gbuhlman's Full Review: La Pavoni Europiccola EPC-8 Espresso Machine
My wife and I spent 2 weeks in Italy this past fall with our 1 year old son. One of the most enjoyable parts of the trip for us were the prime colazioni (breakfasts) which almost all of the hotels/locande provided with the room. There were no big thermos dispensers of drip coffee. You were provided with wonderful espressi or caffe latti.
About halfway through our trip we realized that we would never be able to go back to drinking drip coffee every morning when we returned to North America. So one day while our son was taking a nap in a Milan park, I went out in search of an espresso maker.
I purchased the La Pavoni Europiccola 8-cup Lever Style Espresso machine because:
a) It looks great. The model I purchased was all all chrome with black ABS plastic handles and drip tray. (there are other models which have wooden handles, copper/brass body, black ABS plastic base, etc but the design and the inner workings are the same for all of the models.
b) It seemed to be about the simplest design that you could have for an espresso machine. It is simply a boiler tank with a piston/cylinder attached that has a lever to move the piston up and down. Since there are very few moving parts (very few parts at all), there are fewer things that can go wrong with it. And if any part does need replacing, it would be very simple to replace.
c) The manual piston design lets you control how much pressure is exerted to press the water through the coffee grounds. This means that you can control how strong the espresso shot is.
Note that since I purchased this machine in Italy, it is a 230V model. However, it is identical to the North American model except for the internal power supply.
When we got the machine home, we could not believe the amazing caffe latti that we were able to make. We had never been big fans of places like Starbucks but now that we are used to this machine, it is almost impossible for us to bring ourselves to shell out $3 for a mediocre Starbucks or Tulley's latte.
What I like about it:
It makes the best esspresso/caffe latte that I have ever had (even better than the ones we had in Italy).
It is very easy to clean because the entire surface it smooth and the drip tray removes to be cleaned separately.
Frothing milk is very easy as long as you make sure you open the steam valve completely. Initially I was having trouble getting the milk to foam because I was only opening the valve partially. This heated the milk up but tended to produce little foam.
What Could Be Better:
The machine itself is not very heavy so if you are pressing a shot using very firmly packed coffee grounds, you must hold onto the plastic knob on the top of the machine while you push the lever down or else the machine will tip forward on you. This knob gets a bit hot - not enough to burn your hand but it would be nice if you didn't have to hold onto it while pushing the lever down. There is a 16-shot version of this machine which has a boiler that is twice the size of this one. Perhaps that model would be heavy enough that this would not be a problem.
The milk frother is fairly close to the boiler of the machine which means that you need a milk jug that is shaped like a straight cylinder (i.e. not a top that tapers to a smaller diameter than the base) or else it can be difficult to get the steamer arm into your milk. It would be nice if the steamer was a bit longer and farther away from the base.
I don't like the fact that the filter holder has 1 and 2-cup coffee filters that are inserted in, but are not held in place. I wanted to purchase one of those countertop grounds containers that have a plastic or metal bar hanging across a small stainless steel bucket. Then you simply turn the filter holder upside down and bang it on the bar so that the used grounds fall into the bucket (next time you are at Starbucks, take a look at how they bang out their used grounds). But with this machine, the metal coffee filter falls out as soon as you turn the filter holder upside down which means that you have to pick up the metal coffee filter (which is very hot so first you must either let it cool or run it under cold water) and bang that on something to get the grounds out. I would much prefer if either the metal coffee filters screwed into the filter holder or if the filter holder and coffee filter was just a single unit. We have had our machine for a couple months now and we have never used the 1-cup coffee filter. I imagine most people will use one or the other most of the time, not both.
What I Have Not Tried:
I have not tried the automatic milk frother attachment. This attachment apparently lets you stick a tube directly into your milk carton and then it froths milk right into your cup. Personally, I think that frothing the milk is the best part of making a latte so I can't see why anyone would want to use this. But I guess if you don't have a jug for steaming milk in, this could be useful.
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