9 days later

Hi everyone….New to this forum, was on previous. (I think my forum claim to fame (in my mind) was being one of the first to discover the bad magnet issue on the Vesuvius). Still with Vesuvius and a drawer full of spares.

    Hi! Just noticed the introductions thread. Some time ago I didn’t drink coffee at all, and I felt fine. Over time, things have changed, and I noticed that I drink coffee every day, and even several times a day! In this regard, I am just discovering the coffee world, and I came here so that more experienced guys would help me on this journey. All coffee!

    Morning All! I’m Lee from Foundry Coffee. I used to be fairly active on the other forum, around 2014-ish for a few years. As the business demanded more and more from me, it became a bit difficult to sustain. The forum changed hands at some point and the new owners wanted to more than triple our advertising cost, so the whole thing was no longer viable for us.

    There are plenty of people that we still have contact with from those days, and I’m sure some of you are in here! I’ve really missed the community and was pretty excited yesterday to find this place, which seems like it wants to recreate the best elements of what went before.

    I’m not here to sell stuff, so it’s nice to see the non-commercial element. I’m here to share what I know if anyone is interested and to learn from you all too. Looking forward to getting reacquainted with old friends and meeting new ones.

      LeefromFoundryCR Welcome to the forum Lee. We are glad to see you here! I did post the details of our forum to you when we were chatting about your coffee. I enjoyed some of your coffee in recent times!

          LMSC ah, ok - thanks for that. I completely had no idea about how the whole forum scene has changed, it’s barely recognisable. I suspect I missed the nuance in what you were saying. Glad to have found you all now though! The design of this site seems a lot better too, so hopefully a bit easier to use and find my way around.

            8 days later

            I wondered where everyone had gone from the other place and why it had been moved from the flat Xenforo to a commercial flavour!

            Currently using a Sage DTP and Mingon, but looking to upgrade soon…

              Raziel Currently using a Sage DTP and Mingon, but looking to upgrade soon…

              Please tell us more - what’s the issues are with the current set up?; what do you drink?; how many cups a day; water; budget for machine, grinder, and water (if required); and, please don’t forget accessories.

              Btw, welcome to our forum!

                  LMSC

                  Cheers for the welcome!

                  I’m fairly happy with the setup, the espresso machine less so.

                  I normally have milk based drinks, ~150ml sized so probably in the “cortado” range I guess. I use Waitrose or Tesco bottled water. 4-6 drinks (double shots) a day in the household typically.

                  The main issue is that the machine takes godamn ages to get to temp for steam and to do the milk. So if I have 5 people around who all want a latte it is beyond tedious!

                  Shout out to my local roastery Roasting Party who I am using at the moment for beans.

                  Budget is going to have to stretch as prices for all things have gone silly in the last four years. Can easily stretch to ~1.5k

                      Raziel Can easily stretch to ~1.5k

                      Is that for espresso machine only?

                          There is a compact and a quiet Liz dual-boiler available here for sale priced at £900 with warranty here ! This will save you some cash to get a Niche priced at £500.

                          You said 5 people want latte. Assuming, they are going to be back to back shots, @MediumRoastSteam, who has one, can advise if it will serve your purpose. I can’t judge as I haven’t used that machine.

                          The ACS minima is a very good machine and will serve you very well. It is a bit noisier than Liz, packs with tons of features, you can add a paddle later and I think it will cost you about £1400 direct from ACS; and, they will advise you the actual cost to you before VAT and duties. If you are going to write to ACS, please ask them the cost of ACS Vesuvius. It might not be significantly different from Bianca.

                          If you are happy to stretch another £400, Bianca would be a great choice.

                          These costs do not include the costs of a grinder or water.

                          Edit :

                          I won’t put bottled water on a new machine, as I won’t feel comfortable. The mineralised (bicarb) Zero Water would be the bare minimum for me.

                            @Raziel - The Elizabeth should cope with it just fine. It’s not my experience as I don’t make that many drinks in one go, but on the few occasions I have, the machine was ready by the time I finished grinding.

                            There was a forum member here, a while back who bought an Elizabeth for making coffee for the family in the morning. I think it was 5 in total. He said the machine was copying with the routine without issues.

                            i have done 6 flat whites at most back to back and it was all fine.

                            Mind you i was weighing beans in between shots so dont know how that would be with an on demand grinder. But i guess still shouldnt be a problem.

                            Raziel Welcome to the forum. CFUK was sold by 2 consecutive owners who each made 30K profit (plus money during their ownership). It used to run on Invision but the last buyer was Verticalscope a Canadian corporate that buys forums mo monetise the shit out of them. Xenforo is their cookie cutter forum software used on all forums.

                            So we all came here, sick of being monetised for profit of a single individual. You can read all about it in the “new” drop-down.

                            Sure you will get lots of advice for a new machine…we love spending people’s money 🤑 for them. Check out the classifieds some nice used kit there!

                            Contact me

                              Yeah I’ve worked on forum based communities with top Google rankings and millions of posts a few times and had these offers come in. We always took it that it costs maybe £20-100 a month to keep the bytes running (pocket change) but that the pay off for the huge amount of time we sank into those communities was the community itself, which would inevitably die once transferred.

                              Anyhoo…glad to be here. Wife will be thrilled at me spending more money and spending more time faffing with equipment. :D