Santa brought me some AA from coffee casuals and a gift box from devine coffee.

Got plenty to go at now

Decent De1pro v1.45 - Niche Duo - Niche Zero - Decent is the best machine ever made -

Well, it arrived today nearly giving our post lady a hernia. When unboxing, I could see everything was either in its plastic bag packaging taped up, or the boxes still sealed. The chap who was given it as a gift and sold it, just didn’t want it full stop, so had never even bothered to open it. Both the coffee machine and grinder haven’t even seen or smelt a bean, let alone touched one.

I know it’s not many people’s first or even last choice, but as I’ve said before, for me it is a major step up from my very old Gaggia. Plus, at the price being offered and now I’ve sold the Gaggia, it was a steal.

With the tweakability this machine offeres, maybe now I will be able to give my taste buds a reprieve and get to appreciate the nuances offered by some great coffee beans out there.

13 days later

An Ito/Leva kit, arrived today. Everything I need to turn my Rancilio Silvia into a poor(ish) man’s Decent espresso machine.

Essentially it’s a micro processor that will give PID control, pressure profiling, controlled dosing (by volume using a flow meter, or by weight if you have a Bluetooth scale), real time monitoring on a computer or tablet etc.

I got it mainly because I enjoy playing around with these sort of things. It’s not cheap, especially with post Brexit import duty, but it’s the most complete package I’ve seen. You also need to be happy to open up and rewire/replumb your machine.

I’ll take some photos and post a thread on the build so others can see, as there isn’t much info on this on English speaking forums (it’s popular in Germany, with lots of discussion on Kaffe-Netz)

It will be interesting to see.

Will you do a step by step of the build ?

@“Elcarajillo” I’ll definitely document my build so that people get a sense of what’s involved and how it works, and a bit of a review on the features as I learn to use them, but it won’t be a step by step guide.

The installation guides on their website are pretty comprehensive (see: http://projectcaffe.bplaced.net/index.html) and should be sufficient for anyone who has enough electronics knowledge to do this safely. I wouldn’t want to do a step by step and have someone follow it blindly and electrocute themselves. While you would hope manufacturers wire things the same I know this isn’t true. For example in my Silvia it is the neutral side of the circuit that is routed through the thermostats, rather than the live (which is what the standard wiring diagram shows). This doesn’t matter, and it works but if you just connected things up based on what you expect you could easily short circuit something.

Thank you for the post , look forward to reading it

This just came in the post in a squashed box (almost 3 months after ordering it; I thought I will never see it):

Went over to the Niche to try, pushed a couple of times and was quite amazed to see how much still came out (after my morning rocking the grinder and clacking the cover routine):

Measured it out and it was 0.5-0.6 grams:

Seems it is going to be a keeper:

Elcarajillo Is that a milk expressor ?☺

Description says it’s a “Silicone Sputum Spitting Cup Baby Phlegm Cup”. Maybe it means something to other people. For me it’s a Niche bellow. :-)