Welcome to another episode of
The Classics of Coffee series
where we kind of look at different, almost legendary items,
bits of kit from coffee.
And today one, I think, well deserving of this place
is the La Pavoni Europiccola.
It is a home lever machine, and it is absolutely iconic
in the coffee industry.
It's lasted a long time too.
Pavoni produced their first units in 1961.
So it's coming up on 60 years old.
I have no idea how many Pavoni have sold.
It must be thousands upon thousands.
They're just everywhere.
And people love them.
And for good reason.
You could argue it achieved true legendary status in 1973
when it appeared in a James Bond film,
but the quality of espresso that Roger Moore brews
might make him the worst Bond.
Let's not get into that right now.
Let's talk about this thing here.
The way that they work hasn't really changed
in nearly 60 years, the design is very simple, very elegant.
There have been improvements to componentry
and bits and pieces, but they look very, very similar
to the day that they started producing them.
In fact, this particular unit was made in 1997,
which is kind of interesting.
I thought for Classics of Coffee, get a classic version.
And '97 doesn't feel that long ago
but it's also 23 years ago
which I don't wanna think about too much anymore.
The way they work is very simple.
They have a large tank at the back.
You just unscrew this thing to get inside
and you just pour your water in and seal it up.
You have on the side here,
and I think they appeared relatively early on though,
the first machines didn't have them,
is a fill level gauge
so you can see how much water is inside the boiler.
So you know if there's enough there,
or you're running out,
or you need to refill it,
or you probably shouldn't use it
without filling it up first.
Once you turn this on
there's a little element in the bottom here
and it boils like a kettle.
It's about 1000 Watts
and it will boil the water in here.
And once it reaches the desired temperature and pressure
it will stop heating.
So here's your reservoir of boiling water.
Inside there's a little tube
that runs from down quite low in the boiler,
up through into the grouphead here.
And no water can escape because there's a piston in the way.
And the way that these things work is when you lift this up,
the piston goes up as well,
exposing the exit of the little tube in here,
meaning water can fill the chamber above the coffee
to the piston.
That's the water that when you press,
you're then driving through the coffee, very simple.
If you press with about 20 kilos of force,
you'll get about nine bars of pressure
in this particular grouphead.
And you will see that many of these groupheads
are a little bit smaller,
the bottom filter baskets are a little bit smaller
just to allow easier execution of pressure across it.
The bigger the surface area,
the harder it is to generate 130 pounds of force
per square inch.
That's really important.
Now because you have boiling water,
and you've got steam trapped
generating some pressure in here.
And on the side here, you've got a steam wand
and a little steam valve to control that.
So you just open and close the steam valve
when you want to steam milk.
And it steams okay, but really we're interested in espresso.
The thing to do, I guess right now is to turn it on
and let's make some espresso.
And this thing will just boil quite noisily like a kettle.
So now we're hot, it's coming to pressure,
but not quite actually.
In many cases what you need to do
is just purge out any trapped air that may be in the system
that will kind of create a false pressure.
And you're gonna hear that kick back on
and continue to heat up well.
And as elegant as the machine is
there is a challenge in that thermal management
something that you end up talking about a lot
whenever you're reviewing lever espresso machines
be it ones that you have a built-in boiler
for or not temperatures kind of everything.
You've got a boiler here running
at above boiling point because you're generating steam and
that heat will inevitably kind of leach into the group head.
And again, the more coffee you make
the hotter the group had will get
and you'll start to get very high temperatures.
Now they advertise this
as being able to make eight consecutive coffees
but you really wouldn't want to do that.
Generally. You want to turn this on
get it up to temperature, make your coffee, stims and milk
if you want to do that and then shut it down.
It's really not designed to be left
on for long periods of time.
It doesn't perform its best when it's used that way.
And for some people that is kind of frustrating for others.
That's really no problem at all, as an irritation
is there, but clearly, if it was a big problem
they wouldn't have sold as many as they have
and they wouldn't be so many passionate people who own these
and love these.
For me if I have one of these every day though
I would probably want one of the little temperature stickers
on the group head that you might've seen
in the criminal review from Gabbo
but I'll leave a link to them in the description below.
They're not a sponsor or anything.
I just think if you're pulling shots
on living machines like this
and you wanna know what's going on in your group head
something like that is actually pretty useful.
So the espresso let's go on with that.
Now I will say this machine is not hugely tolerant
of your pack prep.
It might be worse than people kind of experienced that kind
of God shot moment where everything comes together
and it's amazing.
And other times it's only pretty good.
You know, that variation is I think
because it's quite easy to have this channel
or have things go wrong.
If you're not doing it right
and that's half how you prep the basket
and that's half how you use the machine.
One of the biggest things does that I've experienced
with this machines is quite easy to get would be kind of
like a donut extraction.
If you look at a naked porta filter
you can see a ring of liquid come through first
suggesting that water's kind of gotten around the site.
In some ways, a lot
of people online recommend actually tamping quite softly
with this hard enough to compact the cake
and to make sure that there's room
for water to fill above the coffee in that kind of chamber
but not to be particularly aggressive.
These aren't big baskets.
So I'm dosing around 13 grams of coffee
something a little bit smaller
but actually a kind of enjoyable dose to me.
And then the second thing you really want to worry
about is actually how you lift the lever.
If you're too aggressive, essentially air has to get
in to fill that space before the water gets in.
And if you pull up very aggressively
the air flowing through the park
through the basket will be quite disruptive.
So you should be very gentle
in how you lift your, your lever up.
Once it's up, the Chimp will begin to fill with water.
Pre-infusion is beginning at the kind
of boiler pressure here, which is around a bar.
And then as you get your first drops, you can begin to push.
Now this isn't the ideal angle, but we'll make it work.
Now this was pulled a little bit longer.
This was like about 30 grams out
which is a bit more than two to one
but I've been happy to sacrifice a little bit
of texture and have
would have been very drinkable, very enjoyable as process.
And that is a lovely little espresso, public clarity.
Great sweetness.
You could argue that maybe
if I got my pressure's a bit better
by pulling the lever down
at the right angle and not at a weird angle, 'cause
I'm making a YouTube video that it might've been better.
You might wonder, could this have been a little sweeter
if I had nailed the temperature, but is it good?
Yes, absolutely. I mean the,
in the out we're all good at the timing thought about right.
I wouldn't be upset to be said this in a cafe.
I'd be happy to drink it at home.
First thing in the morning
this would be a very nice way to start my day.
These are tanks.
It seems like you can buy them secondhand
from all sorts of years of manufacturer.
They'd been around a long, long time.
They're not overly expensive as a brand new thing.
I think they're about 550 euros.
That's not cheap, but you know
the last machine I think we reviewed was the Kremmina
which was thousands of euros.
And this is not thousands.
This is a half a thousand euros.
There are certainly available.
Second hand too.
There's tons on eBay
or other places that you might find in your local country.
And they're not particularly difficult to clean or maintain.
There's a lot, a lot of moving parts.
There's not a lot of gaskets
to change around the piston head.
You'd worry about limescale and that kind of stuff.
But again, it's a pretty simple tank
and set up to D scale.
In terms of frustrations,
there aren't too many, there's a couple of things.
One, this thing is incredibly hot to the touch.
It will burn you if you put your hand on it.
It is at a hundred degrees Celsius kind of thing.
So, just be wary of that.
This is not a child-friendly or safe in any way.
It's very, very hot.
And because it's a pressure vessel
and you're essentially filling it like a kettle
but sealing the top.
If you need to replenish the water tank
you have to dip pressurize
and cool the machine down completely
get rid of all the steam in there
and before you can open this poor, fresh, cold water
and close it back down again and heat it back up again.
So if you've forgotten to fill it
and you're running low on water, that's annoying.
If you've already gotten a hot
if you're trying to make coffees for multiple people
it's not super easy, but if it's
just you making espresso for you in the morning,
you might want to have a great time.
And as you can see, the wide has been so popular.
It feels intuitive.
It feels easy.
It's small.
It would fit under any kitchen cabinet
and still be easy to load with water
or make a coffee with.
The Euro Piccolo is small by name
but it is a Titan in the world of espresso.
It's been around 60 years now or very nearly.
And I think it will be around a lot longer too.
It's not high-tech, it's very simple.
The components are easy to replace, easy to change.
It's not a complicated machine to take to pieces
D scale, any of that stuff.
It's robust.
It lasts for a long time, years and years, decades.
In fact, in this case 23 years, and it looks fantastic.
It makes great coffee.
It's excellent condition.
Thanks to its careful owner.
This I'll give away
like anything else that I review through Patrion.
And this was actually bought from one of my Patrion backers.
So thank you very much
for connecting me with this little machine.
It's been fun to do a classic
of coffee with an older unit though.
I don't imagine the coffee would tasted that different
out of one manufactured in 2020.
A few components may have changed.
The drip tray may have changed, but the coffee it makes
I think is very similar to what it made in the 60s.
And that's a kind of cool thing to have
in your house to make coffee with every day.
It's something that has absolutely stood the test of time
quirks and all.
If you're thinking about getting one, do some reading
do some research, learn about getting the best out of them
but I've got to say it's been a real pleasure to use
and having the studio, if only briefly.
Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below.
Do you have one of these?
Did it take you a little while to kind of tweak
and find your way around to getting
the best espresso that you can get out of it?
Does the temperature thing frustrate you?
Do you manage that temperature in different ways?
You're using cold cloths on group heads
or are you flushing water through sometimes?
I would love to hear what you're using,
what you like, what you don't like.
All of that stuff.
Please talk to us down in the comments below.
One more quick thing.
The ultimate V60 technique poster is now available.
Beautiful designed by Ross Becker.
It's available linked down below.
Again it's limited, like all the things we do
at 10s, 100s, 1000s I think it's lovely.
I love having it on the wall.
I love the colors or the design.
I'd be like it too.
And if it appeals to you snap one up.
If not that's okay.
Thanks for watching.
And you have a great day.