Stainless Steel or Copper Boilers ?

mikegm

I have at present a ECM V Slim, approx 1 year old. S/Steel boiler. I use Cafiza for descaling/backflush. I have a buyer for my machine, (if I decide to sell) and have been looking at the Bezzera Magica PID.(or Profitec 500 pid) This [bezzera] has a Copper boiler. I have seen a thread considering pro’s & cons for both materials. Learnt today that Copper boilers are sometimes coated with T.E.A….am worried about Copper leaching & copper tainting the espresso. Would sticking with Stainless Steel be a safer bet? Thanks…..Mike

MediumRoastSteam

mikegm if I were buying a new machine, I would want to buy something which tick the boxes I want. You are obviously worried about copper/brass boilers, so would make sense to buy a machine that has SS boilers - at least you’ll not worry about it and it won’t be at the back of your mind.

DavecUK

Copper is OK once it gets a light coating of scale re taste. It’s inherently antibacterial, if a machine is left unused. 316L stainless is super convenient and soon sterilises on heating.

I wouldn’t personally worry about health risks from copper

mikegm

Thanks everyone. I do still love my ECM slim, & probably keep it. You know how it is, we read these things & suddenly need to investigate further!!

MediumRoastSteam

According to Londinium, copper is king:

https://londiniumespresso.com/blog/news/3443/copper-the-perfect-boiler-material

Platypus

MediumRoastSteam seems strange to me to write about copper being superior as a boiler material , highlight all of the advantages over steel but then go on to say they won’t be using it for the Vectis?

dfk41

MediumRoastSteam Londinium have absolutely no choice in the matter. Fracino supply their parts and assemble the machines, so the pecking order suggests that Londinium do exactly what Fracino tell them. This is not a good arrangement. Very recently, a good friend needed a Gicar box so visited the Londiddly website, identified the part and ordered it. What tuned up was nothing like the picture and was much larger. It transpired that Fracino had decided not to order any more and to change it for one which suited their machines. They had not bother to tell Londinium of course…….how embarrassing! It also throws up the question as to exactly what and how many parts the Londinium range use that are actually bog standard parts as opposed to “special” parts. Gicar boxes that are customised have “00” at the end of the parts code. The ones of the Diddly website certainly do not!

CoyoteOldMan

MediumRoastSteam According to Londinium, copper is king:

There’s quite a lot that is true - and quite a lot that is false or omitted in that blog post. For example, conveniently neglecting that copper salts can be highly poisonous (which is one reason why all copper pans meant to be used with acidic food and/or relatively high temperatures are tinned, silvered or lined with other materials). Super-high thermal conductivity is rather pointless when the majority of the thermal mass and surface/volume is water (conductivity 0.6 W/m·K vs. 400 W/m·K for copper and 16 for steel), and it’s not good for energy dispersion - a non-insulated copper boiler will conduct heat well “outwards” as much as “inwards” (in fact more, as there is an endless supply of cool air…). Electrical conductivity is irrelevant for the use case. Copper does work- (and age-) harden much more than steel, although it is more thermally stable, and it’s very soft, so mechanically it’s not very durable (ever wonder why bronze was invented?).

Don’t get me wrong - copper is a fine material for a boiler, but it’s not perfect, just like stainless steel. I’d rather see an objective discussion of the merits of both, and a conclusion that for this and that trade-off we decided to go with X rather than Y, instead than a paean to the virtues of copper followed by ‘this wonder material is so expensive that we decided to use something else instead’ - without then saying what that “something else” is. Given the choices available, and the time spent rubbishing stainless steel (which is also relatively expensive, BTW: 316 is 80% of the cost of copper), I can only assume that the boilers will be in brass, or plastic.

TL; DR: Bah, humbug. 😉

LMSC The L being such a big brand, why they aren’t sourcing their own supplies and assembling like some others do.

I suspect they aren’t quite as big as their share-of-voice may make them seem. Production volumes will be in the few hundreds per year, which is probably not enough for them to get much customisation… especially since there doesn’t seem to be a lot of leverage of components across models

LMSC

dfk41 The L being such a big brand, why they aren’t sourcing their own supplies and assembling like some others do. This gives control over what one needs for their business. This should have been the foundation of any manufacturing process. I can understand the supply-side arrangements.

dfk41

LMSC Londinium piggy back Fracino, as one is in Birmingham and the other New Zealand. I seriously doubt they sell enough equipment to warrant having their own factory. In their hey day they might have come close but with the emergence of a range of machines from modern manufacturers who have incorporated modern technologies, the old brand stuff the peddle only appeals to some.