# appartamento for newbie?



## JamesMac

hey folks,

still haven't bit the bullet from my bean to cup machine and while browsing bella barista I came across the apartamento. I have an open plan kitchen/dining/living and think the apartamento's good looks would look fantastic on my worktop partnered with a mignon.

Has anyone got one who could comment on its ease of maintenance and use for a newbie? I will be using bottled water and I am aware it would need a cold flush before pulling each coffee but reviews that I can find seem really positive with many people commenting on the quality of the machine and its pleasant appearance.

My budget has been blown out of the water to around £1100 for the machine so I have been looking at the minima which looks fantastic and the apartamento. The minima is dual boiler and seems to have a great spec but I must admit im not too keen on the looks of it, the shape whilst apparently function doesn't look the nicest from what I have seen.

Cheers,

James


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## DavecUK

If it helps James,

Forgetting the looks which is a personal thing, functionally the Minima is in a different league to the Appartmento. In reality the Appartmento is a bog standard HX with a 10 year old internal design, not even an insulated boiler (unless they finally changed that). It requires cooling flushes and there is *nothing* special about it at all. It's an E61 HX with a mild steel base frame (that can rust over time).

The Lelit MaraX is another HX that is *todays* HX, modern, no flushing, thermally controlled, faster warm up, great performance, eco mode you can disable and makes the Appartmento look like a joke at it's price point....far too expensive.

Ultimately you have to like the look of any machine you own but it would be a shame to make that the only criteria and get something which is not great value for money and performance as well.


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## BlackCatCoffee

DavecUK said:


> If it helps James,
> 
> Forgetting the looks which is a personal thing, functionally the Minima is in a different league to the Appartmento. In reality the Appartmento is a bog standard HX with a 10 year old internal design, not even an insulated boiler (unless they finally changed that). It requires cooling flushes and there is *nothing* special about it at all. It's an E61 HX with a mild steel base frame (that can rust over time).
> 
> The Lelit MaraX is another HX that is *todays* HX, modern, no flushing, thermally controlled, faster warm up, great performance, eco mode you can disable and makes the Appartmento look like a joke at it's price point....far too expensive.
> 
> Ultimately you have to like the look of any machine you own but it would be a shame to make that the only criteria and get something which is not great value for money and performance as well.


 Dave is the chap to listen to on this forum.

Only thing, all these machines appear out of stock? Is this because BB are running a skeleton crew or they are indeed out of stock I wonder.

It is tough to imagine stocks landing anytime soon given current world events.


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## JamesMac

DavecUK said:


> If it helps James,
> 
> Forgetting the looks which is a personal thing, functionally the Minima is in a different league to the Appartmento. In reality the Appartmento is a bog standard HX with a 10 year old internal design, not even an insulated boiler (unless they finally changed that). It requires cooling flushes and there is *nothing* special about it at all. It's an E61 HX with a mild steel base frame (that can rust over time).
> 
> The Lelit MaraX is another HX that is *todays* HX, modern, no flushing, thermally controlled, faster warm up, great performance, eco mode you can disable and makes the Appartmento look like a joke at it's price point....far too expensive.
> 
> Ultimately you have to like the look of any machine you own but it would be a shame to make that the only criteria and get something which is not great value for money and performance as well.


 Thanks dave I'll have a proper read through your review on it tonight , looks like it packs a fair punch for 950. Quite easy on the eye too


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## jimmgc51

One other thing to note is the mignon is pretty basic to use with the Rocket. Yes it will give you a shot but won't be getting the best out of the machine (my opinion). I initially had it paired with my rocket then upgraded to the Niche & the shot quality went up dramatically.

So if your budget would be blown then I agree with the above advice and look at something a little cheaper & will give you money in the pot for a grinder upgrade. And trust me you will want to upgrade it so may as well accept that fact now, the mignon is good, but not when in use with £1k machine..


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## Kannan

jimmgc51 said:


> One other thing to note is the mignon is pretty basic to use with the Rocket. Yes it will give you a shot but won't be getting the best out of the machine (my opinion). I initially had it paired with my rocket then upgraded to the Niche & the shot quality went up dramatically.
> 
> So if your budget would be blown then I agree with the above advice and look at something a little cheaper & will give you money in the pot for a grinder upgrade. And trust me you will want to upgrade it so may as well accept that fact now, the mignon is good, but not when in use with £1k machine..


 Hi there jimmgc - I had to think about this one a little bit as whilst I'm no expert, I have done a lot of reading and experimenting on this subject (and intend to do a lot more!)... you are comparing the grinds of two very different grinders here, the 50mm flat burrs of the Eureka compared to the 63mm Kony conical burrs in the Niche (which I read somewhere were Mazzer) - back to a point I made in another post on this board a few days ago - comparing conical to flat burrs isn't really like for like.

From what I have been reading the flat burrs produce much more uniform grinds resulting in less variation in flavours of the output coffee (this has been borne out in my tasting experiments) - this is a taste preference for some people and some beans. This also makes it potentially harder to get the grind size/basket/distribution etc right as the smaller particles that exist when using a conical burr are not present to effectively fill the gaps in the puck - basically this means that whilst the Eureka might be harder to dial in (potentially also dependant on the basket), it is perfectly capable of producing grinds for even much more capable brewing machines than the Appartamento (GS3, Slayer, Decent etc)...

Just to elaborate, I know of people with very very capable grinders (Monolith Max, Versalab) a super capable machines who still express difficulty in getting the grind dialled in (which is of course very subjective also). So I'm pretty sure it isn't just down to the fact that the Mignon isn't necessarily "good enough" (it may not suit your taste preference). I think my own feeling on this is that the Mignon represents the point at which spending more doesn't necessarily get you a better result unless you can master all the other factors... I think someone else on this forum said (and I paraphrase) "if you give a good barista pretty much any equipment they can make a half decent cup of coffee"...


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## Rob1

Kannan said:


> Hi there jimmgc - I had to think about this one a little bit as whilst I'm no expert, I have done a lot of reading and experimenting on this subject (and intend to do a lot more!)... you are comparing the grinds of two very different grinders here, the 50mm flat burrs of the Eureka compared to the 63mm Kony conical burrs in the Niche (which I read somewhere were Mazzer) - back to a point I made in another post on this board a few days ago - comparing conical to flat burrs isn't really like for like.
> 
> From what I have been reading the flat burrs produce much more uniform grinds resulting in less variation in flavours of the output coffee (this has been borne out in my tasting experiments) - this is a taste preference for some people and some beans. This also makes it potentially harder to get the grind size/basket/distribution etc right as the smaller particles that exist when using a conical burr are not present to effectively fill the gaps in the puck - basically this means that whilst the Eureka might be harder to dial in (potentially also dependant on the basket), it is perfectly capable of producing grinds for even much more capable brewing machines than the Appartamento (GS3, Slayer, Decent etc)...
> 
> Just to elaborate, I know of people with very very capable grinders (Monolith Max, Versalab) a super capable machines who still express difficulty in getting the grind dialled in (which is of course very subjective also). So I'm pretty sure it isn't just down to the fact that the Mignon isn't necessarily "good enough" (it may not suit your taste preference). I think my own feeling on this is that the Mignon represents the point at which spending more doesn't necessarily get you a better result unless you can master all the other factors... I think someone else on this forum said (and I paraphrase) "if you give a good barista pretty much any equipment they can make a half decent cup of coffee"...


 Nice idea but it's not really accurate. Well aside from the part about comparing like for like. The stuff about "filling in the gaps" is probably not accurate. Anyway....the issue with getting very techincal about this and thinking in terms of what the grinder is "capable of" is the fact that in use you want something that will a) let you produce a very good shot ('get the best out of the beans'); b) get there in the quickest time, wasting a minimal amount of coffee; c) do it consistently/reliably. Think about it logically, in the same you you'd think about machines. It's not that a Classic with PID isn't every bit as capable of producing a shot as good as a much more expensive machine, it's that the conditions that allow it to achieve that shot are going to be present very rarely by comparison. You dismiss the 'ease of dialing in' as if it's something trivial and not related to the quality of the grinder when in use it's critical, just as when you use a dual boiler and instantly get your precise desired temperature and temp stability, in a way that is repeatable time after time, compared to much cheaper machines...

Typically the larger the burr the better the grind quality. A flat burr grinder of any size is very much capable of producing a wide grind distribution -- it isn't always a tight distribution as you seem to assume when you say "smaller particles that exist when using a conincal burr are not present". All grinders produce a bimodal distribution whether flat or conical, 43-to-83mm (or more), just to different extents. EK43s are known for producing a very large proportion of the grinds within a small target range with very little fines and boulders but not all flats achieve this, and not all to the same extent. Shots from EKs tend to run for shorter times and longer ratios (though maybe what I've heard is outdated now?) just to illustrate how different grinders can need to be dialled in in different ways and that shots from these grinders while technically dialled in properly might not be to your preference....so yeah you're right about subjectivity being an issue of course, even comparing flats to flats.

The thing is It does come down to ease of use to an extent. Assuming burrs are aligned, they're stable, and the motor is powerful enough to turn them (not even getting into speed), you should be able to dial them in to get a decent espresso. In theory. In practice you might burn through an entire bag struggling to get a good shot, this can be down to ease of adjustment but not entirely. It's not just the components and construction it's the way it's used. If you single dose grinders (except for maybe those with burrs so large they smash the entire dose in a heartbeat) you won't get results as consistent (both in terms of use to use and tightness of distribution) than if you run them with a hopper of some kind, this can make dialling in that much harder even with commercial large flats and conicals, though conicals are probably less affected by single dosing as they are gravity fed. In making a grinder designed for single dosing the intention is really to reduce or remove retention of almost entirely, and in doing so you improve consistency use-to-use and this consistency, in theory, makes it easier to dial in. In practice the grind distribution can still be an issue due, in part, to single dosing.

You can get as technical as you want but at the end of the day I ask you: Go and use a large flat for a month (Royal, Major, Ceado E37s, E8, Eurekas, Compaks, etc or even an SJ). Run them with a hopper or with a weight on a large dose of beans (say 25g+ -- i.e whatever you need to grind your 18g dose without getting the weight in the burrs) then come back here and tell me sincerely that you think they aren't better than a Mignon. Yes technically a Mignon could be dialled in to produce shots that are at least in some ways equal to or better than the larger flats, maybe it could be dialed in to produce a shot that's entirely better in some cases, but the issue is both how hard it is to get there and how repeatable it is. The same is true with comparisons of small flat to large conicals, it's just there's even more of a subjectivity issue with flat vs conic.

P.S:Issues dialling in can just be because of the coffee and the way it was roasted too and you won't get good shots no matter how good your grinder is.


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## Kannan

Thanks for that Rob1, I'm relatively new to grinder technicalities, I'm researching in order to make my own mind up right now... so I'm really quoting from what I'm reading, hearing and discussing and limited experimentation (I've just started obsessing about coffee, as I do lol!)... my basic tenet here is that I'm not sure necessarily that a shot from a Mignon or a Niche would be that significantly better or worse if both setup correctly, however they might be subjectively different. And I'm sorry if I seemed to imply dialing in was trivial - on the contrary I think that is the crux of the issue, but I don't necessarily think that a Mignon is harder dial in than many other domestic grinders. However I think what you are saying is that a Niche might be significantly easier to dial in consistently for single dosing - agreed.

Overall I think what you are saying is that differing grinders at differing price points will give varying degrees of all factors, and that consistency is something that improves related to ease of use and possibly therefore the particular grinders suitability for task? Are you also saying that something like a Mignon isn't capable of producing consistent good grinds for domestic use? Surely for domestic use it's possibly harder to produce single consistent shots day after day (rather than all day every day) from a commercial style grinder (dynamic retention, hoppered beans etc)?

That said, most of which you say above I do agree with (hopper/single dose, method of use, rotational speed/motor power etc) - interested particularly to hear that you think that the distribution is not necessarily a factor of conicals vs flats? Are you saying that it's more to do with the particular grinder than the type of burr? I've been doing my own (very limited) experimentation with both Kruves and grind size measuring software (https://coffeeadastra.com/2019/04/07/an-app-to-measure-your-coffee-grind-size-distribution-2/)... and from my limited experience the distribution does affect flow and puck etc.: the difference between very narrowly distributed pucks which are super dense and hard to extract vs pucks with much more variety. However my assertion that this to do with "filling in" and that is a flat vs conical thing is potentially a leap too far from what you are saying. Here are a couple of many articles I have read (these are short lol) which also seem to corroborate my own theories:

https://espressovivace.com/micro-particle-migration-in-conical-grinding-systems/

https://coffeetechniciansguild.org/blog/2018/8/14/selecting-a-burr-type-for-an-espresso-grinder

I'm also curious to hear what you might think of something else that I seem to remember reading that did strike a chord but I'm yet to test out - since conicals have a longer grind path for the same diameter they're effectively equivalent to larger flat burr sizes. Whilst this does seem to make sense to me it doesn't account for feed type, geometry, cuts etc. So why would one objectively choose a flat burr if from everything above it seems there are significantly no compromises to using a conical - does that mean the choice is purely subjective?

Btw you are seriously making me consider adding a Niche to my collection, but I'm really starting to go a little lockdown nuts now...


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## HowardSmith

I have an appartamento so will share my opinion.

I was brought the appartamento with a mignon specialita as a 30th birthday present. My family grouped together and I decided to go for the appartamento for a few reasons.

1. In the price range at the time it was the machine I liked the look of the best. I also put it to my wife and she also said she liked the way it looked which for me is a plus as it sits in our open plan kitchen/dining/living area and it really does look great (IMO).

2. I couldn't justify the extra money at the time to cough up for an upgrade. At the time I was considering the profitec pro 500 which would have been about and extra £300.

3. As it was my real investment after a 2nd hand sage machine I didn't really see much advantage to spending a lot more. Maybe if I was more aware of the lelit machines I would have considered one.

So after a few years with my set up what would i change....

Well i have upgraded the mignon to a niche. I also had a maze mini e with SJ burns for some time. In short don't bother, just cough up the little extra and get a niche. Mich easier, less mess, little retention, easy work flow.

As far as the machine I really like my rocket. Bear in mind if you do get a HX machine a group head thermometer is almost a necessity. The mara x like Dave said is an 'intelligent' HX machine and would give you more consistency but personally I would not be a fan of the way it works.

I have done a LOT of experiment with the appartamento to establish repeatable brew temps and once you have a good flushing routine you can target whatever brew temp you want on the fly.

For what it is worth the appartamento at normal boiler pressures required an initial flush of between 150-180ml. This is after a full warm up. After that if you want to make a couple of shots "back to back" you will simply need to screen flush. You can also catch the machine on the warm up and pull a shot at a group head reading of 90c without any cooling flush at all.

Would I change my machine, hard to say, I wouldn't want a minima or lelit machine though. If I was to get anything else I would be looking at the ECM machines and spending a bit more money which at the time was not an option.

Good luck with whatever you choose.

Sent from my SM-A405FN using Tapatalk


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## GengisKhan

I've been reading this thread with great interest being a Rocket Appartamento owner for coming up to 3 years. I would echo my experience to be the same as HowardSmith. Its been solid for me and I've paired it with a Mazzer Mini Elec A.

My two cents around the flushing/temp control etc is that once you get through the learning curve the extra bits on other machines won't really make a difference in the cup, to me anyway. The biggest differences between cups really is around grind settings and how you tamper etc

If I was buying something today, for the money, it would be the rocket again, just really prefer the looks and it still brings a smile to my face!

Its not perfect, some of that's been covered in previous posts, but again its fine for my domestic situation making 2-4 cups a day.

Good luck with the search!


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## Rob1

> And I'm sorry if I seemed to imply dialing in was trivial - on the contrary I think that is the crux of the issue, but I don't necessarily think that a Mignon is harder dial in than many other domestic grinders. However I think what you are saying is that a Niche might be significantly easier to dial in consistently for single dosing - agreed.


 Easier to dial in for single dosing and comparatively easier to dial in than a Mignon even when it is hopper fed. Range of adjustment on the Mignon (I only used a Mk2 not one of the newer ones) is smaller across espresso settings than the Niche. I don't really care about comparing the ease of adjustment of the mignon to other domestic grinders...while the Niche is domestic its burr size isn't....we're talking vs large flats and large conics. I think smaller burrs require smaller adjustments, and have smaller sweet spots that are harder to hit.



> Overall I think what you are saying is that differing grinders at differing price points will give varying degrees of all factors, and that consistency is something that improves related to ease of use and possibly therefore the particular grinders suitability for task?


 Consitency of getting good shots from one day to the next? Yes, obviously ease of use affects that. More consistent grind size? no....Bigger burrs are more consistent than smaller burrs. Even different burrs of the same size produce a different range of output on the same setting so geometry is obviously a factor, and alignment etc etc....it's probably very difficult to compare two different burr sets of the same size unless you can fit both into the same grinder. Cost isn't necessarily a good indicator as sometimes you're paying more for a badge, sometimes electronics, but as a concept "as cost goes up so dose grind quality" works.



> Are you also saying that something like a Mignon isn't capable of producing consistent good grinds for domestic use?


 Again, focusing on capability is useless. I'm not saying it isn't capable, in fact I'm fairly certain I stated that it technically could be dialled in to produce a shot that is at least equal to (according to some people and in some ways) a large flat E.g. a Royal. I'm saying capability is not as important as frequency.



> Surely for domestic use it's possibly harder to produce single consistent shots day after day (rather than all day every day) from a commercial style grinder (dynamic retention, hoppered beans etc)?


 No because the sweetspot is bigger, the range of adjustment is bigger, the output is more consistent, the grinds are probably heated less by the burrs. You can mitigate the retention with bellows and purging (how much varies. For my E8 it was 3-5g max when hopper fed).



> interested particularly to hear that you think that the distribution is not necessarily a factor of conicals vs flats? Are you saying that it's more to do with the particular grinder than the type of burr?


 No sure what you mean. Flats are different to other flats, conicals are different to other conicals. Flats are different to conicals. Generally conicals produe a wider grind distribution with more fines but that doesn't mean a 50mm flat produes tighter distribution than say a 70mm conical...and it doesn't mean fines are absent on flats. There are plenty of accurate grind distribution charts out there from different grinders to look at. I'm saying that other things are important, such as RPM, it's not just burr type. Take a look at this for example: https://www.baristahustle.com/blog/coffee-grinder-rpm/ If nothing else it's a good example of an article that doesn't attempt to draw premature conclusions.



> I've been doing my own (very limited) experimentation with both Kruves and grind size measuring software (https://coffeeadastra.com/2019/04/07/an-app-to-measure-your-coffee-grind-size-distribution-2/)


 The kruves don't offer a fine enough resolution and the software isn't accurate enough to be useful. As above there are plenty of charts out there produced by either laser diffraction, electron microscopes or sieving with a set of sieves that offer a much finer resolution. What grinders have you tested in this way? Large conics, large flats?



> https://espressovivace.com/micro-particle-migration-in-conical-grinding-systems/
> 
> https://coffeetechniciansguild.org/blog/2018/8/14/selecting-a-burr-type-for-an-espresso-grinder


 Coffee bollocks.

No really.

Fines migration is the subject of debate. Some think they help hold a puck together, some think they migrate to the bottom of the basket and block holes, some think they don't go anywhere, some think they over extract, some think they extract perfectly, some think you're better off without them, some think better with them, but only in certain amounts, different amounts, at the bottom of the basket, top of the basket, middle of the basket, mixed throughout...Nobody knows anything for sure. All that crap about shot times 24 seconds this, 27 seconds that. Coffee Bollocks.

The second article is ok, doesn't actually say what is better or worse, and quite rightly so.

See this for more interesting obserations about particle shape. Thankfully less coffee bollocks but still some coffee bollocks. https://www.home-barista.com/reviews/titan-grinder-project-scanning-electron-microscope-sem-analysis-of-ground-coffee-t4205.html



> I'm also curious to hear what you might think of something else that I seem to remember reading that did strike a chord but I'm yet to test out - since conicals have a longer grind path for the same diameter they're effectively equivalent to larger flat burr sizes. Whilst this does seem to make sense to me it doesn't account for feed type, geometry, cuts etc. So why would one objectively choose a flat burr if from everything above it seems there are significantly no compromises to using a conical - does that mean the choice is purely subjective?


 Probably more coffee bollocks. Doesn't make sense at all. The idea is that surface area of the burr is the thing that's important as there's a bigger cutting area. But there are other factors. I very much doubt a small conical produces a comparable output to a large flat, even if the burr housing, stability, alignment is good, and the motor is powerful enough. In practice it doesn't seem accurate anyway. The second article you linked to seemed to highlight the "outfall depth" of conicals vs flats and this could be accurate to an extent but I think more fines is a result of beans being smashed up at the top of the burrs rather than nipped, cut, and pulled in by a flat...



> My basic tenet here is that I'm not sure necessarily that a shot from a Mignon or a Niche would be that significantly better or worse if both setup correctly, however they might be subjectively different.
> 
> Btw you are seriously making me consider adding a Niche to my collection, but I'm really starting to go a little lockdown nuts now...


 *Thing is you're not actually saying anything here. It's a technicality that's meaningless. You could say exactly the same thing about any other combination of grinders *i.e Mignon or a Royal, Iberital MC2 or a Niche, Rocky or a Robur -- that last one has actually been done...as in people actually dialled in the Rocky to the point that at least some of the shots in some opinions compared well to the Robur and large flats. Take a look at the titan grinder project https://www.home-barista.com/reviews/titan-grinder-project-t4126.html and related threads on Home barista, you could even check the Niche review and discussion threads. If you read through those entire threads and still want to think about this stuff I don't know what to tell you. *The reason people haven't engaged you on your multiple attempts to start this discussion throughout the forum is because they're smarter than me* --- it's pointless, it's a subject of debate, nothing is conclusive, it's an exercise in futility and hugely subject to personal preference. What good is it to tell someone a Mignon is not as good as the Royal if they prefer the shots they make on a Mignon? How is it possible to compare one grinder to another without actually physically comparing them and accepting your conclusions are subjective?

My point is this: You're focusing on stuff that is meaningless i.e "the capability of the grinder" to achieve a shot 'better' than another.

Get two grinders e.g. Mignon Vs Niche.

Get 3 different coffees and pull good shots from them, then get them dialled in to the point where you can't push extraction any higher or you'll over extract. You might have a different number of shots from each grinder before you get to this point, it doesn't matter. Score each shot out of 10 overall and note clarity, sweetness, body etc as well as defects.

By the end of it you might have pulled 20, 30, 40 or more shots on each grinder. The point isn't to limit to x number of shots but to keep going until you can't improve the shots anymore for each coffee. You can stubbornly refuse to budge from a typical target ratio range e.g. 2-2.5 ratio which would reflect your preference; that's fine as it's a test of which is better for you.

Look at the results. When you average it all out you might find one grinder hit a higher peak but the other scored higher on average. Then look at how much coffee it took to achieve the peak results and the average results....as in how much coffee did it take to dial in to good shots and from there to the best you can get.

How do you define which is the better grinder? The one that achieved the higher peak or the one that used less coffee to hit their peak? Is it the one that produced better coffee on average? Which would you prefer to use every day? Which is technically the "better" grinder because it can be "dialled in to produce better shots" and what is the likelihood of getting it dialled in to that point? The difference between the peak and average score?

You can get as technical as you want, focus on grind distribution, consistency, fines, boulders etc etc, at the end of the day it's meaningless if you can't use the thing to make good coffee the way you want to make it. Even after all the practice and experimenting you might technically be able to dial something in but that doesn't mean you won't prefer a shot from something else e.g. you might score one shot higher than the other technically based on clarity, flavour, sweetness but you might prefer a shot that has more mouth feel that scored lower overall.

Get a Niche if you want, see how you get on with it and if you don't like it you'll lose a small amount selling it on but at least you'll know what like to have shots from a large conic.


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## Rob1

@JamesMac

Sorry to derail the thread.

My advice would be to get the best machine for your money. With your budget as DaveC said you can get a Minima or Mara X. Looking at features and comparing both to the Rocket should be simple enough. The Mara X is probably the best value for home use for the majority of users but I'd still expect the Minima to have an edge over it in some ways. If looks is the most important thing to you then you need to go with what looks best and live with whatever downsides you get from that. If you want something that is going to be easier to use then get the Minima or Mara X. If I were a newbie I'd go for the Mara X for ease of use alone (technically speaking -- I have no experience of using it). Maybe if you head to Bella Barista when you can to check out the machines in person and have a play you'll get a better idea what will suit you and you might even find you like the look of the Minima. Personally I could never get on board with the idea it's acceptable to be doing cooling flushes on machines over the 1k mark....or even lower if I'm honest.


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## Kannan

Rob1 said:


> Sorry to derail the thread.


 Equally sorry for having derailed this thread, I really was curious as to why no-one was responding to my genuine ignorance as to why the flat vs conical thing wasn't more of an issue...



Rob1 said:


> *The reason people haven't engaged you on your multiple attempts to start this discussion throughout the forum is because they're smarter than me* --- it's pointless, it's a subject of debate, nothing is conclusive, it's an exercise in futility and hugely subject to personal preference


 Thank you for your long and detailed response, really much appreciated - I think you are probably right in that, it is in my nature to get rather technical to probably mask the limitations of my palette, the downsides of having spent many years in academia I guess... the pursuit of meaningless debate.

Lots to read (to satisfy my curiosity more than anything at this stage)... your comments on "Coffee Bollocks" did make me chuckle 



Rob1 said:


> Get a Niche if you want, see how you get on with it and if you don't like it you'll lose a small amount selling it on but at least you'll know what like to have shots from a large conic.


 I think l might just do that once I'm through my current round of taste testing and the rest of my "idle hands can shop too much" purchases have arrived...

Subject closed, I shall keep my "mindless" pursuit of the technicalities of grinders to myself and see if I can taste the difference  !


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## Rob1

I nicked "coffee bollocks" from DFK.


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## JamesMac

HowardSmith said:


> I have an appartamento so will share my opinion.
> 
> I was brought the appartamento with a mignon specialita as a 30th birthday present. My family grouped together and I decided to go for the appartamento for a few reasons.
> 
> 1. In the price range at the time it was the machine I liked the look of the best. I also put it to my wife and she also said she liked the way it looked which for me is a plus as it sits in our open plan kitchen/dining/living area and it really does look great (IMO).
> 
> 2. I couldn't justify the extra money at the time to cough up for an upgrade. At the time I was considering the profitec pro 500 which would have been about and extra £300.
> 
> 3. As it was my real investment after a 2nd hand sage machine I didn't really see much advantage to spending a lot more. Maybe if I was more aware of the lelit machines I would have considered one.
> 
> So after a few years with my set up what would i change....
> 
> Well i have upgraded the mignon to a niche. I also had a maze mini e with SJ burns for some time. In short don't bother, just cough up the little extra and get a niche. Mich easier, less mess, little retention, easy work flow.
> 
> As far as the machine I really like my rocket. Bear in mind if you do get a HX machine a group head thermometer is almost a necessity. The mara x like Dave said is an 'intelligent' HX machine and would give you more consistency but personally I would not be a fan of the way it works.
> 
> I have done a LOT of experiment with the appartamento to establish repeatable brew temps and once you have a good flushing routine you can target whatever brew temp you want on the fly.
> 
> For what it is worth the appartamento at normal boiler pressures required an initial flush of between 150-180ml. This is after a full warm up. After that if you want to make a couple of shots "back to back" you will simply need to screen flush. You can also catch the machine on the warm up and pull a shot at a group head reading of 90c without any cooling flush at all.
> 
> Would I change my machine, hard to say, I wouldn't want a minima or lelit machine though. If I was to get anything else I would be looking at the ECM machines and spending a bit more money which at the time was not an option.
> 
> Good luck with whatever you choose.
> 
> Sent from my SM-A405FN using Tapatalk


 thanks for taking the time to talk through your reasons for choosing it , looks a real thing of beauty . Am I correct in saying you would flush the until the group head thermometer reaches 90 ish and then go for the brew or would the reaction time of the thermometer not be that quick? I'm not sure if the probe touches the actual hot water or if it just takes surface temp of the metal?

did you notice much difference in your brew when you changed from the mignon to the niche?


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## scottishcoffeegeek

Just to add another opinion in...

I had a basic machine when I first started out and was looking to upgrade and, without a whole lot of knowledge, I saw the Appartamento and thought it looked cool as well as being a step up in quality etc. from where I was.

At this point I also had a Mignon I'd bought 2nd hand.

I kept looking at the Appartamento and then started looking at whatever is just above that in the range (forgive me I can't remember right now) and started looking into the differences between them. All the pros & cons. Looked up all the YouTube review videos as well as looking on here.

As a bit of time had past I figured I could bump my budget up a bit and started looking at midrange Rocket machines. Then when I was about to go for one of them, a friend said why don't you just go for the R58 dual boiler if you're spending that much anyway....good point!

I now have an R58...when I set out looking at an Appartamento.

It's probably saved me upgrading multiple times and losing money when selling old machines. If you can push your budget or wait a wee while longer and save a bit more then I'd really suggest doing that and buy a really good machine & grinder. 
Buying secondhand from the forum is totally a great way to go, I bought my Mythos grinder off here.

Sell stuff on eBay, wait a while & save, do whatever...but just don't buy something now when you wish later down the line that you'd saved a bit more and bought the machine/grinder you really wanted. It's definitely worth the wait.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## HowardSmith

JamesMac said:


> thanks for taking the time to talk through your reasons for choosing it , looks a real thing of beauty . Am I correct in saying you would flush the until the group head thermometer reaches 90 ish and then go for the brew or would the reaction time of the thermometer not be that quick? I'm not sure if the probe touches the actual hot water or if it just takes surface temp of the metal?
> 
> did you notice much difference in your brew when you changed from the mignon to the niche?


It's not as simple as one method all the time. I will try and explain what I have learnt in as short an explanation as possible.

In an e61 HX machine Brew water temperature (BWT) is predominantley determined by two factors that we can control. Group Head Temperature (GHT) and HX Temperature (HXT)

There are mainly two methods for repeatable BWT.

Flush & Go - With the F&G you flush a sufficient amount of water out of the HX to cool the HXT, the GH will remain hotter with this method. You now have cooler water coming from the HX being heated by the hotter GH. With this method one may flush until the GHT drops to around 96c for example and then go withing 10 secs. This will give you around a 94c shot.

During the F&G method the GH thermometer will read maybe 1-2°C lower than the actual brew water. This is because the water that is passing the thermometer is cooler at the point it passes and still has a bit further to go/heat up on it's way to the puck.

F&G will likely produce a declining temperature profile during a normal extraction with a drop of around 1c over the course of a normal extraction. This is due to the GH being gradually cooled by the cooler HX water.

Flush & Wait - With F&W one would flush a sufficient amount of water through the group to cool the temperature of the GH below target brew temp. You would then wait for the reading on the GH thermometer to rise to around 1-2c below the target brew temp and initiate the shot.

With F&W the group is cooler than target brew temp and the water in the HX is likely fully recovered to around full temp.

With this method the GH is cooling the hotter water from the HX as it passes through. GH thermometer read outs will be around 1-2c above the actual water hitting the puck. Again this is because the water still has further to travel after the thermometer where temperature will continue to change.

F&W will likely produce an inclining temperature profile during a normal extraction. This is because the extra hot water from the HX will warm the GHT during the shot.

One can also use a fan or wet cloth to cool the GH for a F&W method but I do believe that if this is to be done for the first shot after a long idle period there will be a higher temperature 'hump' at the beginning of the shot (this may or may not be desirable) due to no flushing of 'superheated water'.

During both methods one can simply ignore the readout on the thermometer at the beginning of the shot. Especially during the F&W as it may peak to 96c but rest assured that with that method the puck will not be seeing 96c water. The readout during the middle/end of the shot is a much more reliable read out to consider but one must also be aware of the offset.

Personally I am no longer worrying about temperature at the puck and simply work towards a repeatable readout during the middle/end of my shots.

I hope this makes some sense. I have done a lot and I really mean a lot of reading and experimenting with HX temperature to dial in my rocket. Good luck lol


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## GengisKhan

@JamesMac - Did you decide on what to get?


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## JamesMac

GengisKhan said:


> @JamesMac - Did you decide on what to get?


 Not yet buddy. Everything is out of stock but narrowed down to appartamento, minima or marax. Appartamento looks the best but I do worry about flushing, getting the length of flush correct and making sure the temp is back to where it needs to be for the next brew.

Appartamento looks great quality too from pictures and reviews .


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## GengisKhan

JamesMac said:


> Not yet buddy. Everything is out of stock but narrowed down to appartamento, minima or marax. Appartamento looks the best but I do worry about flushing, getting the length of flush correct and making sure the temp is back to where it needs to be for the next brew.
> 
> Appartamento looks great quality too from pictures and reviews .


 I've not been militant on measuring temp and how long to flush, I've just done it and made my coffee. It's a shame though you can't try it out in the flesh..


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## JamesMac

GengisKhan said:


> I've not been militant on measuring temp and how long to flush, I've just done it and made my coffee. It's a shame though you can't try it out in the flesh..


 Have you fitted a brew head thermometer to yours ? Unfortunately I am about 400 miles from Bella barista too so the reality is ill be picking a machine blind which sucks. I'd love to give the appartamento , mara-X and minima a shot side by side and see which feels best for me. I have 4 young children and work a lot so maintenance is a big one too, the easier to maintain the better .


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## GengisKhan

JamesMac said:


> Have you fitted a brew head thermometer to yours ? Unfortunately I am about 400 miles from Bella barista too so the reality is ill be picking a machine blind which sucks. I'd love to give the appartamento , mara-X and minima a shot side by side and see which feels best for me. I have 4 young children and work a lot so maintenance is a big one too, the easier to maintain the better .


 I haven't done the brew head thermometer, don't feel the need to, TBH.

It terms of maintenance, I only use bottled water and then just before shutting down do a back flush with a blind basket. 1-2 weeks i'll do a back flush with a cleaning powder, take out the shower screen and gasket (you only need a screwdriver to get it off) and soak them in the cleaning powder for 15-20 mins, along with the portafilter/baskets etc. Beyond that its a wipe down with a soft cloth etc. There are loads of stuff on here on maintenance which would be worth reading.

It's a really tricky decision but its worth nothing that my machine is 3 years old and as its been said in the thread, you can get more features for your £ now.

Sorry probably not helped!


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