.
It would be difficult to say whether there are any technical benefits or taste benefits in using a DE1 over a Gaggiauino. I would expect there to be, as they have an entire R&D department at their disposal, but I imagine that’s just my bias at play. I’m happy with my DE1 as I like how it makes coffee, and I like how easy it is to use, troubleshoot and look at. I also really like the community around Decent. They seem like nice people, who are genuinely interested in making coffee better.
