This is the Smart Espresso Profiler.
This is a very interesting little device,
but it's actually not just a hardware thing,
it's a hardware and software thing.
Let me explain.
This in my hand is a digital pressure transducer,
that is Bluetooth enabled.
That means it could send the pressure it was sensing
to something like, I don't know, a smartphone.
With the right software, you could read to that pressure
and maybe do something cool with it.
Let me give you some context as to how this works
when it comes to espresso.
So this I think is the brainchild
of a guy called Gabor Laczko.
He is a coffee roaster, he is a video maker,
he's made some very cool stuff, I'll link down below,
and he's also a lever head.
He loves lever espresso machines.
He wanted to have a way of tracking
what was going on when you're pulling a shot,
but it's not just Gabor,
there's another person involved as well.
One of Gabor's customers,
a guy called Miklos Csanady, he's a software guy,
and he got involved to write the software piece
to go with the hardware.
The idea is this:
you can attach this thing
to anything that generates pressure
and you can connect it to your telephone.
And at the same time, you can connect your phone
to, say, an Acaia Pearl set of scales.
And at this point, you could monitor,
and potentially replicate,
what you're doing in a lever espresso.
There are two types of lever machines.
There is the classic kind of spring type
where pulling the lever down compresses the spring,
and when you let go,
the expansion of that spring generates the pressure.
And then there's the second type of lever machine
which is a much more direct thing
where you pulling down on the lever
actually generates the pressure.
These are the kinds of things we've seen before
like the Flair or the ROK or the Robot.
These are all direct pressure manual lever machines
and they're cool and they're fun,
but it's difficult to really know what's going on.
Even if you've got a gauge to be accurate and repeatable,
that's really tough.
Now, humans are good at some things
and we're good at having fun making coffee
but we're pretty terrible at pulling levers repeatedly.
This might just be a solution to that problem.
In order to explain it and demonstrate it,
I'm going to need to make some coffee
and I'm going to need a coffee machine to make it on.
So let's grab one.
What I have here is an Olympia Cremina.
These are very cool little direct lever machines.
They're a little bit culty, they're very cool,
they're very beautiful as you can see.
Now, Gabor very kindly modified this one for me
so that I could use the Smart Espresso Profiler with it.
Now there is going to be a review of this machine coming.
It is going to be given away at the end of it, as always.
Thank you to all the Patreon backers I have
that allow me to go and buy this, review it honestly,
and then give it away.
These will actually be given away together
because obviously this has been modified to work with this
and it only seems fair that they go to a home together.
Very simple, this just kind of screws in.
And now we can turn this on and get it hot.
We are on, we're ready to go, the machine is hot.
It is time for us to pull some espresso.
To do that, to use this thing, we've got to use our phone.
So there's an app, it's a very nice app, if I'm honest,
it's called the SE Profiler app.
You can download it if you want
to have a little look around.
This is the main screen for it.
And to get going, you would swipe,
and then open up devices
and make sure you were connected
to your pressure transducer
and also to your Acaia.
I think at the moment only the Acaia Lunar
I think is supported.
It's a good little scale, it's expensive though,
but this is about the best anyway.
So here is your setup screen for what you're going to do.
Right now, it's a blank template
because right now I have no target profile set,
but I can record one.
So the first thing that we're going to do
is we're going to get some coffee.
Now, this little thing,
doesn't take a sort of huge dose.
We're going to use 14 grams in here
and I'm going to get 14 grams of ground coffee.
And when you put your dose on the scale, and it says 14.1,
in the app, I can set that as my starting dose.
How very nice.
So let's get ready to brew.
Now, this is not going to be a perfect shot
because I just want to talk you through how the app works.
So I don't really care how this goes,
but it'll be interesting.
So, scale,
cup,
zero.
Now, when I hit start, it will start logging
both the weight here and the pressure at the sensor.
Let's begin.
Now with this machine, when you lift the lever,
we're going to get a little pressure reading here.
Now, as soon as I start to push down,
you can see the pressure climb.
Now a seated position is not the easiest position
to produce a decent, you know, leverage,
but here, you know, six bars I'm doing okay.
And I can choose to gently ramp that down.
I can see the mass in the cup climbing up,
climbing up, climbing up, and I can see my brew ratio.
I've hit the end there.
Let the pressure dissipate naturally.
And lo and behold, once it stops, I can hit stop.
And there I have a profile.
And I can see my brew time, I can see my pre-infusion,
I can see my mass in the cup, I can see my brew pressure.
Now, if this just so happened to be
the best espresso of my life,
which is, well I'm not going say likely,
but it's not unlikely, it's not impossible,
but let's say it is, well, I can save this profile, right?
And I can look at my history and come in here
and I can set, as a reference.
This means if I want to replicate this exact shot,
I would need the same grind, the same dose,
all that kind of stuff.
But I've got a template to work with.
Should we see if I can do exactly the same thing again
just for a bit of fun?
So if I'm honest, that was not the greatest shot,
but that's not the point right now.
Let's go, let's replicate this thing.
Here we go.
Oh, I went early.
Now the grind is just too course here, actually.
But I can sort of reasonably accurately.
Let's see if I can tail that down at the same time.
And you can see my mass in the cup
is trailing a little bit,
but it's going to end up ultimately at the same weight,
and surprisingly.
There we go.
So you can see my attempt, very quickly,
at replicating a curve.
Now, I'm not giving myself excuses,
but it's not the easiest thing to do sitting down
but that's not really the point.
The point is I have, beautifully and simply,
a lot of information about what's going on here.
And that's really useful, that's really interesting.
It makes this thing that is a little bit of a dark art,
you know, how to really pull repeatable shots
on a direct pressure lever machine.
Well, it kind of opens that up.
It makes it entirely possible.
And what's more interesting
is that I could put this same thing onto a Flair,
and I could pull a shot on this thing,
and then I could go and replicate, as closely as possible,
the same pressures, the same mass in the cup,
therefore the same kind of grind setting,
on a whole other machine.
Now it was actually John from Decent Espresso
that put me on to them in the first place.
And I think in future, there's going to be an integration
between Decent Espresso machines and the SEP.
I think the SEP software will ship on Decent tablets,
but watch this space.
I'm not going to say too much,
but the possibilities get pretty exciting
if you're interested in messing around
with the way that pressure and flow
and all that stuff interact inside one of these machines.
Previously, I have made videos covering
the software that goes with smart scales
and I was not complimentary because it was all awful.
It brings me a great deal of pleasure to use an app
that is intuitive and beautiful,
simple, presents all the information I need.
I think this is a really well done app.
I think they've done a fantastic job
and they had to, really,
because this setup is expensive.
I think it's about $400.
That is not a small amount of money.
That's expensive, but if you've got one of these,
if you spend a few thousand on something like this,
well, for a small price in comparison,
you get a whole new level of insight into what is going on
and a whole set of tools
around how to brew better espresso.
Now, while the app is very simple, very intuitive,
if you want to make it a more detailed logging experience,
you can certainly do that.
And you can start to log quite a lot of information
about a roastery, about the beans, roasting date,
description, color, operator.
All of this stuff is there
if you want to get super, super nerdy.
If you really want to track all of this stuff,
that's very easy to do.
Now, for me, I don't want to log every detail.
I'm happy with my weight in, weight out,
brew time, brew pressures.
If I want to set something as a reference curve,
that's enough for me, I don't want to go crazy.
But if you want it, it's absolutely there.
So overall, I really like the app.
I think having pressure to 0.01 of a bar with low latency
is kind of amazing.
I think the detail is wonderfully presented.
I think they've done a really, a really good job.
So overall I'm pretty impressed.
I think it's pretty fantastic.
I will say that I probably have a little bias in this
because Gabor has been so helpful
with everything from the beginning.
And, you know, I kind of encountered his stuff
before I really understood that he built
the original pressure gauge
for the Flair in my old review,
but I just didn't really understand that connection
and I messed that up quite badly,
so apologies, very delayed apologies,
but apologies for getting that so wrong.
It's expensive, it's really well-made.
Changing the battery on it is very simple.
That's the only maintenance you would need to do to it.
Installation on many things will be relatively easy.
I think this is a great tool.
I imagine myself, I see myself using this
in a host of different applications and having some fun.
And Gabor does cool stuff.
And I would like to do some cool stuff
with him in the future, so maybe we will.
Watch this space.
Now, as I said, this is not a review
of this particular espresso machine.
That is coming, I'm working on that.
That will be after this,
and these things in combination,
this Profiler, this machine will be given away
to somebody somewhere in the world
who can use 230 volt power.
And that will make me happy, but that's a future review.
So once again, thank you to Patreons
for supporting this channel,
for giving me a budget to go and buy this stuff,
and give you honest reviews.
It's cool what you can do with it.
I think there are a lot of users out there.
If you are making manual espresso like this, in any form,
I think it's worth considering if you want to dive deeper
and understand more about what you're doing.
It's expensive, I get that,
but it's a small run, it's a small company,
and I think they're doing something cool.
It is nice to see tech in coffee be really well-executed.
But I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Do you have one?
Is anyone watching who's got one of these things, too?
Do you use it all the time?
Do you love it?
What kind of things have you learned from it?
Is there something you didn't see me do?
Is there something you want me to show off about this?
Let me know if there's something really interesting,
I'll probably throw it up on Instagram at some point,
so follow me there,
there's a link in the description down below.
But for now, I'll say thank you so much for watching,
and I hope you have a great day.