What's the difference between the Slayer paddle and La Marzocco paddle?
My understanding is that there is only one difference. With the Slayer you can set the actual
preinfusion pressure by taking the top off the machine and turning a small valve that is next to that group heads brew boiler. With the La Marzocco, the preinfusion pressure is preset by your water main pressure. It should be possible to put a pressure regulator on the mains pressure to achieve the same result with the La Marzocco. Not only that but the regulator could be easily accessible without having to take the top off the machine.
Has anyone have any experience with these paddle groups?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Wes Russell on
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When we were researching locations for our new shop, we would go to all the nearest shops and order a couple of drinks to see where they were on quality. One of the shops closest to our new shop is a Stumptown account and had clearly done the training. However the dangers of only having a rudimentary understanding of how their 2 group EE Linea worked quickly made itself apparent. While pulling the first shot, which I was so lucky to get, the barista decided to let the second group get a full 45 second flush. This lowered the pressure enough on the first group head enough that my shot took about a minute to pull. I know she thought she was doing a good job and I felt so guilty putting the drink in the bus bin after only taking a couple of sips.
So I suppose the moral of my story is that that no matter what trickery you use to pre-infuse on multiple groupheads, You can't do any kind of flush, which many feel is a mandatory stage in the process to maintain heat stability.
The point of my original topic was aimed at some of the articles of late that have been referring to the Slayer as a "4th wave machine" and whether there was any true merit to this claim or whether it's just
just Slayer marketing voodoo. One thing that has made me skeptical is that Slayer has very little technical
information on their website as to what they are doing differently. For along time I thought their machine
was a fully pressure regulating type like the Strada. However, it appears that it offers nothing different then
the Marzocco. And with a little tweaking, it may be possible to have a marzocco setup with an easily accessible pump and regulator that makes adjusting pre-infusion pressure easier.
This isn't saying that the Slayer doesn't make great drinks, I've just had to ask myself as a new coffee shop owner,
what am I really getting with a machine that is new to the market and has very little field testing.
Bryan Wray said:Alright, not to come off as the biggest d!ck on the site, but seriously guys...?
You use one pump to create pressure... then you give the pressure a place to escape... why wouldn't it be common sense that the pressure would drop as it spreads out into the new place? I thought everyone knew this?
*If you have one pump, you should either be engaging groups simultaneously or running one and then running the other.*
The difference probably isn't drastic, but neither is the difference between a 200F shot and a 199.2 shot, yet we still freak out about temperature stability, this should be no different.
====>WES<====
Sorry your thread has gotten so far off topic. Do you still have questions at all? Any new ones creep in?
-bry
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Permalink Reply by Ryan Soeder on
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I apologize for still being a bit off topic but I just came across a coffeed.com thread that hits on some of this stuff. A little basic, a little helpful.
Water Pressure Regulator Tips
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Permalink Reply by Fraser Jamieson on
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Don't worry Bryan we know you're a little d!ck. ;)
But as someone pointed out already, you wouldn't be foolish for thinking that a $12,000.00 machine had pressure regulators working on its pressure lines.
There are many hydraulic operated machines used in factories and on construction sites which don't change their motion speed when performing two funcitons at once. I know that's a different application, but it does relate.
Honestly, I was never taught anything about pressure drops and only learned by watching what the machine was doing and what my coffee looked like.
OK, I'm out of here and off to the cafe. Bryan has all night to think up something smart to get back at me!
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Permalink Reply by Brady on
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Honestly hadn't given this much thought. Wow.
I guess the question becomes this:
If you have a large volume of water at 9 bars of pressure with flow through one pinhole, then you open a second pinhole, what is the impact on the pressure downstream of the first pinhole?
I'd imagine that systems employing smaller gigulars would see less of an effect?
You'd probably get different behavior on a 2-boiler machine than you would on an hx.
Surely someone has some pressure profile plots showing this effect (Dr. Schecter, perhaps?) ... maybe I'll go looking for them later.
Interesting digression, btw.
BTW, on what planet is a 45 second flush EVER ok?
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Permalink Reply by James Liu on
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I think if you're running two shots not-quite simultaneously, shutting off the first shot will also have an affect on the pressure of the second shot as well. Somebody want to Scase-2 this and tell me if I'm right or wrong?
That said, one group machines are probably too small.* You want to be able to start one shot, clean around your area, and then grind dose and tamp the next shot as you're watching your first shot, just in time to stop that shot and start the next one. A two group is almost perfect.
Three groups is nice if you can control the temperatures of the groups independently, and want to have a grinder with a different espresso. Set one group to a different temperature... Just be sure to rotate daily which group that is.
Four groups is nice if you can find the counter space and an old Starbucks Linea 4 group for cheap, but otherwise I don't see much of a purpose.
Bry: Also, it turns out that it's sometimes possible to turn on the solenoid without activating the pump using the Linea rocker switch. (If you have a gicleur installed, all bets are off). This works on groups 1,2 & 4 of my shop's Linea 4. Be gentle with the switch, and move it slowly and you'll hear a click and water will start flowing. You can activate the pump by activating the switch all the way. It's kind of useless in practice since finding that position takes some time, and your puck is just sitting there heating away... But if you find a clever electrician, you can use one of those buttons on the control panel to just activate the solenoid. After all, you didn't rip out that auto control panel, right? You just kind of ignore its presence.
And for the record, I think the Slayer's killer feature is the mirror on the back of the drip tray that lets you see the bottom of your portafilter from standing.
*If that one-group happens to be a (paddle) Speedster, I'm not going to say no to it. I guess I'll just have to learn to control workflow and move my hands and feet faster to get drinks out in a reasonable time frame.
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James Liu said:You want to be able to start one shot, clean around your area, and then grind dose and tamp the next shot as you're watching your first shot, just in time to stop that shot and start the next one. A two group is almost perfect.
Maybe if you need to do two shots - Simul-spro? Grind, dose, and tamp PF#1, park it. Grind, dose, and tamp PF#2. Load both, then start both at the same time.
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That's been my procedure for a while. But I almost never need simulshots.
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Wray on
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"Fourth Wave"
Damn it... really? We're going to have a 4th wave? Can't we just call it "caring a whole ton about promoting quality coffee and quality service"?
Oooo... I'm on the edge of my seat to know what all of the tiny little details of how the fourth wave will differ from the third!
Sorry, I just hate the wave terminology...
@Frasier: You also wouldn't be foolish for thinking your space age Prius could stop when you needed it to, but... well... yeah I guess that one is a little different too isn't it. I dunno... watch your gauges guys, that's why they are there. Sure they aren't the most accurate things in the world, but they also aren't generally 3 bars off (referring to the drop from 9 bars to 6). It's like putting a PID on a machine and never watching the boiler cycle to know when temp is coming up, or on it's way up but about to drop hard, etc. It pays to pay attention.
Most important thing since my last post is EXACTLY what Brady said.... WHAAAAAT THE %^&$!!! A 45 second flush? Good lord you don't have to preheat the drip tray, hun! I don't even want to dream how long recovery would take... 4 minutes? More? I know I always feel like a dumb@$$ when I accidentally let it run for like 10 seconds, knowing I'm going to frustrate the customer (and myself) while I add like 1:30-2:00 to the drink time while we wait for the boiler temp to stabilize again (for those of you not familiar with a 4G EE specifically, they drop boiler temp very quickly verses a 3 group).
I'm going to play with this some in the morning... I think I'll probably lose interest after like 4 shots to be honest, just because of how impractical it is on a working bar, but I figure the grind will probably be tight anyhow, so might as well see what I can do before the open sign goes on.
-bry
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After work tonight I tested our machine by running two doubles at the same time. The gauge dropped from 9.25 to 7 bar.
Neither espresso even looked good to me.
Like Bryan said: Watch the gauges. That's why they're there.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Sabol on
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Fraser and Bry - I think you might have a flow restriction on your machine. Have you checked the water filters lately? I've worked on many a four group Linea and they don't drop pressure that drasticly unless they're having trouble getting water from the wall. There are some inlet filter screens that can get crap in them too.
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Good point.
My hands are tied though; I just work there, if you know what I mean. And trust me: I'm the only one there who drinks espresso so I'm the only one there who cares what it tastes like.
For the record, the machine I'm talking about is a VFA Expres single boiler, single pump two head machine using heat exchangers for the heads and for the infusion tap. It's not boiler water which comes out of the tap, and if you try opening it while running a shot it will confused the flow meter and shut down early if on automatic. Though there are clearly two flow meters on the machine I'm guessing by the way it performs that the pressure is ganged through a common manifold. I'm not actually sure about that but that's how it behaves.
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Mike, every shop I have ever worked in and every machine I have ever worked on that was running off of one pump has had this issue. It's a point blank fact the same way that running 2 gallons of water through the machine is going to drop the boiler temperature. It's just *going* to happen. Sure I have also worked on 3 group machines that had 3 pumps and nothing ever bumped the pressure around, but not on one pump machines.
Just for clarity, our newest location (the one with the 4EE) has been open for not quite 4 months. Mains pressure is absolutely fine. I saw the brand new Mavea filter (C300) get installed into the line. Not only is the filter new, the entire line is only 4 months old. I am not totally sure of our current bypass percentage, but I do know that the filter has had MAYBE 30 gallons go through it (and it's rated for about 1100 gallons, depending on your bypass). It's not anything to do with restriction in the filter.
At our other location we have a 3EE and it behaves exactly the same way. Before moving, back in Michigan, I worked on an old NS Program Plus VIP and it behaved the same way. Before that a Faema that behaved similarly. Before that a different Faema that was on a brand new line and filter that behaved the same. Before that a La Cimbali, before that before that before that...
It's a simple fact that when you build pressure and then create an escape chamber, the pressure is going to drop in the original chamber as it expands into the next. Even if the pressure quickly builds back up it's going to have to drop. This can be seen by running this test with blind filters inserted instead of normal baskets.
I'm sure there is a chance that you worked on machines that didn't drop 3 bars when the second group started up, but the pressure did have a substantial drop, whether you noticed it or not.
-bry
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