It was a lot of work as a solo project but I hope you guys think it’s cool. When I say “we” in the website it’s only in the most royal sense possible. I also did all the photo/videography. I started out designing a single machine for personal use, but like many things it sort of spiraled out of control from there.
I felt like espresso machines were getting very large, plasticky, and app-integrated without actually improving the underlying technologies that make them work. The noisy vibratory pumps in particular are from 1977 and haven’t really changed since then. So I wanted to focus on making the most advanced internals I could and leaving everything else as minimalist as possible. The pump is, as far as I know, completely unique in terms of power density and price. Without spending several thousand dollars, it was difficult to find a machine with a gear pump, and adjustable pressure was also similarly expensive but this machine has those things and costs a normal amount to buy. You can also turn the pressure way down and make filter coffee.
I also saw so many people (including myself) using a scale while making espresso, and even putting a cup below the group head to catch drips, entirely negating the drip tray, so I basically designed for that! The profile of the machine is much lighter on the eyes and doesn’t loom in the corner like my old espresso machine did.
And for the grinder, basically everything on the market uses conical and flat burrs that have descended from spice grinders, and the same couple of standard sizes. Sometimes larger companies design their own burrs, but only within those existing shapes. There is sort of a rush to put larger and larger burrs into coffee grinders, which makes sense, but with cylindrical burrs, you can increase the cutting surface way more relative to the size of the grinder. When grinders get too big, maintaining alignment becomes mechanically cumbersome, but the cylindrical burr can be very well supported from the inside, and there is the added benefit of hiding the entire motor within the burr itself. The resulting grounds are just outright better than all the other grinders I have used, but obviously this is a matter of taste and my own personal bias.
The biggest downside for the grinder is that it doesn’t work with starbucks style oily roasts, because the coffee expands so much while traveling down through the burrs and can sometimes clog up the teeth. It doesn’t hurt the grinder but it does require cleaning (which is tool-free!). Another downside for both machines is the fact that they run on DC power so it’s best if you have a spot in your kitchen to tuck away the power brick.
I also made a kit that makes the gear pump a drop-in upgrade for other espresso machines, to reduce noise and add adjustable pressure.
https://velofuso.com/store/p/gear-pump-upgrade-kit
The roughest part of this process were the moments midway through development where they weren’t working at all. When the grinder is just jamming itself instantly or the fourth factory in a row tells you the part you’re making is impossible or the pump is alternating between spraying water out the side and into your face and not pumping at all. And the default thought is “Of course it’s not working, if this was going to work someone else would have already made it like this”. The route you’ve taken is fundamentally different enough that there are no existing solutions to draw on. You’re basically feeling around in the dark for months on end, burning money, and then one day, every little cumulative change suddenly adds up to a tasty espresso. And it’s not perfect yet, but you at least can see the road ahead.
Anyways, this is way more than I expected to write, thank you for reading! Tell me if you have any questions
Congrats! The design looks nice, but I'm not very fond of the website design. There isn't a single picture of Trefolo that doesn't crop-out some part of it. Also, every picture is in a "sterile" environment. It would be nice to have a picture of it on a real kitchen counter or coffee corner to put its dimensions into perspective, and also demonstrate how it "fades back into the environment".
Also, IMHO, the sustainability pitch is a nice one but needs to be put down in more precise terms. It is good as it is for people who would otherwise buy a Nespresso machine, but anyone who has bought something above that level would need more convincing.
Overall, a good espresso machine already scores pretty high sustainability-wise. Apart from the used of sustainable/premium materials, a key factor to that is the replacement parts and repairability. So, how does Trefolo do in terms of replacement parts and compatibility with 3rd party parts?
For me, the future lack of replacement parts is especially concerning for the Turbina coffee grinder. The use of bespoke grinding burrs adds a wow factor and may be functionally superior to other types of burrs. But this is the one part in the whole setup that is guaranteed to need replacement down the road. What are the provisions for that? How much would it cost? And if you decide to stop selling it, would you e.g. be willing to commit to releasing the burr design so owners or some independent manufacturer can machine replacements?
Thank you so much! I appreciate the advice about the potentially over stylized product pages. If you go to the store here, you can see many full profile views of the products:
You raise a ton of good points.
- It's going to ship with a full spare parts catalogue available
- Full prusa-esque upgrade paths will be made available for existing customers
- Every single part on either product can be changed off with the removal of 1-5 screws.
- The switches, cords, buttons, and (gear)motors are all standard sizes.
- and I absolutely commit to open sourcing everything if a day came where the project could not continue (I have done this for previous projects, it isn't an empty promise)
You make a good point about the burrs being a non-standard size. The thing to remember is every size of burr was once a non standard size. One of the most important parts of being a good engineer is only making something new when you can truly add value, and I think the burrs are valuable enough to have them be probably the only non-standard wear item in either machine.
Just to chip in with the drive-by website feedback, I just realized that (I love everything about this and) I have no idea how big either the espresso machine or the grinder is. I think I'd really need some realistic (ish) kitchen photos with it in action to really appreciate what I'd be ordering.
Appreciated that you took the time to address my points. Glad to see that it's probably the website design that doesn't do justice to the product.
IMHO, you should be putting these details in the spotlight. As a new brand in the espresso world, this would help convince customers go with you instead of a tried-and-trusted brand with decades of history on their back. Also, if there is a hackable PID controller or if there are plans to add one, this would also be a selling point for many (see the renewed popularity of the relatively humble Gaggia Classic).
For the burrs, maybe running a lab test of Turbina against a traditional grinder of the same class would help make a solid argument for the new design. E.g. start grinding 2 kilo batches on each grinder and then take a sample and lab-test it for consistency. Continue until the ground coffee becomes inconsistent on both. Yes, this may turn out to be pricey. And maybe there are established test procedures that I'm not aware of (not a coffee pro - just pulled this out of my engineering bottom).
As a final comment, for the wooden parts of Trefolo, maybe a darker or even black varnish would look more premium/classy. The pale wood color is vaguely reminiscent of IKEA furniture, something you probably want to avoid.
Re website, The photography is also noticeably low-resolution, which stands out immediately
Exactly this! It immediately turned me off from the product when I realised there isn’t a single practical image of it. It’s impossible to visualise how it would actually look on the counter.
Agreed. And please -- show a video of it working, start to finish! This is clearly a product designed to be a sensory experience, so let me see and hear this on a kitchen counter pulling a shot or two.
The video of the device in operation with the entire device in frame please. You could still even switch between sexy angles.
Yep, I looked for a couple minutes and concluded “must be ugly since they clearly don’t want to show it to me”.
I would also like to see a user’s manual and a diagram of how it’s plumbed. Where does the hot water come from? Does the user supply their own kettle? Where does excess water go when pressure is released? How does the preheating cycle work?
Hey there!
Yep, you bring the hot water, the machine does everything else! There is a pressure seal directly in the group head that holds the water in at the end of a shot. You can preheat just by pumping water into a cup for a couple seconds, which is around the same as a purge cycle on a traditional espresso machine. The fluid path is kept as small and as insulated as possible to avoid thermal losses or unnecessary water being held in the machine.
I added a pre-release version of the manual to the warranty page! Please excuse any minor errors.
I definitely agree that there needs to be a simple clean 30 second video of the full workflow with every part visible - I will work on that ASAP.
Hang on...you are running a plastic tube to a kettle on your stovetop?? There is zero chance that the water getting to the device is anywhere near the right temperature after going through a length of plastic tubing. As you know, temperature, pressure and grind are the three ingredients that make good espresso. This throws temperature control out the window and would make the temperature wildly swing depending upon the speed and volume of the extraction. Warm up time is crazy too, as you have to boil a pot of water. Most machines take around 30-40 seconds, but Breville has really perfected this and their new machines come up to temp in a miraculous 3 seconds.
Besides that, anyone who has used an espresso machine knows that there's quite a bit of resistance when locking in a portafilter so that it seals properly. This thing looks like it would move off your countertop before the portafilter would lock in. Do you have to hold the legs with one hand while you lock the portafilter or something?
This is the main issue with those hand pull machines that don't have a boiler. It's so so fussy getting the temperature right, you have to warm everything up first then it's a race against time and even then you never really controlled the temps.
Very very good points
Sorry I can't look at your product page from work, but am I getting the correct impression that this machine doesn't have a boiler? If so, my (meant in good fun) suggestion is that you have in fact designed half an espresso machine :)
Hahahaha, that is fair, but I like to think it is the important half =]
We figured out how to heat water thousands of years ago. Flow control is considerably newer
| We figured out how to heat water thousands of years ago
Then why doesn't this device heat the water
With all due respect, you have to figure this out since not many people are going to pay $700 for half of what a $100 device can do. Honest advice not a critique. It must be hard not to read the negativity from some comments but this is already a great job that you had done! You just need to continue building on it IMHO.
Yeah but having the water hit the grounds at the right temperature is what separates a great machine from an average machine. Yours doesn't do that. Congratz on everything you've done so far but I am your target customer and won't consider a machine that doesn't also manage the water temperature.
Yeah dude until I saw that it needs an external apparatus, I was quite interested.
Externally supplied hot water through a plastic tube makes this a non-starter for me. You use almost no plastic (wonderful!), but the little there is has a lot of surface area touching hot water.
Have you thought about making a water heater accessory? I'd be open to collaborating - contact[at]otekengineer.com
That grinder is a thing of beauty. I was going to impulsively splurge until I saw the price (not complaining, you're doing the right thing by launching at a high price point).
my preference would be pictures of all angles and a single shot video start to finish.
stop hiding, be proud.
I've just looked at low end robot vacuum cleaners. It was hilarious, non of them are willing to show the product in action.
What type of hot water supply is needed?> you bring the hot waterE.g.
- Hot water poured in from a kettle?
- Hot water plumbed in from a domestic hot-water supply?
- Hot water plumbed in from a boiling water tap (such as Quooker?)
Reading the manual, it seems like a hose is placed into a kettle, and the pump is in the machine.
> There is a pressure seal directly in the group head that holds the water in at the end of a shot.
Like a check valve? Does that mean that some (clean) water is trapped between the pump's output and the seal at the end of the shot? If so, this doesn't seem so terrible.
One thing I've often found odd about espresso machines is that they all seem to have some mechanism to depressurize the basket when a shot ends, and that this mechanism lets water that may have been in contact with the grounds go through some portion of the machine. What's the point? The pressure will naturally dissipate quite quickly through the grounds unless like kind of pressure-retaining basket is in use.
Basically it removes excess water from the filter, creating less soggy pucks. Easier to clean. I imagine the rapid depressurisation "upwards" may cause the puck to move a bit upwards, again, making it easier to remove.
I'd also like to add that everything I click seems to open a new tab/window. Can't I just view the coffee devices and store all in a single tab? Details? New window. Shop? New window! Back to the details? New window. Contact? New window!! I don't like having all these extra tabs to close without a good reason for it.
Excellent comment. I beg the OP to address the topics, specially spare parts, so I can buy it.
I was also looking for a full, non edited, non animated, non faded picture of the machine.
He has "full body" shots in the actual store, but I agree—it would be great to see a clearer shot, maybe lower in the flow.
> He has "full body" shots in the actual store
Is this the image you are thinking about? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/642b16caa70131...
Because the problem is that it is not the "full body" of the coffee maker. Those pipes go somewhere. At least in the sense of how people usually think of an espresso machine the machine also contains the pump and the boiler. This apparently doesn't have those parts? Or if it has they are not good looking and minimalist enough to show.
We are discussing the photos as if those are the problem, but I think the issue people are having is with the product design. If I make a picture of a laptop on a charger people don't ask where do the cable go, because they know it goes into a charger connected to the wall. But with this people have to imagine a standalone boiler/pump setup just waiting to be connected into this coffee extractor thingy which is not a thing most people have (or expect to one day have ) in their kitchen.
Surely that image is a computer rendering and not an actual photo though! I want to see an _actual_ photo. Like on a counter. How big is it? Wires? Power brick? Cool concept, but hard to make a decision with so little information.
> Cool concept, but hard to make a decision with so little information.
It sounds like it is not hard to make the decision. I made my decision and it is a no. This is a cool thing for people who want to try the latest concepts but don't worry about it being an already polished and integrated whole product.
It is how some people kit build their Rutan Long-EZ to fly with, and some people just buy tickets from an airline. They are both flying but they are not the same class of thing. This is more towards the kit built airplane end of the scale for me than what I would be comfortable with.
> It sounds like it is not hard to make the decision. I made my decision and it is a no. This is a cool thing for people who want to try the latest concepts but don't worry about it being an already polished and integrated whole product.
I got to push back on this and align with the dozens of other comments being critical of the website. If I had the physical and budgetary space for it, I'd already be salivating at this point and wanting to hear more, polished or not.
But, the website is utterly lacking in conveyance of practical use and just dressed up in marketing design. While there is a disclaimer that the (device) design may undergo further revision, it's orthogonal to the fact that this completely kills any chance of an immediate, impulse buy (again, if I had the space). I would at this point be asking other buyers to post videos of it in use long after units have already been sold into the wild.
I do take my coffee somewhat seriously, with the consumption of fresh microroasted beans and a few prized pieces of brew equipment.
Want to try turning my comment more constructive (though my frustations with what passes for customer service/relations these days will bleed through)
I see that the OP has already stated they will upload some videos. That would be great; many angles, both in use and not in use, both overview and zoomed in on components.
I am not most people, but I would prefer the kind of videos without excessive (though not to say "devoid of") pre-/post-processing, editing, green-screening, video cuts every three seconds, and all that shebang. Even your teenaged child or friend/significant other conscripted for twenty minutes to hold the phone with a steady hand while you show things off, minimally rehearsed and to-the-point... would be _fantastic_.
Don't even need to publish it on the official website if you deem it too tacky; but it will be infinitely more valuable to have on the ready than no demonstration at all if people are reaching out to you through channels like HN or even any address listed on the website. IMO.
The only way this type of thing takes off today is if it gets reviews. I am sure he will send out test devices to the usual suspects and we will see third party reviews.
I think people are being a bit harsh about the site and presentation. I think most of the criticisms are legitimate, but it is only fair to recognize the trends right now; it is no better or worse than most any other new product website - which tend to be similarly devoid of real information, no matter how much the product might cost.
From looking at the site and reading his comments here, this is a soft-launch / teaser, and he seems receptive to feedback. I look forward to seeing how things progress. I especially look forward to some solid videos showing everything in action. As with all things coffee, I can only be cautiously optimistic. But that means he is doing great :)
A bit of a catch-22, right? In any case, there is going to be an "in the meantime" until reviews get published, and probably even more time before some more well-known channels possibly decide to get their hands on it and talk about it.
Any effort to get early wave buy-in from a certain (IMO critical and not uncommon) type of enthusiast (i.e., someone like me) in that meantime will be cripplingly handicapped by their web presence lacking information and not showing anything w.r.t. what the real-life use looks like.
I suppose that's my feedback, but you are right about the good move to make themself available here for feedback/Q&A. I'm jealous that I don't have the funds right now to actually consider buying one, so I'm here pontificating instead.
I personally am heavily considering pre-ordering a pump for my old Ms Silvia that has already undergone the knife many times, and then more long term I really like the idea of the grinder. But I won't be buying until they do their follow up and provide the richer detail you require as well. I was mainly saying it is not a special omission that indicates anything about the product to me (unfortunately, that is the state of the relevant arts right now).
I suppose it says something important about the major defects with modern marketing that many people stopped there. Although I often would do the same, I did not, because I sense there is something great in this product line, and I want to be uncharacteristically patient to allow it to blossom.
> I got to push back on this
Push back on what exactly though? I claimed that it is not hard to decide if one wants to buy it. I just decided that i don’t want to buy it. It sounds like you came to the same decision. So what is exactly the thing you disagree with me?
Well, it's not hard only because the website completely lacked any useful detail to inform the decision. In the end, it's a great play by OP to come here and open up a Q&A.
I am not a coffee drinker. What does this mean?> fresh microroasted beansI'm admittedly corrupting the term a bit, but I mean beans from a local-scale coffee (micro)roaster in the same sense as a local beer (micro)brewery.
There are actually no renderings on the website except for that one cross-section of the grinder, the internals are rendered there.
But absolutely, going to add more "banana for scale" photos asap
Reading between the lines, I’m pretty sure the pump is integrated in the housing (that’s their custom “bespoke, brushless gear pump”), and the boiler is your electric kettle. So I think you could just drop the end of the tube into your kettle and call it a day.
The kind of coffee enthusiast who is going to preorder a $650 unreviewed coffee machine probably has at least one temp holding kettle they use for pour over.
But fully agreed this needs some clarity on the website.
OH! I think you might be right. Oh! That explains it. Thank you.
Thinking about it now, of course. What else would the power lead be for? It doesn't heat the water. The pump being in that part can be the only other explanation.
> The kind of coffee enthusiast who is going to preorder a $650 unreviewed coffee machine probably has at least one temp holding kettle they use for pour over.
Yeah. I think that's the key here. This is for an enthusiast who wants the latest coolest tech, and is willing to accept some amount of discomfort for it.
This was my first impression too. On a large, 4k display, I could barely read anything, all I saw was a really zoomed-in photo of some device.
It's interesting that he's made this visual mistake even as a person whose main concern is the product. So many photographers/videographers make the same mistake, and I guess he's copied them rather than thinking through what his market needs.
The error is basically to film the product as if it was a sexy woman. I'll put it bluntly: I don't want to fuck your product. I might want to buy it but only if you show me the practical details. (Speaking generally - I'm not in the market for a coffee machine). Videos that solely try to convey allure and mistique are a net negative for the vast majority of products.
This is very good news, as designing a physical product like this is 20x more difficult than designing a website!
My bad ! Should not have said my comment about the website earlier. Apologies to op, i am human, this is how communication should be.
Yeah, I couldn't tell if the photos were real or were rendered images
They are all real! But I definitely need to have more photos in actual environments.
I for one can't read a word while there are moving pictures around. That's one of the main reasons I block ads. So please, remove the video and stick with stills! Animated stills while scrolling is fine, however.
It's a good presentation, but it's not sufficient as a sales pitch. A non-staged video of both the grinder and the machine in use would be required to place an order, at least for me. As others have mentioned it's not clear where the water pipes go exactly and how the machine is powered.
Also, for $700 independent reviews are also a must.
For the pump kit - this too looks interesting, but requires (way) more details. At the very least a list of supported machines and, again, a video or two of an actual retrofit. Dimensions, voltage (!), etc.
Get this in the hands of James Hoffman, I’d love to hear his take on it
It’s fascinating how he has become to coffee as MKBHD has to technology. The kingmaker of coffee gear.
Unlike MKBHD, James Hoffman has some slightly more objective credibility. He won some barista competitions about 15 years ago. He's been involved in the coffee industry (outside of being a content creator) for most of his life. As far as I know about Marques, his main qualification is that he was just relatively early to the tech review game.
That is not to say that I personally take all or most of Hoffman's suggestions at face value. It's abundantly clear that the level of nuance he considers in coffee is not relevant to me. But I do tend to see him applying a much more objective level of rigor to his reviews than many other content creators.
The draw of MKBHD has nothing to do with "objective credibility". Consumer tech reviews are more about whether the reviewer will discuss daily usability objectively, and entertainment.
Coffee is more niche. It makes more sense for "objective credibility" to play a role there.
Very few tech reviewers have anything other than experience. Nilay Patel trained as a lawyer. He can’t code, can’t engineer, isn’t an industrial designer etc. it’s one reason why tech reviews are so obsessed with keyboards. For most reviewers keyboard feel is one of the few areas they have real expertise in.
MKBHD is absolutely as qualified as 99% of his peers.
Nilay Patel is an odd example to use. He has absolutely no credibility and he just attacks critics when his errors are pointed out.
he's also fair, often trashes big brands when their products are mediocre
I have great respect for his integrity and body of work
He's also deleted some of his videos because they had mentions to brands or companies with wrong practices (yes, plain wrong).
Also has very good books. So, totally not the average youtuber/content creator out there.
When he trashed the aldi espresso machine I think he was unfair. The main issues with it are probably the same issues you get on a Breville until you tune the OPV and get a seperate grinder. That said I dont think he is the screwdriver to espresso machine type.
I've got a Bambino Plus and so far the only customizations are a bottomless portafilter, a huge single wall basket (IMS), programming the flow presets for a good ratio by weight in/out, and optimizing the grind specifically for 30s duration. I'll have to look into your OPV suggestion; anything else?
Bambino might be OK stock?? Not sure. Only change the OPV if you have a problem to solve. For me it was slightly too fine gets zero extraction and the pressure compacts the puck. Then go a bit coarser and it spews out.
> That said I dont think he is the screwdriver to espresso machine type.
He's mentioned modding espresso machines many times in his videos, and brings it up often during reviews.
Yeah, I wouldn't compare them at all. Hoffman is also by all appearances and mannerisms a standup individual, more of a Mr. Rogers of coffee than anything else, in my opinion.
Mr. Rogers is a great comparison. Something about the sweaters and always wishing viewers a good day!
MKBHD is the last person I’d go to for anything tech related.
He, like many others, do little more than just read spec sheets.
I like his car related content though, reckless driving notwithstanding
Is there a BOLTR for general tech? For Instruments there is evvlog… but general tech?
Alec Watson of Technology Connections is my favourite for technology in general.
You know, I've watched basically every video of his for several years now (as well as going back in the archives for some of his older stuff), and I think this is the first time I've ever encountered his name.
Is there a way to get hours watched for a particular channel out of YouTube?
Another high-hour channel for me is Petter of Mentour Pilot.
As an Australian, those two guys accents their way of framing things are like mum’s lullabies.
He has made me extremely enthusiastic for heat pumps.
Me too, though it turns out certain types of houses don't support just replacing furnace with a central heat pump. No free lunch in thermodynamics :(
Have you heard about brown?
I have found Mr. Mobile (Michael Fisher) to be quite good. He does some sort of a road trip or excursion as a real world tech review and also covers a lot of old and quirky hardware.
- [deleted]
+1 for MrMobile (Michael Fisher), he comes across as more impartial than a lot of the other folks.
I find his channel useful just for getting an opinion from a end-user perspective of what a product is like; that's a legitimate opinion, not every data point needs to be a deep dive into the manufacturing process of a particular gadget.
Regarding grinders there's actually someone else who is considered the kingmaker: Lance Hedrick [1]
mkbhd over the years has had some really bad takes on tech. I haven’t used his channel for quite awhile.
I would say his success is largely due to being among the first to the market in tech reviews and having (at the time) better production quality.
St James, the protector saint of all things covfefe.
Thankfully it's quite difficult to grind and brew coffee dangerously.
Not really, moka pots are known to explode.
Source? I'm from Italy, where everybody's using them, but never heard of a single one exploding. Maybe you can find an isolated case, but I'm confident it's extremely rare. There's a safety valve to release pressure after all, and if you use the Moka correctly the valve never has to engage.
I’m in the Dominican Republic, and moka pots are 99 percent of the market here as well. Everyone warns me about moka pots exploding, but I’ve never met anyone (15 years here now) that knows of one first hand that actually exploded.
But everyone is terrified of mokasplosion.
I’ll admit, the prospect of a pressurized vessel of boiling water is a potent reminder for precautionary thinking.
Minor nitpick here, but it's a fact I found interesting when I heard about it. The water inside a Moka doesn't boil, you can indeed observe that the water coming out from the top isn't boiling. What happens is that the air that is left inside the bottom chamber expands due to the heat, pushing the water upwards.
I think YMMV with this.
The custom where I am at is to load the moka pot with a grind and quantity that produces a significant barrier to the flow of water.
The alert that the brew is finished is the sound of the boiling hot water and steam spraying the coffee through the standpipe into the upper chamber, and it is absolutely under steam pressure, I’d say around 5 to 10 psi.
When the liquid water is low enough that it doesn’t get picked up by the lower tube, you get a significant outflow of pure steam hissing through the standpipe nozzle, and then it’s quiet, as the bottom chamber is now completely dry, as are the grounds when you dump them out.
It could be that if you use a coarser grind or less coffee than is customary here, flow restriction does not occur, and the pressure of the heated air and water vapor is enough to push out all of the water through the coffee without reaching 100c (should only take about 1/6 psi for a flow overcoming gravity to that height) but if you used that method here your coffee would fall under heavy criticism.
The violence with which the flow jets into the upper chamber and the volume and aroma of the steam serves somewhat as a social signal as to the “quality” of the coffee, so there is a strong incentive to heavily load the pots here.
Legends of exploding pots are common, as is precautionary disposal of pots whose threads have become excessively worn.
But I still have no first hand knowledge of anyone witnessing an explosion or even an over pressure venting event (there is a small pressure relief valve on the side of the vessel)…. So I suspect that the risk is not that high.
Interesting, the different way we use mochas can explain why you have stories about explosions: our way is definitely putting less stress on mochas, which end up lasting for decades without the need to be replaced. We use coffee that is specifically ground for mochas, and we fill the chamber with water up until just below the valve (or, at the very limit, the water reaches half the valve). You still hear a sound when the coffee is ready, but it is caused by little sprays of coffee mixed with hot air, not steam.
This is fascinating to read, thank you.
Well my wife had one and it exploded (and it was Italian, Bialetti I think), we have several friends with explosions etc. It's of course possible that Italians use it properly and we don't, but I'm not an expert in this topic, so I just stay away from them.
This is unexpected to me: I would have assumed that, even if you did something wrong, the valve would have prevented an explosion. I can understand a single valve going bad, but if this happened to many of your friends there might be something going on there.
Who is mkbhd?
Product reviewer with a very popular YouTube channel.
He wouldn't take it. He'll review it after it's been on the market for about half a year, without any money. Lance hedrick is also a decently respected voice who does usually take sponsored reviews, whilst being honest.
I think Lance Hedrick would like this a lot. I bet he would experiment with changing the pressure during the brewing process
I agree here. Given the bespoke design, I would love to see a comparison with other machines.
It seems to go where ever you like it to go.
> The result is a freedom to use a far more thermally stable source of hot water - like the kettle you already have. And because no water is stored in the machine - it’s fresh every time.
Seems like a interesting idea, but I feel like there is a crucial point missing. What if I do not want a random water tube hanging into my water kettle? Feels like that is a big hole in a otherwise great thought through product.
Also, having to boil water in a water kettle first is a minor, but significant enough, inconvenience. It's why so many people now have hot water taps for tea, and use espresso machines instead of filter coffee.
Here in the UK, I only know one person who has a boiling water tap (they've been renovating an old cottage and are a fan of tech) though I wasn't a fan went I went to visit and tried it out (not why I went to visit). I'm more of a fan of the Unix/Linux philosophy of "do one job and do it well" as appliances are more likely to break when they have multiple jobs to do, so I was slightly against the idea of it anyhow. The main criticism I have of it is that it's far more likely to cause scalds/burns as you have to bring the container to the tap (specifically an Aeropress) and it's more difficult to control the flow of water. With a kettle, you can move the kettle to the container and it's far more controllable in terms of water flow. I'm also not a fan of the tap needing to keep pre-heated water in an insulated container all the time - only a small use of energy, but it seems unnecessary to me.
I'd be interested in an overall energy use comparison between a kettle and a hot water tap. I know lots of people who boil far too much water for a single cup of tea or coffee (partially due to kettle designs).
<opinion>
This problem is solved in its entirety by simply microwaving a cup of water. No wasted water.
If the same / similar cup is used, one can choose the desired temperature of the resultant hot water simply by varying the time. Seasonal variation of ambient water temperature may need to be taken into account.
I tend not to drink coffee, and I prefer to make tea with less-than-boiling water.
YMMV
</opinion.
Now that I’ve written that, I’ll have to put a power meter on the microwave and a kettle and report back with the results. My kettle recently broke and I hadn’t intended to replace.
I've tried that, and there are two problems. One is that water has a tendency to superheat and then boil all over the place when you put the tea in, or it suddenly produces a big bubble and water goes everywhere. The other is that it is hard to get a consistent temperature. Even if you measure it with a thermometer it seems problematic (although perhaps the grocery store thermometers go out of calibration easily). If you're doing herbal tea it might not matter as much, but for something like Chinese green tea, it was always hit or miss. I bought the Bonavita kettle as soon as I found out about it, and now I always have consistent tea with no fuss or mess.
My daily driver, a flatbed Panasonic microwave, does a good enough job, but yeah actually boiling the water in a microwave is a recipe for a way too hot cup, and half the water boiling over.
220ml, regular ceramic mug, one minute forty, does what I need, but I’m not tea or coffee connoisseur, just a prole with a box of Twinings loose leaf.
Thanks for the kettle reference, I have been meaning to find a temperature controlled unit.
I recently picked up an inexpensive Thomson branded electric frypan with digital temperature and time controls, well impressed.
I'd guess that a microwave would "waste" more energy as it's got moving parts and the energy isn't completely directed to heating the water. A kettle also "wastes" some energy as you end up heating the kettle too (from the hot water).
If a microwave was more efficient, I'd expect to see premium kettles that used microwaves instead of a simple heating element, though maybe there'd be design problems with preventing leaking microwaves.
Agree, at least to some extent.
For my use cases, I’m not looking to actually boil the water, bringing it up to 80 plus degrees suffices.
The inefficiency kettles bring is the tendency of certain users to heat way more water than their immediate needs.
I don't have a comparison to a kettle because I don't have one, but our Quooker tap took a fraction of a kWh over a couple of months that I measured the energy usage, and my wife uses it daily for tea and we use it most days for boiling water for things like cooking.
The 3L tank that holds the hot water, under the sink is well insulated and it takes almost nothing to keep it at temperature.
Given that it uses such negligible energy that I needn't care, the benefits of instant boiling water whenever we like and not having an extra appliance no the counter-top make it a clear winner for us.
Interesting, thanks. I really like the idea but the thing I'd miss from our kettle is the ability to change to lower temperatures for different kinds of tea. You shouldn't really use boiling water for some kinds of green tea, for example. I guess you can mix in some cold water to reach close to the right temperature, but I'd miss the convenience.
I've never come across a kettle that changes temperature, or is it that you can stop it boiling when you feel it's about right?
My wife drinks tea (I'm a coffee drinker) and I make tea (just simple, English Breakfast with milk) for her quite often, and we both use it for cooking. It was something she'd always wanted, and she's not much into "gadgets" but she's been very happy with this, so I'm happy.
I've got the OXO adjustable temp one. It lets you select a temperature between 40 and 100 °C in one degree increments. I wish it were a bit smaller and could heat to a lower temp (for e.g. proofing yeast), but otherwise it's pretty nice. As it's an American market product it's limited to 1500W, which is still pretty quick but nowhere near the speed of something designed for 240V mains.
The biggest problem I've had so far was that Amazon seems to only stock used/counterfeit units. Buying direct from OXO got me on that hadn't been used and didn't reek of volatile organic compounds on the first try.
> The biggest problem I've had so far was that Amazon seems to only stock used/counterfeit units. Buying direct from OXO got me on that hadn't been used and didn't reek of volatile organic compounds on the first try.
This is slighly terrifying; and interesting that something like this would be counterfeited. I too would make any and all efforts to ensure I was using something legit where mains (240V for me) are concerned.
I once bought a knock-off hot-air soldering station without knowing, and once I looked into it, people were complaining they'd received units where the live was "grounded" to the case.
I opened mine to check, not quite as bad, but the live in mine wasn't attached to the metal case, just bare, and within about 1cm of it. I reported it to the retailer (we all know which major online retailer this was), and they did nothing. Let's just say things changed, seriously, for me that day when it comes to buying anything mains powered with uncertain origins.
This may have been the tipping point for me. I got two from Amazon. One was obviously used and had lots of hard water deposits. The other had a very strong VOC odor to it. Around this time I'd started looking more closely at items purchased from Amazon and they'd often appear to be lower quality (if not blatantly counterfeit). Even if I didn't despise Bezos this would've put me off Amazon.
ThermoWorks refused to sell their products on Amazon for quite a while. Apparently they've changed their stance but I wouldn't risk it.
Anyways the kettle is nice to have that I use daily for coffee even though I now have an induction stove with burners that are far more powerful than the kettle. Stateside, circuits for electric ranges are 240V, 50A (occasionally 40A on older buildings).
Why do despise him?> Even if I didn't despise BezosProbably due to him making a fortune by exploiting and underpaying his employees. His workers are reduced to pissing into bottles to save time whilst Bezos is mucking around flying in space.
> I've never come across a kettle that changes temperature, or is it that you can stop it boiling when you feel it's about right?
There's several around - I've got one that allows you to choose between 70°C, 80°C, 90°C and boiling (along with a keep-warm option that's never used). I use the 80°C option all the time for making coffee (Aeropress) and use the 70°C for things like green tea (black tea should be 100°C of course).
It's a mistake to use boiling water when making coffee - it'll extract a bitter flavour.
> I've got one that allows you to choose between 70°C, 80°C, 90°C
That's really cool, I suppose I haven't really looked, being a coffee drinker, a kettle was never important to me.
> It's a mistake to use boiling water when making coffee - it'll extract a bitter flavour.
I have two espresso machines, one in the kitchen and one in my home office, I also have an Aeropress like yourself, love it, but I only use that for travelling. Wouldn't dare pour boiling water over my freshly ground coffee :)
- [deleted]
The Bonavita kettle lets you set in 1 def F (or C, if you prefer) increments, with some common presets. I've used it for making Chinese tea for years.
We have an earlier version of this: https://www.bosch-home.co.uk/en/mkt-product/food-preparation...
The only annoying thing about it is that the fill indicator is rather hidden by the handle, but otherwise we really like it.
Ah that looks cool, got a sort of retro-coffee filter machine for the office look to it too (I love Bosch appliances).
I never understood why so many kettles always put the fill indicator behind the handle, which of course you'd be holding when filling it up. The first time I saw one with a large, clearly graduated window on the side (and wasn't also a cheap, white plastic kettle) I was impressed, being the nerd I am.
When I was trying out my friends' boiling water tap, I had to much around with putting in some cold water into the Aeropress first, before then adding the boiling water. If I had to use one for longer than a weekend, I'd probably use a small jug for mixing the water to the right temperature first.
Very good point, it's good for when you want water at that specific temperature but could end up being an inconvenience depending on how you intend to use it. I have a few different thermermometers in the kitchen, plus a laser one and my Pixel now has one (for some unknown reason) so I use those to check the temps of things in the kitchen when I need to know.
Hot drinks can be a bit of a ritual, as I'm sure you understand as an aeropress user, so I don't mind a bit of work to get the right brew if I need to do it, in fact one of the things I enjoy about taking my aeropress when I'm travelling whether camping or any other break, is having my coffee ritual with me.
Here in New Zealand they seem to be installed in every new or renovated office kitchen. Prior to that a boiling water tank that is mounted on the wall and allows instant near building water for tea.
Those boiling water tanks would be very hard for a child to access without a lot of effort. Those boiling taps are sometimes close to the cold/warm water tap.
The ones that I'm referring to are a single kitchen mixer tap that does the usual cold and hot, but also a boiling option.
As far as I can tell, the target market for steaming hot water taps is office kitchens.
When a kitchen serves 100+ people things like limescale will inevitably be a problem. If the steaming hot water tap is plumbed in, with replaceable water filters and a regular service contract - that's an advantage, not a disadvantage.
Steaming hot water taps can supply lots of hot water fast, so even if a load of people are making drinks at the same time in between meetings, they can keep up.
There's also a safety argument that if you've got a kettle and a mug, that's two things of boiling water you could drop, and eliminating one of the two makes things safer. And because the steaming hot water tap is directly above a drain, the impact of a spill is much reduced. And a lot of these taps make water that is steaming but somewhat below boiling, which might be safer or something?
Not sure why you'd want one for home though.
I have a Quooker tap, and no kettle. It's a game changer in the kitchen, need boiling water for cooking and it's instantly available, and my wife can have tea in a second whenever she wants, no waiting around or boiling a certain amount in the kettle, also one less appliance on the counter-top.
The energy usage is indeed minimal; I've measured it with a power meter over a couple of months and barely used a fraction of a kWh.
There are other boiling water taps, but Quooker is incredibly well built, really simple, and was created in an era of making things to last, it's got a price tag to match, but well worth it in our households opinion.
Sorry, I meant that they are installed in nearly all newly built houses, at least in my country. I don't imagine you'd find many in older kitchens.
> so many people now have hot water taps for tea
I know they exist but I've only ever seen one house with such a tap and that was a very well off family member. I don't think these are terribly common.
They're not so wildly expensive. a couple hundred bucks maybe. My mom got one years ago, and it's really convenient for quick pour-over coffee. Great if you're in a hurry. I use a moka pot at home, but the 10 minutes it takes to boil while I putter around the kitchen trying to remember my name are really the most worthless of the day.
Minor nitpick here, but it's a fact I found interesting when I heard about it. The water inside a Moka doesn't boil, you can indeed observe that the water coming out from the top isn't boiling. What happens is that the air that is left inside the bottom chamber expands due to the heat, pushing the water upwards.
We have a Quooker and I recommend them to all our friends who ask, it's more expensive than others (starting at around £1200) but it's incredibly well built, designed/created in an era of making things to last, and they seems to stand by that; you can get spare parts and they sell a service kit for £25 (last I bought it) with the filter that you can replace every few years if you want, but you can also buy the individual parts of system like a new tank, just the core/element, etc.
"starting at around £1200"! It would need to bring it to my chair for that price.
I wanted one but also baulked at the price, got a ~£200 drop ship special instead. I might actually prefer it to the Quooker tbh - it doesn't spit. (The spitting is apparently a safety feature, but guess which one I've burnt myself on...)
My experience of boiling water taps in offices is that they're not actually hot enough for decent tea.
How's your experience been? Do you preheat your mug before brewing? I like tea strong and dark!
I'm not much of a tea drinker myself, but I make it for my wife, the Quooker tap dispenses water at 100°C which I believe is sufficient for tea, I can brew it quite dark and it keeps a good temperature after adding milk.
As for pre-heating, I tend to use it to pre-heat my wife's tea mug and my coffee cup before I brew with the espresso machine in the kitchen, by filling it part way for a few seconds and then pouring away; mostly to take the chill off, as our kitchen can be cold in the mornings.
I know there are lots of other cheaper brands but my understanding from researching several of them a few years back was that many/most of the cheaper ones won't keep up with the Quooker, won't be as reliable, and likely won't have the after sales support as a product from a company that specialised in that single product. There are the office ones you speak of but they're been weaker performing in my anecdotal experience of our office, and often come with service contracts.
Seems like good way to get third degree burns if you're not careful? I just put my water filled mug in the microwave (with a spoon in to avoid superheating).
I've put my hand under the boiling tap once, it hurt a bit but I wasn't burned. Someone told me it has some sort of atomiser mechanism in the tap when the water is ejected to reduce the chance of burns, but I haven't looked into it and I'm not sure how true that is.
It's a quite deliberate and slightly difficult action to activate the boiling water, there's a ring around the base of the spout that you have to double-press and twist on the second press, completely independent of the normal cold/hot water.
I have two young children and honestly, I'm not concerned either for them, my wife, nor myself that there's any risk.
Using the microwave is a perfectly good solution I think, but I don't know many people who do that, and although it's fine for tea etc for one person, it won't do a house-full of cups of tea in seconds, nor fill a pan with boiling water.
I wouldn't dare to suggest that it's the best thing for everyone, but we are extremely happy with its utility in our home.
EDIT: Typos
> so many people now have hot water taps for tea
I have never seen that anywhere at houses I visited in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, a few US.
I am not saying that this is not a thing, it is just that "so many" depends on the demographics.
Sorry, I meant that they are installed in nearly all newly built houses, at least in my country. I don't imagine you'd find many in older kitchens.Sorry, I meant that they are installed in nearly all newly built houses, at least in my country. I don't imagine you'd find many in older kitchens.
Out of curiosity - which country is it?
The Netherlands
I wouldn't consider it an inconvenience in my kitchen. I'm highly interested in this. However, $700 is a lot. So, like others mentioned, I'd first like to see a demo video at the very least of it in action.
Different teas require different and specific temperatures for optimal results. A hot water tap cannot do this. I love the minimalism in the product design for this!
I disagree. There's a very large espresso market for those who want a cheaper device that doesn't have the complications of a boiler. I have a flair espresso machine myself.
Adding a boiler I'd guess would double the price, so I think it's a good decision to leave off.
This isn't a cheaper device though.
“So many” should be heavily qualified. It’s nowhere near true in my experience (in the US) and I suspect this may only be true in specific places, or economic classes, or maybe it’s just you and two friends.
How much energy is that hot water tap wasting by keeping some tank with water hot throughout the day (and maybe night) for just a few cups of tea/coffee?
Not a lot actually, and there's the space from not having a kettle any more; filling pans for pasta/rice/etc. too.
The cheapest ones are about 10x the cheapest kettles. Can't imagine wanting to go back to a kettle personally.
One of us is making their coffee wrong, because my espresso making is definitely more inconvenient than a pour-over.
Yeah, you would have to really like espresso for this to be worth it. Personally I don't like espresso. The only thing it's good for is the milk drinks, which I also don't particularly like, and being a lazy "push button" coffee. If I'm going to put effort in, filter is the way to go (I use a V60).
I reckon hipsters will be drinking filter in a few years' time, if they aren't already.
As for hot water taps for tea, if you are brewing black/red tea that is usually not good enough as they don't produce truly boiling water, although some do claim to.
Cold Brew is glorified filter coffee, especially when made with ultrasonics. It can even simulate the feeling you get when you go back to work while waiting for your coffee to be at drinkable temperature only to find it cold an hour later.
Cold brew coffee and cold filter coffee are two different things. Brewing at a cold temperature for a long period of time results in a very different taste which some people like and some don't. Note that the brewing temperature and drinking temperature are essentially independent; you can heat up cold brew and you can cool down hot brew.
Is it still thermally stable after a low-speed journey through a long (? Hard to say how long it is, or if you just plonk it into an open kettle of water as there are only close ups) narrow plastic tube? And what about cold water already in the tube?
If thermal stability is important enough to make such an advertising claim, you should probably show a comparison of input temperatures where the water meets the coffee over the course of multiple cycles against a representative competitor. With actual data rather than stylised cartoon graphs like in TV adverts for washing powder or whatever.
Woolly claims like that without clear evidence really make sound like audiophile woo territory, which would be a shame if you've actually done the research!
Thermal stability is arguably one of the most important aspects of espresso machine. If the water in the espresso machine boiler is sitting at 95°C, by the time this hot water reaches the group head it will lose some of the temperature. Lose 2°C and you're good. Lose 5°C and you still might be good but already at the edge of getting the crap out of the machine. Lose more than that and you're not gonna want to drink it.
Traditional E61 espresso machines whose water boiler is at ΔT cm's away from the group head, solve the problem of temperature surf with heavy duty pipes, boilers, isolation and materials to keep the temperature loss at the minimum.
More modern espresso machines place the water boiler just above the group head so they're basically solving the problem other way around: keeping the ΔT at minimum so giving no or minimum space for temperature loss.
As for this design, I am not sure how does it solve this problem.
In addition I would need to some justification for the idea that water stored in a clean tank without access to light is somehow worse than fresh out of a filter.
> Also, for $700 independent reviews are also a must.
Also for $700 you don't want to be the guinea pig.
Honestly, $700 is considered a very inexpensive price point in the espresso world.
For something that is essentially a slightly automated manual lever machine, it is quite expensive. Anything from Flair or the other lever machine companies is far less than that.
Without actually fully heating the coffee for your and having a tank, etc, I don’t see a huge advantage here over those types of machines.
The flair 58 is 600+. So it's slightly more, but from a new manufacturer and has a unique design. I expected it to be at least a $1000, so I think it's definitely price competitive. Though I'd hold off until reviews come in.
So, the Flair 58 is their 'highest end' model and sports a 58mm portafilter... this thing is a 51mm portafilter which is basically only used on smaller portable machines. Also, it's listed on their website for $580. Not sure how you get to 600+ (unless you include tax, I guess).
A more comparable model from Flair would be either the Pro 3 ($325, all metal in the grouphead, pressure gauge, shot mirror... lots of included accessories) or the cheaper models they offer (Classic w/ pressure gauge, $230, Neo Flex, $99).
If you wanted to compare to the Cafelat Robot, that is also only $450... and is all metal, built like a tank, and has a very charming aesthetic.
I love all these machines that we're comparing to but they're fundamentally different things - they don't have a pump to fit into their BOM. So maybe:
In the category of "machines that don't froth milk", it might be the most expensive by $50.
In the category of "machines that have pressure control", it might be the cheapest by $700
In the category of "machines that have a rotary pump", it might be the cheapest by $2000.
It's sort of the curse of making something that doesn't clearly fit into a specific category.
51mm portafilters are better and some day the world will come to understand
The Met doesn't do milk and it is way more expensive, and similar to what you are doing, I think.
The Meticulous is a lower end competition with the Decent Espresso DE1, or a more upscale version of the DIY stuff like Gaggiuino.
Given the author has given us essentially nothing regarding what is actually controllable (besides pressure control?), it's unclear to me what you even can do with it. A simple pressure control is pretty basic and not at all comparable to the Meticulous or a DE1.
OP's machine features are:
- Group preheat (so it has some kind of heater) - "Fully adjustable power" - ???
It does seem that the water tube either goes to a kettle and the pump is in the machine, or it goes to a pump, that you then need to attach to a machine, and that clear line is pressurized.
It does potentially have one feature the met doesn't (hinted at by allowing for filter brews): it'll be able to use up the entire water source, not a small amount of water you pour into the machine (similar to the Decent).
Edit: based on the manual just added, it seems like the pump is in the machine.
Best I can tell, with the manual released, this is literally just a pump and a group head. The dial appears to control the pump 'power' (voltage, I assume), and that's about it.
I'm really, really not seeing what could possibly justify this price. If the 'control' is just as simple as an analog knob, then this is no different than adding 'flow control' via a common dimmer switch to any other pump. I've done this modification on vibratory pump models myself, and they function just fine when dimer switch modded.
"Just a pump with a group head" is still pretty cool. It isn't revolutionary, temp control is a "big deal" in the community, but it's pretty cool that OP created that.
The pump absolutely is a "big deal" though if they can deliver on it. It has been attempted (Decent is trying to make one - actually they have been trying for years) and no one has delivered on a pump like that to date.
The pump doesn’t appear to offer any meaningful controls. The espresso machine itself seems just voltage controlled. How is that innovative?
A small rotary pump would be innovative, nothing like that exists currently. Vibe pumps are loud, but they are tested tech and live forever. A drop in replacement rotary pump would have a big market if it can stand up to use.
Are rotary pumps that large? From what I can tell, they’re relatively small as long as we’re talking the ones sized for single group machines.
Yes, they are pretty big. Just the pump alone is larger than the pump + motor for a vibe pump, and the motors for rotary pumps are like 4-5x the size of the pump. So you're really approaching 10x the size, it's kinda wild.
No offense, but we're not really comparing different things. You're offering an espresso machine that fundamentally has:
* No heating control
* No tank/water storage
* No milk frothing capability
The obvious comparison is a manual (lever) espresso machine that does not offer its own heating capability. It offers pressure control (via your arm) just fine.
Also, besides noise complaints and possibly some questionable reasoning involving vibe pump longevity, I have yet to see a compelling reason a rotary pump is better. They're 'nicer' and offered in higher end stuff, but performance wise a very good vibe pump seems just fine. Flow rates are more than adequate for pretty much any normal brewing method.
Regarding 51mm vs 58mm: you might be correct technically, but the ecosystem around accessories is firmly in the 58mm camp. As far as I can tell, the difference is so marginal it doesn't really matter anyways. Puck prep and other things will matter more for the average user.
Is it really? How many home users are really spending that much on an espresso machine? As someone who owns a ~$1000 machine (Profitec Go), I definitely feel like the $500-$1000 range is "end game" for the vast majority of people, not "very inexpensive".
Not if you have used the same bialetti moka pot for decades, only replacing the rubber seal once every year.
A moka pot isn't an espresso machine. It only generates around 1.5 bars of pressure which is only slightly higher than what you get pushing an aeropress by hand. Espresso needs at minimum 6 bars, although traditionally it's 9 bars.
Costs at least a few minutes a day, which works out equivalent to plenty of dollars per year if you make it at home and have a well paying job. Works well but I hate cleaning it after making coffee.
I have had a Flair for a few years now and the time is an important aspect. I used to use a Jura and the whole 1-button thing led to me drinking way too much coffee as I also had it mounted next to my desk. The workflow is a meditation and at the end the reward is a (usually) perfect pair of espresso shots.
I am more of a tea guy but I think you can totally cancel the cost of preparing and cleaning it when considering it becomes part of a package of daily movements you should do to stay healthy.
Also you can totally work while the pot is getting to temperature.
I hardly ever really clean my Moka pots. Usually, it's just a quick rinse with water. Is it really required to clean a Moka pot often?
Just washing the grounds out but takes time to cool the moka down. I guess I could leave the grounds in and clean it the next day but that idea is icky to me.
I preheat the moka with hot water and fill it with hot water from jug to reduce time to brew (necessary due to stove setup).
I don't understand these comments, both the product and the website is fantastic. This is the most impressive solo project I've seen in my life. I'm especially intrigued by the novel grinder design; and it is amazing that you could fit the motor in there. Top notch industrial design coupled with novel approaches. Almost in too-good-to-be-true land, but I will take your claims at face value. If this all checks out, this is an amazing set of products for the enthusiasts at home at a good price point (considering the market).
And don't get discouraged by the attacks on your web design, I think the website is excellent the way it is. Leave it to some reviewers to go into nitty gritty real world stuff; your website does a great job of showcasing the design language and what's great about the product.
I mean, the problem is the website is designed as if it's trying to hide something from me. Giving the benefit of the doubt, I don't think that's the case, but my, and I think many other's tuned "Something scammy on the internet is going on" alarm bells are going off. So I think that's why the criticism is so harsh.
And generally Show HN's posts are taken as a request for constructive criticism, which I think most are.
Specifically, those two tubes that fade into the darkness is just begging for an explanation.
I think I did make a mistake in not having the product in more real life environments. My kitchen is not very pretty so I set up a little photo area to capture all the images and video. Now I will find some kitchens to borrow.
> My kitchen is not very pretty
I would love to see the machine in a messy kitchen, where it is used to actually make coffee. Because to be honest, looking at the picture, it looks more like a decorative object than a functional coffee machine. Seeing it in its natural environment shows that it is the machine you use to make your own coffee (you do, right?), give some practicality.
To be fair, no one does that, it is not how marketing works, I guess. But here, it is not a regular espresso machine where we can immediately see how it works because we have already seen dozens of them, so a more practical shot saying "it is doesn't just look good on the countertop, it has a function, and that function is to make coffee".
Makes sense! Sounds like an easy fix.
But just from a practical consumer perspective. I want to know more about what the tube and power cable connect to. Since this is designed to be a new novel "compact" espresso machine, I would have higher standards in that regard compared to more conventional machines.
You obviously invested a lot in this product. I think that maybe renting a high end kitchen and bringing a professional photographer would go a long way!
You might need to give something away to make it happen, but an oddball request to an owner selling their nice home would probably work out, even if it took a few tries to find the right fit.
Thank you so much, this really means a lot.
Yeah, this. Anyone who criticizes this project is simply revealing their ignorance of what it takes to build a product like this. Super-impressive. And the web-site looks top-notch too (though there is some constructive criticism in other threads that would improve it). Hard to believe this was a solo project.
> Yeah, this. Anyone who criticizes this project is simply revealing their ignorance of what it takes to build a product like this
I don’t know what it takes to build a computer, but I know what it takes for me to buy one. The feedback given is all constructive from people who are saying that this product is as it’s currently presented to their taste and the customer is always right in matters of taste.
Also there is a matter of knowing your audience. The website looks top notch to people who build websites not to people who buy expensive coffee equipment. There doesn’t seem to be a single non cgi or cgi-like image of the machine or video of it running. These things a trivial to add, so it’s fair to give OP the feedback that this should be added.
First thought: Cash grab
There's no way someone who designed, manufactured, tested and refined all this original equipment wouldn't include some technical photos, documents, experience or anything to 'sell' the product. And with pre-orders? There isn't even a single video of it making espresso without total cropping.
For reference - The owner lists his studies in media design and works for Terra Kaffe - claiming involvement in building Terra Kaffe TK-02
I'll happily change my opinion if anything resembling original invention is presented.
If this were a cash grab, why in the world would a scammer post this to Show HN, instead of targeting a much larger, less savvy customer base via a crowdfunding platform?
Anything is possible, but I don’t know why you would jump to that conclusion without taking the opportunity to engage with the OP.
What do you mean by "cash grab"? Are you suggesting this is a scam?
I'd argue it looks like it, yes.
Giving me ZPM Espresso heeby geebies, but more money. Maybe inflation happens on scams too.
All the images look to be animation which is a warning sign for me.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-control...
Yeah honestly I'm in the same boat here. Something seems very off about this. There's not a single video on the site or YT of the device working. The video on the site is intentionally cropped so we only see the portafilter. Why was that conscious decision made? The price also seems WAY out of line, as handmade machines like this go for many thousands of dollars. The builder also is completely anonymous, which seems odd for a passion project like this.
I spun up a little project a few years ago and designed a product based around analog synthesizers. It was something I really loved doing, and I dropped videos of the R&D process all the time. How could you not!? It's the best part of the process and it's great marketing too. Again, things just seem strange here. I hope I'm wrong. Someone in this thread seems to have bought one, so I suppose we'll see.
Please make sure you protect your design in the UK and EU by registering it. It doesn't cost a huge amount, and the design is striking and different enough that it would be a shame if it was copied.
(Unless you're comfortable with that of course!)
Good advice!
It's a beautiful pump, but feels like only part of what an espresso machine is.
What heats the water? What provides temperature control? How would I produce steam?
It is so single purpose that it does not feel useful by itself, it feels like the prototype for part of a whole.
I like the idea of it, and I like the idea of "part of the whole" being a composable coffee machine where one could put together components which were all independently maintainable and highly serviceable... this feels like a taster for that, but by itself is very expensive for a pump that claims to be an espresso machine but could not produce an espresso alone, and would need something else to make any espresso derived coffee.
What this replaces is a lever espresso machine, but I'm not sure anyone with a home coffee machine would've purchased a lever espresso machine without the integrated boiler... and if they would, then this is right there https://bellabarista.co.uk/collections/lever-machines/produc...
You would benefit greatly from a video that showed the workflow end-to-end of making an espresso... from bean to the final drink.
Flair, which you linked, is hugely popular. Several people in my office have one even though I would not consider them coffee enthusiasts like myself.
Most people are going to have a decent electric kettle anyway (especially if they want to make pour overs) so being able to save costs and counter space by reusing what you have already makes tons of sense.
If you told me I could get something roughly equivalent to the Flair, for roughly the same price, with programmable flow profiling? Hell yeah!
I have the budget and desire for a Decent, but not the counter space or interest in cleaning and maintenance. Something like this machine would be very appealing.
I have a Flair and I'm not that happy with it. It looks beautiful but I feel like they pulled a fast one by providing the, cheapest ugliest power brick ever. There's lots of other small issues that makes it frustrating to use on a daily basis, although it's a great conversation piece for sure.
I feel this one is trying to do the same thing, all focus on the pump, 0.1% plastic - but ignore that huge plastic power brick, that doesn't count.
When it comes to espresso machines the devil really is in the details.
> I have a Flair and I'm not that happy with it. It looks beautiful but I feel like they pulled a fast one by providing the, cheapest ugliest power brick ever.
What power brick? Flair makes manually operated, lever-based espresso makers. You heat the water in a separate kettle and you can buy whichever brand of kettle you prefer.
Are you referring to a Flair grinder? That seems irrelevant to the gp’s point.
No, I'm referring to a flair 58 lever espresso machine that has a heating element and power brick. The older type of flair doesn't have that, instead you are supposed to take out the metal core and submerge it in hot water every time which sounds even more annoying.
Have you looked into third party power bricks?
If you're willing to spend the money, you can get much smaller and better looking AC/DC adapters than the standard black brick.
I have looked before and never found one. I just spent ten minutes on Google now and got nothing except for identical replacement bricks. Some by third parties but looking exactly the same.
If you know of something better please share a link.
Absolutely love this , congrats on making your dream a reality. I know how much work it is to bring something from concept to actual product one can use. Also it hurts me to say this but the website is trash. I know you are trying to go for modern look but at no point I can see the full machine, the price is hidden and there are just over exposed images and videos with very hard to read information. This will not convert. Why do I have to add it to cart to see the price ? Please DM me if you need help with website. Some examples of similar sites that convert (based on my exp in e-com and retail designs/development)
https://us.rok.coffee/products/presso-smartshot-soft-teal https://aeropress.com/products/aeropress-coffee-maker-premiu...
Good luck !
"...it doesn’t work with starbucks style oily roasts" I think this is a feature :)
> Also it hurts me to say this but the website is trash.
Then better to not to say it at all. I don’t think anyone on HN should call someone else’s work “trash”.
I personally really liked the website on mobile. Other than missing a demo video it communicated the value proposition.
I think at this point anyone that posts here expects at least half the comments to be about the website
You missed GP's point. One should not call another's work "trash" here. That is not what this site is about.
That does not mean the site cannot be critiqued, however, as plenty of other commenters have successfully accomplished here today.
I wasn't talking about the "trash" comment specifically. It was a bad comment. Even if it was formed more constructively there's no value to be the 32nd blowhard to give a long winded version of "It would be nice if there were photos showing the whole machine on the product page"
I think one shouldn't say that on its own, as it's not helpful. But given that it's in the middle of a lot of clear and specific detail that includes an offer of help, I think it's fine as emotion-conveying hyperbole.
Thanks for the advice and the feedback!
The price and full profile pictures should be visible on the store page without adding to cart, maybe something is going wrong?
Here is what it looks like on all of my computers:
- [deleted]
My bad ! Should not have said that. Apologies to op, i am human
I've been using an Aeropress for years (long enough to have had to buy new gaskets).
Our kitchen doesn't have much counter space, but that Presso Smartshot looks good (at least in the video). Do you happen to know if it's actually good?
BTW I had no idea Aeropress now sells a non-plastic version. I guess the output is the same.
This looks great! I think I need to wait for some reviews to know if the coffee is good, but I would also like to offer you some advice. Your website is very poorly designed and does not match the craftsmanship of the machine itself. The animated fonts, constant videos, lack of white space—it all adds up to something that feels like a quick design job by a mid-level design student.
Any paid template from any of the big website building companies would be better than what you have at the moment.
Also, photography-wise, as a lot of other people have suggested here, take a few steps back. Just show the whole product on a worktop, without videos. You're not Apple; it’s not iconic yet. A close-up won’t suffice. We need to see the whole thing static, not in a close-up video all the time. (The reason you’ve done this is that you’re very familiar with the design. Visitors are not—you’ve forgotten what it’s like to see it for the first time.)
I hope this comes across in the way it’s intended. The device is gorgeous; it should be treated with the respect of a good website.
> The reason you’ve done this is that you’re very familiar with the design. Visitors are not—you’ve forgotten what it’s like to see it for the first time.
Maybe part of the problem. I suspect that is not the whole reason. I think they are not happy (consciously or unconsciously) with the appearance of the pump and/or don't consider it part of the product. And that is why they are excluding it from the images. Sometimes literally photoshopping it out.
Hey, you can actually see the pump here, in the kit you can use to put it in other kinds of espresso machines - it's inside the machine. I'll find a way to incorporate it into the product page for the espresso machine as well.
I think you might have easier time selling the pump kit than the machine and the grinder. For one, I am almost sold on trying the kit, but the description is missing necessary details - what's in the box, ideally with a photo, and which machines it can be used with (and which it cannot be).
Also, related - set up a mailing list and add a subscription link at the bottom of every page. I bet people that are interested but hesitant would love to get a ping when you add more info to the website.
Thank you for the explanation! I was totally confused about it. I thought the pump is at the other end of the tube.
In that case I agree that a video where one makes coffee with it would be useful. That would have disabused me of my confusion immediately.
I don't think its really fair to call this site "poorly designed".
> Any paid template from any of the big website building companies would be better than what you have at the moment.
This is a Squarespace site. See: the favicon.
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In my defense, you have cut off the second half of the sentence when quoting me. Which is not the sort of thing I'd expect to happen around here.
I hope this provides some context: what I mean is "poorly designed" in the context of the product, which is in the second half of the sentence you omitted. There’s a mismatch between the product quality and the website quality. You’re right—it’s a 5 or 6 out of 10 website. Not a bad score at all, certainly not poor. I would enjoy and not comment on most other content using this design style. However, a 10/10 product (let’s assume it is) should not have a website that looks like this. It damages the brand. And that, I think, justifies calling it poor. (But what’s the worst that could happen? Fewer sales? It’s fine, really.)
for a sales pitch, i was really put off by the website design as well
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I disagree. Frank language is not disrespectful. And here I think the warm opening and closing, the specificity of the critique, and the useful suggestions are not just respectful, but helpful.
Also, I think anybody whose contribution is, "Oh, knock it off," doesn't have a lot of room to complain about somebody bringing the tone down.
This is a pot, kettle, black situation.
There's more than one kind of poor design. These days there's quite a lot of bad design that looks slicker than something in the geocities era, but is worse in terms of how well it meets its purpose.
I agree with idk1; however pretty this page is, it's terribly designed as a product page. I am less likely to buy the product after seeing the page than before. And reading through the comments, that's true for many people. Is it pretty? Yes. But a pretty thing that harms your purpose is worse designed than an ugly thing that serves it.
I feel like I’ve seen a dozen photos of it now and still have no idea what it looks like. Could you maybe take a couple steps back and snap a shot or two?
Thank you -- all these weird close up shots accentuating the curves, but no idea what it looks like just sitting on a table.
Also consider that what is pictured misses many of the parts that makes up the full setup. For the hot water supply, it requires something like a kettle on the side. Also, as mentioned, it also requires an external power brick and something to act as a drip tray.
Seeing the full setup as envisioned would be nice. With the machine, kettle and grinder, all plugged in, and with all the accessories. This is an unusual machine, looking at the pictures, I have no idea how making my morning coffee with it would be like.
This. Plus a clear video of the thing(s) in action. Right now I have no idea what I would be actually buying.
Yeh totally agree just replied with full details on this.
First of all, congratulations. It must be a monumental task to design and manufacture a mechanical machine.
However, the website is kind of confusing regarding the operation of the machine. You say that the machine accepts hot water directly, so no boiler or thermoblock, which results in a simpler machine. But where does the water come from? I see 2 pipes leading to/from the machine in the videos, so I’m guessing the water feeds from one and drains from the other? So you need to preheat water in a container? Won’t the water cool rapidly while traveling in the pipe?
I have the same impression. I guess the machine is completely passive regarding temperature and requires a) a preheated water source and b) a hot-water flush before each use to heat the machine and push hot water into the hoses
That means it’s a pump attached to a grouphead.
Cool product!
However, to me the site feels very anonymous. I’m not currently in the market for a coffee grinder, but in general if I where to spend $700 on a product I at least would like to know things such as the name of the company, what country the company is incorporated in, warranty info, returns policy, etc.
A presentation of the founder wouldn’t hurt either, and preferably some 3rd party reviews of the product.
Thank you!
I will work on that aspect, thank you for the feedback. May have gotten more than a little bit of tunnel vision on the products.
There is a warranty page here, https://velofuso.com/warranty (which should now be displaying properly at the top of the store) but more importantly there is going to be a full spare parts catalogue on ship day.
If I was in a market for minimalistic espresso machine I'd just get a manual espresso machine, something like the cafelat robot [1]. No plastic, standard professional 58mm group head (compared to the 51mm here), pressure gauge, no need for any hot water tubes, no electronics
For OP, this is also a great reference for what their website should look like.
Albeit more user friendly it does look dated and not as premium.
Manual espresso machines are great and you would not be disappointed buying one! The main advantage of one with a pump is how much more repeatable the entire workflow is in terms of preheating and maintaining pressure - you don't need to repeatedly pour and purge water from it, and the pump will output exactly the same pressure every time.
In case you have 26 minutes to kill, here is an interesting video on the subject of group head diameters.
I pretty much immediately bounced due to your website design. Idk how to describe it - but, I guess just too much going on? I had zero interest in actually reading any of it because it was just so... I don't know.
Turn it into a normal ol' expected ecom product page so I can actually read and just click and see things and different angles and such and I would've stayed.
But good luck!
Thank you for the advice!
If you click the shop button to go to the store itself, might be more your vibe?
You should totally send one over to James Hoffman. See what he thinks!
I don't think he reviews products that haven't shipped yet. It would be a PR disaster if his video sends people to pre-order something that doesn't actually ship.
I feel like, that he would be interested in the product nevertheless. Maybe it wouldn't be a review, but just a demonstration of the ideas and concepts used in the machine.
I think it definitively would be worth a shot to just hit him up and ask if he could take a look at it.
He doesn't review products he didn't pay full price for in general (I didn't ask of course, I've just watched him for years). Maybe someday he'll order one!
This was my first thought! Let's see what James Hoffman thinks of the coffee it makes, he seems very fair and honest in reviews. I went with a Jura bean to cup based on his review and it's turned out very good.
I'm looking forward for his review.
Congrats on the launch btw OP
Congrats, I'm jealous. I too want to design an espresso machine and I see that you covered many of my complaints already :)
It looks great and the presentation is also amazing. However, I wasn't able to understand the website at first glance because my first instinct was to check who made this and how much it costs. You have to click a few times to see the price and I couldn't find who is going to send me this from where. IMHO you should have a page explaining why I should trust you and also I would like to see an address because when those things lack I got the vibes that someone is trying to sell me something from Temu at %1000 price. It's just the vibes.
Anyway, I hope you have succeed in this because the espresso machines desperately need a revolution.
Thank you! And you should still design an espresso machine!
Argh, yeah squarespace seperates the store from the overall site. Definitely need to re-organize and add some stuff, like an about us page. For now, you can uhhh watch me fighting robots on TV
I was just wondering the other day why all espresso machines seem to have the same loud pump from the same factory. The pump is just a plastic tube, a sping, a valve and a huge coil around it that vibrates on mains 50/60Hz. Essentially a soap dispenser combined with a doorbell
It’s not all machines. Some have rotary pumps which are very nice and quiet.
The ones out there now are wonderful, but quite huge and expensive because they rely on AC motors which sadly aren't very power dense and don't scale down well
Rotary pumps aren't that big -- most of the premium espresso machines with vibration pumps are actually bigger than the ones with rotary pumps, i.e. compare a dual boiler or heat exchange vibration pump like Synchronika with a Linea Micra or Lelit, with two boilers and rotary pump.
And some have a manually-operated lever, which is completely silent.
It was this exact question that lead me down the rabbit hole to making espresso machines. The main reason everyone uses them is because they're $25, small, and can leverage the oscillation of mains voltage for their operation. The next best thing is probably $300 and quite large and heavy - and those professional gear pumps fundamentally don't scale down well. Ours operates under the same principle though with a completely different sort of motor that hasn't been common until pretty recently.
Congratulations on your product! I don't know if i missed it, but i feel like you are hiding two very important parts of the machine: the power supply (you call it power brick) and the water container. For any machine i put permanently in my kitchen, I would prefer having a box that contains everything needed.
> the fourth factory in a row tells you the part you’re making is impossible
Unless you're smarter than all of them, perhaps take the hint? Fabricators aren't just there to complain, heeding their advice here would probably save you money. Red flag.
As a background, I was a pretty experienced production engineer before going into this. "It's impossible" means "It doesn't make sense for us to do this with our current machines/setup times/engineers, etc". If what you want to make is possible, you will find a shop, or a combination of several shops, whose specialties line up with what you're making or how you're making it.
This! A big red flag to me too. The manufacturing is hard. Even if you design it properly there are million ways to fail somewhere in the manufacturing process. Hardware is for graybeards.
Great work.
One extra thing about plastic that's more pernicious - under heat it breaks down into microplastics and nanoplastics that are awful for our bodies. A lot of research has recently been published about this in 2024.[1][2][3][4][5][6] It seems like we're just beginning to prove it. I keep track of this by watching Mike Mutzel[7] on YouTube, which I recommend to anybody interested in the topic
Does the water touch plastic in any part of the machine?
1 - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822 2 - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385827603_New_insig... 3 - https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/article... 4 - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38890513/ 5 - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300582121 6 - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822 7 - https://www.youtube.com/@Highintensityhealth/videos
Thanks man!
There is no plastic in the fluid/material path of either machine - it's virtually all stainless steel and silicone. Basically the only plastic on them is in the switches/electrical parts where is is almost impossible to avoid.
I think the plastics we have noticed to be harmful are only the ones that are the most obviously biologically disruptive or carcinogenic. Not sure anyone building anything now can confidently say that the plastic they're using won't be a problem later on.
I'm also slightly skeptical of aluminum when in contact with acidic fluids but that's a whole different thing.
Isn't silicone a type of plastic?
It's petroleum based but it's not a thermoplastic. It's a really wonderful material though more expensive than you'd think.
Silicone is not petroleum based.
What is it you are actually trying to avoid? Is it petroleum-based plastics that are the problem? Thermoplastics? Something else?
Wow, thank you for building this, with stainless steel you have addressed the last concern I had for the grinder (well, the price is a bit steep for me too, but I can understand it).
Btw, is it Turbina or Oculo? Chart and shop say Oculo, bit it's Turbina elsewhere.
Anyway, good job!
Thank you for noticing this, Oculo was a working name when the hopper looked more like an eye but now it doesn't! Clearly I've left some random references to the old name around. Could you point me to where in the shop it says Oculo?
In the chart where you compare the "total burr area", and then... Hmm, I could swear that the shop said that it is coming in march 2025, and used the name Oculo there? Sorry, can't find it anymore.
The claims here of 0.01% plastic are a straight up lie though when you factor in the wires and power brick.
You're right when you factor in the power brick, but the wiring is actually silicone jacketed which is much nicer in any case! The main plastics are in the switches inside the machine. Would be fun someday to roll custom ceramic parts for those but for now, keeping scope creep to a minimum!
> the wiring is a actually silicone
That's very cool.
When taking into account the power brick, what percentage by weight/volume is plastic? 5%? 10%? That's the number you should be advertising.
> The biggest downside for the grinder is that it doesn’t work with starbucks style oily roasts
I have no idea whether my coffee is oily or not. I sometimes buy Starbucks Blonde Roast, is that oily? I would expect a $749 grinder work with any coffee beans.
And the grinder looks great, except for the two things that immediately catch my eye:
- the cable that I feel should come from the base and not hang like that.
- I think there should be a (optional) storage container integrated where the ground coffee goes.
And the 'See more' link ( https://velofuso.com/oculo ) doesn't work
Starbucks lighter roasts (Blonde and Willow) are not oily. I understand why Starbucks is a good reference but just about any Southern Italian style dark roast ends up with oily beans.
The problem with Starbucks coffee from an espresso point of view is that you don't know when they were roasted and chances are it was more than a couple weeks ago.
Although, staleness isn't always a problem, especially for blends with Robusta.
https://www.home-barista.com/coffees/thoughts-on-italian-esp...
I'm in Central Europe, we don't have Willow here, just Blonde. Anyway I don't drink it often but as you say it's a good reference point. Mostly what would concern me are light and medium Arabica roasts for filtered coffee (Hario).
Thank you, fixed it!
>I think there should be a (optional) storage container integrated where the ground coffee goes.
There is a little cup that fits right below the grinder, or do you mean something else?
>I would expect a $749 grinder work with any coffee beans.
I totally get this, and I definitely want to make a burr set that works with everything. The reason these don't is essentially because these burrs are designed for something called densification - it's where particles are gradually rounded and amalgamated as they are mixed and tumbled. The cutting path for most grinders on the market today is too short for to see much of this, so it definitely sets this grinder apart in terms of flavor profile and even how the grounds look. The downside is that sticky and oily particles resist that process and expand and start to clog up the bottom of the burr when grinding finely. When grinding for filter, it's fine, but with espresso can require some routine cleanings.
> There is a little cup that fits right below the grinder, or do you mean something else?
I would prefer something that can be sealed. My cheap & not good Delonghi KG89 has a semi-sealed plastic vessel, which is handy when I want to grind coffee in the evening to use it in the morning and not wake up the family. I just let it there for the night. But of course if a small cup fits, a small sealable vessel will fit too, so it's fine.
> When grinding for filter, it's fine, but with espresso can require some routine cleanings.
All right, that's important information since I only drink filters, now I would love to taste this.
Yeah, for storage it would be nice if there was a hole in the espresso maker's arches to hold the grinder. Even people with the money to buy these products need efficient storage.
Feedback on your website: If you have designed a product and you are proud of the visual design show it. Don’t do a thousand different strange angles and moving pans around it to obscure what it actually looks like. The impression your site gives is that you’re trying to convince yourself that it might actually look good, but that you don’t really believe it yourself, so you are doing everything in your power to change the perception of it away from what people will actually see if they just look at it.
> I also saw so many people (including myself) using a scale while making espresso, and even putting a cup below the group head to catch drips, entirely negating the drip tray
The drip tray is also where the 3-way valve dumps the excess water when the extraction is compete and the system is depressurized.
It is also not just for drips, it is used for flushing, though I guess you can use a bowl here. I also see that it is designed for a naked portafilter, these are great, but they can be a bit messy if your technique is not perfect, making something like a drip tray even more relevant.
Maybe offer a platter as an accessory, to avoid messing the countertop. I also wonder how the system is depressurized without a visible 3-way valve chute.
A color matched platter is a good idea!
Essentially inside the group head, there is a silicone ring which only lets water past with a small amount of pressure. When you turn the pump off, whatever pressure has built up will still be released into the coffee (we are talking like half a gram of water maybe) and at that point, water neither can neither exit the machine from the front or the back. If you want to flush all the water out entirely, you can put a cup below and the pump will blow it all out with air pressure.
Wow this looks really interesting. Do you per chance have a video of you using the grinder & machine?
I’m not quite sure I understand where the hot water is added, but I like not having a boiler.
I second the request for videos. I'm primarily interested in the espresso machine and the lack of an end to end video will prevent me from giving it any really consideration.
I will upload a simple video of the workflow very soon!
The techie's midlife crisis isn't a sports car, it's an espresso machine.
Some feedback - your market is undoubtedly going to be coffee nerds, and we are instantly turned off by the video of the very unappealing shot being pulled on this page https://velofuso.com/trefolo.
If any situation ever called for the early 2000's ideal expression of espresso, this is it. Break out the double city roast, grind it fine and pull some ristretto shots with tiger stripes. It might taste trash but it will make for much better marketing.
Kudos for making something cool. 5 second preheat is awesome.
I'm quite intrigued by the gear pump upgrade kit, since this was something I had been planning to do for a while. The vibratory pump from my E61 machine is incredibly loud and doesn't particularly spark joy.
Looking around the market for some used Fluid-o-tech gear pumps which were not extremely expensive was quite frustrating. Also having to deal with the correct power supply for the replacement pump wasn't something I was looking forward to.
Props on releasing such cool products!
Order #1 for the Pump kit went through. Looking forward to try it out!
Thank you so much for the order!
I think the trouble with using fluid-o-tech style pumps (I actually started out by buying one) is that they're really optimized for machines where the space, cost, and weight of the pump aren't a significant concern, so they can get away with using a giant slow AC motor with big gears. That sort of motor unfortunately doesn't scale down too well, so instead we use a small DC brushless motor and spin it very fast, and then even with the power supply it still ends up being a smaller and cheaper setup.
First off -- this is sweet and you should be proud.
Without data, I'm skeptical of the claim > that gravity does most of the work to reduce retention
Naively, I'd guess that the increased surface area from the cylindrical burr increases the retention rate since it's mostly caused by static cling. There's mention of a built-in knocker, but even with the dissected machine photos, I can't tell where that knocker is housed or how it would function.
Thank you!
It is definitely true that larger burrs have more surface area to retain grounds. In general, I think most people consider the tradeoff worth it in terms of flavor, especially because in my experience the coffee that builds up in the burr of any grinder is likely to stay there whereas coffee that sits in nooks and crannies around the chute is likely to get cycled each time.
The knocker is actually hidden within the hopper itself, you twist and release it and it knocks into the burr. The basic idea for the design is that you have 3 rings, and each of them is a touch point, the bottom turns it on, the middle adjusts the size, and the top is the knocker.
> static cling
Every burr grinder I've owned over the years (Cuisinart, De’Longhi, Braun, Black+Decker) had that awful static cling problem, although my newest, a KitchenAid KCG8433DG conical, is notably cleaner and quieter than all of the others were. For comparison, I'd like to see some real life on-the-counter evidence after a Velofuso grind.
BTW, there are a few different means of reducing static cling problems, including stirring the beans in the hopper with a moistened spoon before each run.
What is reason for all this fancy website stuff and marketing jargon instead of just a youtube video with a bunch of runs of the machine where we see it in action?
There's only one clip/snippet in there of the machine actually producing espresso and whatever comes out looks very thin and watery with no crema visible. That's worrying.
Google "bottomless portafilter shot" for how it's supposed to look.
That clip is showing the filter coffee brew function, not espresso. Brewing filter coffee in an espresso machine actually sounds like it'd be nice on occasion. Side note -- I find it funny that you'd assume the guy that designed an espresso machine and grinder doesn't know what espresso looks like; on the flip-side, why no espresso pull money shot???
That’s a charitable take. There’s a picture at the end of the page that shows coffee dripping with much lower flow rate in the „filter mode”. The upper one however looks like low pressure attempt at an espresso, which makes me question whether the machine can actually do the advertised 10 bar.
>Brewing filter coffee in an espresso machine actually sounds like it'd be nice on occasion.
It's honestly not necessary. We espresso drinkers can already do that - it's called an Americano.
It tastes different! Filter is fundamentally extracting an entirely different way
Americano definitely tastes different than pour over -- I make both all the time
I would love to see a video of it in action. Nearly all the photos on the site don’t show the whole thing, just lots of close up shots such that I can’t really tell what the whole thing actually looks like or what using it would be like.
I assume it does work, but I have this gut skepticism because it’s so radically different from any espresso machine I’ve seen before.
There is a lot to like, but not enough info right now to make me place an order! I have many questions. For example
regarding the machine,
- can you confirm if the pump can be adjusted during the shot (profiling)?
- can the shot be programmed too, or just manual?
regarding the grinder,
- can you explain a bit how the "knocker" works when you twist the hopper?
- I guess that the burr is unimodal, do you have more details about distribution or flavor profile?
Can you give some feedback as to how people can feel confident you will produce this machine?
People are used to larger teams taking literally years to put out a machine - see "Odyssey Argos" and "Meticulous" - and years of delays after preorder is announced.
Both are probably not significantly more complicated than your machine - and you are aspiring to also put out a grinder with a totally new concept.
I am really excited about the product, but I think answering the above will go some way to help you get a lot of preorders.
Additionally, re: the pumps, I would love to order and put these in my Decent. The Decent uses really standard vibe pumps (which are super annoying) but what does the flow rate look like compared to standard vibe pumps? The decent can get up to 8ml/s I think - but it uses two pumps to mix hot and cold water. So I wonder if this would be about the same as a traditional vibe pump.
The machine in TFA is maybe a bit deceptive, it's actually hardly more than a pump. The Argos and Meticulous are much more complex. They have both struggled scaling up their operations, which is a complexity shared with all manufactured products, however I'd be curious if this machine fetches that many orders (both those machines are in the thousands of orders).
There's some discussion in the Decent Diaspora (Decent's private user forums, for other readers), but I'd have doubts about simply dropping in these pumps with no changes in firmware. The Decent relies on the rapid (near instant) response of vibe pumps to make constant adjustments to the water mixing.
Aside, 8ml/s is more or less accurate. Some people have gone a bit above this I believe even up to 10ml/s, but it's a bit of luck and your electricity.
You're right, they are more complicated machines. It doesn't seem like the velofuso machine has a heater, so that's a huge difference.
The pump is pretty cool though, I hope they can deliver on that. A lot of people will buy that and it will open up cool innovations for new machines. I hope they patent the pump.
As a coffee freak my first impression is "shut up and take my money". However if I compare it to my current setup I lack steaming wand and a clarity on what to do with those cables that stick from the pump unit. I'd love to see a three legged design that hides the water + power cables or even a small water tank.
I think a way to have the wire and water pipe discreetly guided off to one side rather than dongling about in free space might help the look.
A little stainless steel clip the you can put on either side, perhaps. Or have two, in case your water and power don't come from the same direction?
My biggest concern about the longevity of the device as a beautiful item is that if the countertop gets water (or worse, coffee) spilled on it, the wood will wick it up the end grain and stain or swell.
What a beautiful bit of work. Are they actually commercially available and how are you going to handle production? Did you set out to sell them from the start or was it a personal project that has spiralled? How long have you been working on it?
In any case, congratulations!
Congratulations on the development and taking pre-orders! You certainly have my attention. I would love to see some scientific breakdown of the grind analysis at certain sizes - just to see how consistent the grinder can be. Some media of you (or someone) actually using the grinder and espresso machine would be really helpful to really get an idea of what a total flow looks like. I am especially curious about boiling and adding water.
Will definitely be saving for future reference when I need to upgrade my current grinder.
The minimal design is beautiful. I’ll second others that you need some candid simple non marketing hype howto videos of actually using the equipment, as well as reviews to get people to place orders. The cropped photos, e.g. not showing what is connected to the tubes seem potentially misleading. Look at Seattle Coffee Gear for some good video styles- they would also be an example of experts whose reviews I would trust, however they don't seem to be very into simple non-automatic machines.
While I’m curious of this design, can someone tell me why my cafelat robot is inferior? It’s performed for years with zero maintenance and minimal cleaning. It pulls excellent shots. It takes up minimal counter space. The only downside I can think of is it’s not ergonomic - disabled or less strong individuals may not be comfortable with its physical operation. But short of that … it’s perfect. It is my peak coffee optimization (not one narrow measure of perfection). What am I missing?
“Inferior” is a bit silly in a comparison to this, considering this entire hobby is about small quirks and incremental changes. They seem to have similar offerings except for the big difference that this one has a pump. If you don’t care about a pump, a robot will do fine for the rest of your life. I’m personally bored of lever pulling multiple shots, but my counter space is limited, and I’m interested in purchasing, after seeing a review.
It's not inferior, it's just a different kind of machine!
The main advantages are in the workflow - heating, brewing, cleaning, etc are all done by pressing a button, and the pressure itself is going to stay at exactly what you set it to.
It's also a fair bit smaller than the robot.
This comment feels disingenuous. You're comparing a manual machine. You obviously know a decent amount about the topic if you ended up with a cafelat robot and reached "peak optimization", but here you are acting confused and incredulous. I'd rather read an account of how a manual machine stacks up against a normal one in your experience than whatever this is.
Sorry, my point is I’m not in the market for new/shiny and I’m wondering what I’m missing. Nothing against new tech, that’s why I’m here. But if we can satisfy our personal espresso needs with something non-electronic, I think that’s worth discussing.
I enjoy coffee and espresso, I don't enjoy the ritual of making it. I don't want to have to stand and focus on getting my pressure correct on the leaver in the morning when I'm half awake. I want to dump premeasured beans into a grinder, then dump them into a machine and press a single button. I realize this machine would require more work then just that but it's still less then a leaver machine.
I'd like to just put a drive-by comment as to how thoroughly, deeply impressed I am with all this. Taking any product from idea to completion is very hard, and these both look like very non-trivial products with deep challenges in design, technology, sourcing materials, manufacturing, all the way to website design, marketing and so on. To be able to offer this at $649 right out the gate blows my mind. That's plenty competitive in the fancy coffee market!
Very cool, props to you for pushing through on a solo hardware project. Most of the keyboard ticklers in here have no idea of the types of challenges involved. Very funny to see their critiques mainly limited to the domain they have experience in i.e. the website.
It's also interesting to see the reaction to the price - to some, your price points are absurd, but I've met a few coffee enthusiasts who have spent 4x what you're pricing for a grinder.
Best of luck!!
>critiques mainly limited to the domain they have experience in i.e. the website.
They are giving actionable advice on how to convert more sales. That's the whole point of Show HN, and helpful to the author.
When a bunch of people with experience in a domain tell you that you can vastly improve something in that domain, it's generally a good idea to listen and consider their critique instead of calling them "keyboard ticklers".
I don't take issue with the critique per se, but the shallow and dramatic complaints about the website. In no way was the website "unusable" or "trash." If you wanted a photo of the brewer unit you could click through to the shop page.
No curiosity or questions or clarification about how it makes better coffee, spare parts availability, food safety, where and how it's assembled, thoughts about the aesthetics of the unit. Lots of "the site sucks, I bounced."
Edit: happily, there's more and better critique on the thread now than when I posted the GP comment.
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Thank you!
Their critiques might be fair, after all the website is by far the furthest part of this from my area of expertise. But hopefully, people will prefer a good espresso machine with a bad website to a bad espresso machine with a good website!
The website is good for someone who is not primarily a web designer. It can serve as a starting point which can be polished into something quite nice.
I want one, but I need a Video with a real life demonstration. A kind of manual where I can see all parts and at least one independent reviewer.
Congrats to the website, too, great design, and actually informative and a nice, modern experience without being gimmicky, really good!
I'll try to be helpful, so allow me to point out that near the bottom of the espresso machine, the grinder is called Oculo, guess you changed that mid-way? Also, do you consider it necessary to open new tabs when you go from the home page to the two sub-pages with your products? I mean you stay on the same domain so why open a new tab? I find that's unexpected.
Lastly, I didn't quite grasp how the cylindrical burr works and how one can adjust ground size with this arrangement. I'd really appreciate a schematic! Also I think you are totally allowed to right-out dis flat burrs because of their inherent weaknesses. As for oily roasts, that's my preferred roast, the coffee's so much better and also my hand grinder feels so much better, so it's a shame if I couldn't use a burr with those.
Other than that, good luck with your project!
Hello there! Thank you so much for the comment and the good luck
So essentially the adjustment works the same as conical and flat burrs, except the burrs need to move way more for the same amount of adjustment (it’s about 19:1, instead of 1:1 for flat and conical). When the engineering problems are worked out with the grinder basically telescoping, this translates to much more repeatability in adjustments.
I definitely hear you on dark roasts, I like them as well, and I will absolutely make an alternate burr set that is more flexible - it’s just a matter of what to prioritize when launching a decently high priced grinder, where light and medium roasts benefit the most from the attention.
And argh yes oculo was a working name when the hopper looked more like an eye but now it looks less like an eye! Thanks for catching that. I’ll change the tab behavior, I wasn’t sure how to handle that.
Just ordered your grinder! I'm amazed you designed your own burr type! Looks super space saving, too, with the vertical straight up tilt of the grinder.
Huh, new account created just to say they bought the very expensive preorder of the account created 10 hours ago. I hope I’m wrong, but this is heavily triggering my scam-o-meter.
I'm a years long daily chatter on the espresso aficionado discord, hoon's discord and brian quan's discord. lol also this will be far be my cheapest grinder
uncola is definitely not OP, they are active on other discords/forums.
Coffee community is talking about this grinder, the world is bigger than HN, etc.. etc..
I can believe it, after all it’s just a heuristic. And of course the world is bigger than HN, but they went to HN to talk about it.
This is the only place that OP has posted, at least at the time of that comment.
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I would really recommend having a reviewer take a look, or at least include grind analysis yourselves.
Love the idea of a new type of burr beyond flat and conical, but would like to see someone actually use it and scientifically compare the profiles.
I kind of doubt the line "it works for all styles" because even with flat / conical there are so so many different types and resulting taste / body profiles. It's largely a personal preference. So I'd like something like the chart lagom provides.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b125642ec4eb7...
I’ve been looking into pump upgrade options for my Silvia, but I’d given up on gear pumps assuming they’d be too large/expensive. Do you have an additional info /specs on your pump? Hard to find it on the site.
I’m most intrigued (and politely skeptical) about the grinder. How’s the grind distribution look (and fines) compared to other popular espresso grinders? My Rocky was great two decades ago, but not today; my other grinders are targeting clarity from light roast pour overs. Need a new grinder for getting my Silvia up and running again.
FWIW, I’m basically your target audience. I either need a grinder and pump or grinder and machine. Will be following. Either way, congrats on the huge solo effort.
Where we’re going we don’t need no stinking drip tray!
Believe me. You need a drip tray.
Best of luck. Hope it turns out better than ZPM.
Either I can't find it or the site needs more detail. I'm totally blind and have a couple of questions I can't find answers to. 1. Is the grinder stepless? Based on the description it appears it is. This is a deal breaker for me. 2. How do you control the Espresso machine? There are many coffee products I can't use do to there interface. I'd like to get a Fellow Aiden coffee maker but the interface is completely inaccessible. It's unclear to me if there app will ever allow you to fully control the machine. If this machine had a documented API I'd be interested. I've looked at the Decent espresso machine, but can't justify the cost since I drink mostly filter coffee.
> Is the grinder stepless? Based on the description it appears it is. This is a deal breaker for me.
From what I understand stepless is pretty common on espresso grinders. Can I ask why it would be a deal breaker?
I frequently switch between three grind sizes, one for a single cup, one for a pot, and one for cold brew. With the Fellow Ode I can easily count clicks to insure I'm at the expected position. With out tactile markings on the dial and a tactile arrow to line up with markings there's no way to make the grind size reproducible as far as I know. I've never tried using stepless grinders for this reason so I may be wrong about how hard it is to dial in when blind.
Edit: Sorry, I missed the earlier comment! I can totally understand why steps would be important in that case.
Do you think braille indicators around the ring that you could feel would work? Or are actual clicks the best option
I'm going to brainstorm ways to have a toggle-able step feature..
I think an option to 3d print a ring of dots that could be stuck to the outer adjustment dial would work, you could add a stick on dot to the inner dial and line things up that way.
It sounds like the person you responded to isn't able to see, so they depend on the tactile/audible feedback.
Oooh I understand now! Thanks.
It sure looks pretty. Both the site and the machine. And the tech sounds interesting too! There are a bunch of fabulous devices out there though, not sure how to understand just how great this is, some third party validation would help me. Anyhow, excellent presentation!
> REIMAGINING OF THE ESPRESSO MACHINE
It's a brave brave person who takes on the decision to reimagine something that people are so particular and pedantic over.
I have to say it's an interesting idea though! Sounds like it wasn't easy too. good luck with the journey!
Nice! As someone who has never used an espresso machine, I was a bit intimidated by the presentation. I think part of your show should be to teach, even if in a simplified fashion, how to use the machine, so any customer is less intimidated :)
I don't think anyone who has never used an espresso machine is in the target market for this product. I own an espresso machine that costs a bit more than this thing, but it took me several steps along the way to get to the point where shelling out $$$$ for an espresso machine was worth it to me.
Looks you have brought a touch of Dyson to the world of coffee. I hope you do well! I can't see your presence online at all, like no search results other than this HN post which is odd. If you can ship in January you might want to be marketing a bit more.
Have you patented the cylindrical grinder? That looks like a new idea. I wouldn't mind trying that.
Needs a youtube demo video I think. Plus you might want to give one to a few coffee influencers. Maybe give it to a few r/espresso regulars first to pedant about, then fix those things, as you don't want a crap review.
Or can some RSU rich HN-ian just buy it and post a review, pls :-)
This is actually the only place I've posted it haha. Will incorporate feedback from here (especially more candid video content) before proceeding.
I filed for a patent a couple days ago on the burr assembly, and a design patent on the wood arch thing, but definitely not looking to prevent anyone from making their own. Only to prevent some massive company from running off with it or even patenting it since I'm never going to be that high profile.
Good on you!
I recommend you send samples to coffee machine reviewers on youtube and have them review it and offer their opinion. I feel this is the kind of product that needs consistent marketing efforts to maintain stream.
I am very much the target market for this and it looks super interesting. Some feedback on copy: from the website I thought the espresso machine worked like the flair et al where you pour water into a reservoir on top, so I dismissed it since while that’s a neat thing, it’s not my preferred workflow. I then read a comment here that said it’s actually designed to suck up water from a kettle placed next to it. That’s brilliant! I suggest making that clear in the marketing.
Great work on the product design. The website, while very pretty, can be a bit disorienting. I agree with some of the suggestions about pushing a video so that users can see it in action and finding more ways to get them to the shop page. There's only a single shop button at the top. What's missing is likely header navigation.
Also, a few typos you might want to fix asap: https://triplechecker.com/s/306095/velofuso.com
> the fourth factory in a row tells you the part you’re making is impossible
Then perhaps take the hint? Fabricators aren't dumb or there to complain, heeding their advice might even save you money. Red flag imo.
> We believe the best technology is the kind that doesn’t call attention to itself. So we are going to call attention it by writing about it here.
Last sentence should be:
> So we are going to call attention to it by writing about it here.
or
> > So we are going to call attention by writing about it here.
Both the grinder and espresso machine look amazing! I'd be curious to see more photos of a "real" setup with these things on a countertop. Especially where those two tubes from the espresso machine go. I suppose one is power actually, so the other one just goes into a container of water?
Re: the grinder and burr design - I am impressed that you’re taking a different tack from standard burr design, but it looks to me like you’re going to get extremely uniform grind size out of this burr design. There is a bit of black magic that goes into making great espresso, and my understanding of burr design was over grinding the beans actually led to a very “flat” tasting espresso, because everything was just far to uniform.
What have you seen in testing this grinder/burr design? Any numbers after screening the grinds?
This is an incredibly complicated subject full of dissenting opinions and obviously people have their preferences especially across different brew types. In my opinion, the effect of densification within grinders with longer, or multiple cutting paths is universally positive for flavor. Fine particles accumulate with eachother and with larger particles and everything is rolled and rounded. One of the things to remember is that over-grinding coffee, I assume you mean by putting it over and over through the same burr set, is not the same as putting it once through a longer burr set. With the cylindrical burrs, the coffee is doing the same thing that any other set of burrs do, only over a longer distance period of time, so the coffee has more time to densify.
Below is a great James Hoffman video comparing traditional coffee grinders to roller grinders, though the company keeps a lot of the details a secret, their grinder not only has a very long grind path, but also a dedicated densification stage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkYqHWThIpA
I have only done blind taste tests using my friends and family as unwitting participants, and they've universally preferred turbina over a 64mm flat burr grinder with titanium nitride burrs and a high-ish end conical hand grinder. But obviously, this may be a matter of preference!
Awesome! I appreciate the detailed response. I look forward to seeing this on the market
Beautiful design. Curious since you mention the issues with plastic, what's the part that you couldn't avoid plastic for the trefolo (given you mention it's 0.01% plastic)?
Electric Cables? They are hard to make in metal or wood
About the only kind of fully plastic-free cable I know of (other then historical examples) is bare MICC aka "pyro", which are copper tube sheaths filled with magnesium oxide powder and the wires in the middle. It's used especially in fireproof installations.
A huge pain to install as it's so stiff and needs special tools and fittings to keep it from absorbing water from the air. It has a large bend radius, and it only good for fixed installation as it will crack open if you bend it a few times. And it's nearly £1000 for 100m. So it's not very popular these days.
Plastic really is an annoyingly wonderous category of material when you consider the flexibility, insulation, mechanical, thermal and chemical resistance it can have (and the price)!
Electric cables at very easy to make in metal, in fact I'd wager 90%+ at least are made of copper in the whole world.
Electric cables are made from insulation (plastic) and wires (metal). Wires use metal, insulation typically does not, so it's NOT easy to make a whole cable out of metal.
Have you heard of insulation?
If I say humans are made of polyester you wouldn't correct me? You usually meet them wearing insulation too.
Silicon ?
Do you mean silicon or silicone? The former isn't a very good candidate for flexible cable insulation. The later is a form of plastic.
Wow, just incredible props for getting this over the finish line. As someone who has manufactured a purely mechanical product, I can't imagine the hassle dealing with factories on this. They absolutely hate doing anything they haven't done before, especially if the tolerances are tight.
The products are right up my alley too, though I'm all manual at this point. I hope the Trefolo and Turbina are both so wildly successful that you end up making manual versions of both. :)
> Some people might say that it’s cool to open to open up a home appliance and expose yourself to high voltage AC components, but at the end of the day, it’s also pretty fun.
Ok you got me.
How do you control this machine? Is it touch screen based, app based, or physical controls? If physical controls is there enough feedback that you could use this totally blind? Sorry for the somewhat duplicate post but I think this got lost in my prior post where I was discussing both the espresso machine and grinder. edit: I saw the manual after I posted this, looks like it's a simple knob to control pressure with a simple start and stop button.
Right, but is it Nespresso compatible? Not clear from the website
I hope this was a joke.
For this price, these are both great if they work well. It's very much the lower end of pricing for espresso capable equipment.
I look forward to seeing some reviews.
That being said, while you have increased the burr surface area, it feels like the grinder design would lead to a lot of re-grinding. Also, there is a reason decent espresso uses vibratory pumps to great effect, and its not because they're cheap or because they output a noisy flow of water.
> Also, there is a reason decent espresso uses vibratory pumps to great effect, and its not because they're cheap or because they output a noisy flow of water.
The suspense is killing me! What's the reason?
Decent machines (the company called Decent Espresso, to be clear. It’s confusing) use a vibe pump to do cycle-by-cycle water flow measurement. They claim it’s substantially more accurate and responsive than any water flow meters on the market at low/high flow rates.
I own a Decent and I'm quite familiar with its in's and out's.
The Decent uses some math to estimate the flow. Their math is actually quite solid, within a specific range, but if you stray from that then it get less accurate. So most people brew espresso at about 1-2ml/s, if you have the machine calibrated there then it's fairly accurate. If you brew a fast "turbo" style shot, say about 3-4ml/s, it's less accurate unless you set the calibration to be more accurate there.
This actually does end up more accurate than many machines, however some have volumetrics that are much more precise like the Unica Pro. And I suspect the new "Bengle" from Decent will have more accuracy in flow calculation but that's yet to be seen.
I kind of love the idea of reducing the tech, and bringing everything back to the basics, and searching for improvements on the core stuff like the pump. Hope you succeed. I'm in the market for an espresso machine, probably not an untested (at scale), but in a year or 2 when you've worked out all the kinks in production and you have reviews... i could see myself looking at this as an option.
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I can't point them out here right now (on mobile and takes more effort than I care for at the moment) but you have several typos on the website.
I like the design. I do not understand the $700 price beyond coffee nerds are used to paying that much for equipment. I’ll wait.
The cable management of the Trefolo. Would be nice to be able to run it along the back of the stand would make it more elegant and minimalist.
Links to reviews by known coffee reviewers on YouTube would help.
Definitely considering the grinder as I’ve been frustrated with the retention of my DF83.
Also, I hope it was designed for serviceability as well since everything breaks eventually.
Thank you, a couple of people have suggested optional cable clips along the stand. Will work on this.
Serviceability is definitely a critical design consideration. Going to have a full spare parts catalogue available on ship day. Virtually everything can be changed on both machines by removing between 1-5 screws, and nothing is particularly finnicky or requires special tools.
That's pretty cool.
- What did you use to prototype your project? What software and what companies offered prototyping services for your project?
- Was it hard to get the whole machine made? How is the market for small scale manufacturing?
I'm asking because I have some designs, that I never materialized - because there were no companies that would mill a one off item.
Thank you!
I used fusion to design and printed ergonomic/partial prototypes on Prusa 3d printers. Then, I fortunately had a ton of manufacturing contacts because I have worked as somewhat of a production engineer before. Some parts were definitely difficult, especially the outer burr of the grinder (there were a couple viable ways to make it, but it is sometimes difficult to find a shop that is price competitive in say wire EDM machining and 5 axis CNC, or CNC and casting, so you have to get shops to coordinate with eachother) or the wood arch (because high volume wood shops are not nearly as technologically sophisticated as metalworking shops)
PCBway is a good option now, especially for 3D printed metal parts. They have CNC as well but they tend to struggle with anything that has complicated geometry or features. But 3D printing doesn't require approval, and for one offs is often cheaper.
Congrats on making this! Looks very cool! For me it was very hard to learn about your products from your website. It is painful to scroll, it lags a lot and I had to put very much effort into getting the information I wanted. The design definitely sparked interest, but website killed it. Good luck on your journey!
That is impressive...
I will be the one saying this though: While the design of the metallic parts looks really good, the wooden arch not _at all_. It is _very_ offputting for me.
I think if you want wood, you should do more wood, sturdier and without the "ethereal" shape that feels very dated (for me this is straight from the 90s).
Great work! Always fantastic to see works of love of passionate people, who want to challenge the status quo. That's what it's about!
The "see more" link on the grinder page is not working, https://velofuso.com/oculo
> but like many things it sort of spiraled out of control from there.
I love when this happens, beautiful work, impressive! Looks like you have it well under control :)
Basically this is a Flair with an electric pump, at 2-3 times the price. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
It's actually about the same price as the Flair 58
I appreciate the effort you've put in. But I'd like to see a non marketing video of it in operation.
Where do the pipes go?
These horrible scroll animated css pages are the bane of all products. Just create a video next time.
I wish there were more products like this. Just straight up build quality. I'm not yet talking about the product quality or performance, but if someone puts in this much work in building something, I can trust them to iterate and commit to its overall quality.
This looks cool. I would like to see a video showing how it makes brewed coffee. I’m currently using a moccamaster (for convenience), but it has far too much plastic. Pour over is a pain in the ass. I’m curious if you plan on shipping to Europe (where I live).
Lovely design. Just a quick note to say that here in Australia, people are coffee crazy and would probably find a home for your kit. That includes individuals at home, but also cafes and hotel foyers etc.
Might be worth considering an AU plug as an option (we run off 240v).
I look forward to the James Hoffmann review, should it ever come about. Am tempted to buy as a piece of functional art that I can drink. Currently, the 9Barista serves that purpose. Every. Morning. Bought it after the Hoffmann review. Good luck!
Some day! The 9Barista is so cool, I think that was the first video of his that I watched actually
Nice job! You should add an about us page to tell your story and your mission. Even use pictures of yourself in the marketing because people love to support independent coffee companies. I hope you get rich and famous for all your hard work.
Espresso machine getting 455 upvotes and 213 comments on HN was not on my 2024 bingo card
*replace air fryer with coffee machine https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/comments/1gu4m07/buying...
$649.00
Nice. But I prefer this one and I will build it: https://www.kaffee-netz.de/threads/projekt-eigenbau-kube.957...
Looks very interesting! A video is also a must for me as well as an independent review. I would love to be updated though, and I think you could pick up a lot of potential leads by having a newsletter. But exciting stuff! Good luck :)
Looks awesome. It's way too expensive for me, but i love the design. I do wonder about the cleaning process, in particular how many times and how much effort i have to do to clean it and make sure it keeps making perfect espressos.
Your story is nice and all but there are no actual videos these devices running. The website seems to feature blender generated mocks quite well though. And you're taking preorders?
I'm surprised folks are willingly getting scammed.
Have you reached out to coffee influencers with review copies?
That might be worth doing; it seems like this is the kind of thing that they would like to cover, and if the feedback is positive than that could drive a lot of sales.
Yes! well done. Having taken apart some consumer level coffee machines I was shocked at the poor design. Something much better is possible, but requires redesigning the base components that are common off the shelf
Could you go more into detail on the actual process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing? Like how would an average person, given enough motivation, do what you were able to accomplish?
Also, how did you fund this?
Yes, for sure!
A good first step is to learn some form of CAD and buy a cheap 3D printer. With that, you can rapidly test mechanisms and ergonomics on a daily basis for pennies. With both products, I went through maybe 5-ish entirely 3d printed prototypes. This will save you a ton of money iterating parts that don't need to be made from the final materials. With some products, you can make something functional here, but in my case, plastic isn't stable enough to make gear pumps and grinding burrs with.
If you intend to use casting or injection molding, you need to start thinking about that now rather than later, and designing parts that fit those processes even if you aren't using them yet.
So now it's time to start working with final materials. The best way to save money doing this is to only make the most critical parts from final materials until everything is nailed down. PCBWay has reasonably cheap machining/metal 3d printing services but you can also reach out to CNC shops directly and build some relationships for later. For me, this meant making the burrs, pump, and group head from metal, and testing them inside an otherwise 3D printed machine. I could iterate on just those parts and not worry if they required downstream changes because I could just print the secondary parts at home. I also cast my own silicone to save money.
Then once you're happy, you can go ahead and have everything made from final materials, (even if those materials are, say, CNCed instead of injection molded) and you have your MVP. Production engineering is a whole different beast, but that is for another time.
As a disclaimer, I wouldn't recommend starting with coffee machines, coffee grinders, or anything like them if you want to make a physical product. Hydraulics (especially at a small scale) and material processing are difficult, non-intuitive, and will be impossible if you are learning the other core skills at the same time.
As many have said, get some good reviews in. I love almost everything about this machine and if someone like James Hoffman likes it, I might buy one for real. The wife acceptance factor of this thing is huge.
Not a fan of the tubes sticking out the bottom aesthetically but looks nice! Looking forward to hear of other people’s experiences with it once some people have got their hands on it.
I almost bought one, but then I realized I have to manage the water temp myself. Sorry, but that's too much work, which means this will likely end up collecting dust after a month.
Send it to Lance Hedrick I'm sure he will make useful suggestions.
Lance! I am still frothing milk his way. Even after a barista course that did it a different way.
Very impressive. The rotating Trefolo would look better without dust.
Do you have a team? Or is this largely a solo project? Very impressive — I hope you keep at it, would very much be interested in a v2 or v3 Turbina grinder.
While I'm not in the market for an expresso machine, the price seams reasonalbe for a low volume design product
If I would be in the market, I would consider this offering.
Designs look great. Only comment would be to hide the wires better on the espresso machine. Maybe find a way to route them down through the supports?
I love the concept of the cylindrical burr, but it is just arguments now. I'd love to see data on retention, and particle size distribution.
Congrats from Vibrateau, région vibratoriale, France.
Very cool work, would love to test this out. Would definitely need to see some videos of it working before thinking to purchase it though
Out of curiosity, have you tried running extremely light roast/dense beans through your grinder? How does it perform with them?
Congrats on launching a product. Unfortunately, I think you've misread the market here. This is a space with immense competition, high prices, and even higher expectations around quality. While you're concept is neat, it's falling short.
The grinder looks sweet, but the espresso machine looks completely janky with the "wires" running out of it. A power cord is expected, but having a power brick on my counter ABSOLUTELY is not expected. Not to mention, the wire looks flimsy. The second wire was a head-scratcher. Turns out that's the water line. That's a bit of a shock since you never mention this is a hard-wired system or show a reservoir.
Finish on the espresso machine components looks poor. Almost all of the metal pieces have millwork marks, inconsistent finish, and knicks in them. The photos clearly show poor tolerances on the wood structure. The video of a person rotating a knob shows absolutely terrible workmanship in the stand.
Oh, the wires. It's almost like they were a complete after thought and they ruin an otherwise amazing aesthetic.
I personally don't believe that wood is the proper material for the stand. While it looks nice, it's durability is going to be crap for a tool that handles water. Water collects on the counter. Water splashes from the cup. Steam everywhere. Those are all recipes for wood going bad. No sense having this amazing, durable espresso machine when you can't use it because the stand went bad.
Oh, the wires.
One of demo photo of this in action shows something that doesn't even look like espresso. Some sort of dirty water (not even coffer water) being pulled into a steamed up wine glass. The other demo video shows rather poor shower distribution. Neither of these scream a machine that competes in this space.
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Generally, I see a focus on technical discussion of the machine's engineering. I don't see any discussion on how well either machine actually does it's job, including possible technical details.
For the espresso machine:
* Water pressure consistency
* Water pressure level and adjustment (though the specs do suggest this is adjustable)
* Water temperature
* Water temp consistency through the brew cycle
* Where's my steam? Do I need a separate machine for steaming milk?
* The power block. Ewe.
For the grinder:
Honestly, it looks polished. I don't "believe" the marketing materials as your claiming a novel grinder design that outperform the rest of the market. This is just going to come down to this grinder building a reputation as good. Get it in the hands of reviewers and community members.
This is lovely! Good work on the machining. Will there be iFixit guides to stripping them down and reassembling them?
People say "hardware is hard" but that's because it's true. Congratulations man, really cool work.
Beautiful objects! I'll wait for review and maybe order one haha although my favorite coffee is still french press
What temp is the pump rated to? I've been looking for a pump for a sous vide and wondering how viable this is.
The pump has been tested up to 100c for extended periods. It would definitely work for that, but it's optimized for pressure rather than flow so it might be a bit overkill!
For all the talk about "beautiful" design, the photos and videos look super overlit and quite amateurish.
If advertisements took the form of this post I wouldn’t hate them and they would sometimes succeed with me.
Are the Trefolo legs weak? It looks like the wood for both sides of the legs only connect in the back.
And where the water pipes go exactly?
Why can't you just show a simple embedded video of the product instead of parallax embedded background video that scrolls badly even on decent hardware and gets all distorted depending on display resolution?
Building a new kitchen consumer device is nearly impossible. This is amazing. Congratulations!
The design is a call to try and then buy. Did you have any great coffee aficionados try it?
I want a new grinder for a long time now, sadly our Mahlkönig works and works and works.
Same, I had a Capresso grinder for about 11 years now and it works fine. Parts are available as well. I’m sure that there are better ones, but it makes me wonder if it’s like audiophile territory. I don’t think I would be able to tell the difference if I were to upgrade.
Some of it is audiophile in the very high end, but the Capresso is definitely not where I would consider the edge of diminishing returns. It uses pretty mediocre burrs with a considerable amount of plastic and a poor grind adjustment mechanism. I used to own one and upgrading got me substantially better coffee.
I had once a collegue at work who said, "I pity you that you need to drink expensive coffee, I can't taste the difference" My taste tops out at $600 grinders.
Funny, although I pity someone who can’t taste the difference between truly hugely different coffees. At some point it becomes like saying you can’t taste the difference between a Merlot and a Chardonnay wine. I can respect someone who says they just prefer “boring” cheap coffee, but they’re kidding themselves if they’d try to say there isn’t a clear difference. Even the smell is blatantly obvious.
Can you set grind size for filter machine? Hard to tell from the website
Otherwise impressive work.
Yes totally, I actually made filter coffee with it this morning. Sorry I will add this!
> Maxiumum dose: 20g
I found this spec a bit strange. Maximum dose is a function of the basket AND the coffee, both of which are up to the user, so I don't understand why this is in the machine's specs.
> Basket style: Naked/non-pressurized (And it better stay like this)
Naked refers to the portafilter not having spouts, it has nothing to do with the basket. And what if I prefer to use a spouted portafilter and/or a pressurized basket? This feels unnecesarily confrontational.
> I found this spec a bit strange. Maximum dose is a function of the basket AND the coffee, both of which are up to the user, so I don't understand why this is in the machine's specs.
I assume this is just referring to the basket that comes with the machine. It's common for aftermarket baskets to be sized/sold by dosage weight.
I know, but they usually offer dosage ranges, since it varies greatly depending on coffee density.
In any case, it's not a "grouphead spec" as shown on the website. I know this is pedantic, but most coffee nerds are pedantic :P
Hardly the first conical burr grinder. Niche Zero has been available for quite a while; https://www.nichecoffee.co.uk/products/niche-zero
Edit: Misread cylindrical as conical
They didn't claim to be first conical burr grinder. The claimed innovation is in the cylindrical design.
Their claim is something else, though: "The first cylindrical burr coffee grinder"
This is cylindrical, which the author purports to be different
Tangental: I have a 3 yr old Niche Zero, they are excellent - but they are not first conical. They used the burr from another famous grinder (I was more into all this shit but don't remember now)
They use Mazzer burrs, a classic!
Niche made the single dose grinder mainstream though and deserve a ton of credit for that
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I’ve read probably 100 comments before I stopped. It’s really sad how negative HN has become. I wonder how many of those comments are from people that are really into coffee.
Super cool product. Especially interested in the grinder. I recently purchased a Niche Duo and was not very impressed in the upgrade from a Zero. Kind of wished I would have gone a different direction entirely. Maybe something like yours.
Regarding the website, I was on mobile and it seemed fine. I like the very Apple-y product showcasing. I think it’s fun.
Regarding the espresso machine, I think people are being very silly about the plastic and external heating source.
A tube going into kettle? Like, people are consuming 10x as much plastic eating beans out of a can or getting a coffee to go from their local shop.
The external heating source is also exactly how Modbar works. I think it’s cool you don’t double or triple the price by basically doing what Modbar does. A nice kettle can hold temps to approximate levels pretty well.
I think people should see this for what it is: a specialty espresso machine. It could be a statement piece, or perhaps a really interesting option for great espresso depending on how it performs. Have you tried to get it in front of daddy Hoffmann?
This is a gorgeously and uniquely designed product. Very cool.
Thank you so much!
49mm Portafilter? Was unclear from the site but seemed so?
Where did you see 49mm? I think from the specifications section that it's 51mm.
As a coffeegeek myself, i would like to see a video before!
I don't even drink coffee and I want one! Nice work
I would love to see a whole process how you engineered it
The design looks pretty but I'm sticking with freeze-dried granules, a kettle and a mug. Proper coffee, with none of this squeeze-the-beans rigmarole that needs complex machinery to make.
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what... $700 for a... grinder? What in gods green earth would someone need a $700 coffee grinder for...
I am very intrigued by your grinder.
How does it compare noise-wise?
It's the quietest electric grinder I've used but I didn't want to diss any competitors in particular! It has a nice low rumble for probably 45 seconds grinding a single dose. I think the noise level is helped by the fact that the motor is completely enclosed by the heavy stainless steel burr, which basically eliminates its noise, and the fact that it spins slower than other grinders because it has a larger grinding area.
It is easy to say the espresso machine is the quietest because basically everything else uses the same pump, which is way louder and more annoying than ours, but grinders are much more variable not just in terms of noise level but also how annoying the noise is.
Am I crazy, or is 45 seconds a really long time? My current cheapish grinder does 18g in ~25 seconds. If anything I would expect/want a better grinder to grind faster. Is the slow grind rate intentional?
Mine takes around a minute, so this sounds normal to me. Are you using a blade grinder?
Kudos !
Is the pump alone compatible with a nespresso machine ?
https://www.diypresso.com/ is an open source espresso machine
This is very cool! Also check out Gaggiuino!
https://gaggiuino.github.io/#/
Hopefully going to work with their community to find a way to make it communicate with our pump upgrade.
this is really cool, congratulations on the launch!
i'm definitely in your target market - my daily drivers are an 83mm flat burr grinder and a manual lever machine. don't get me wrong, i love them both, but i'm intrigued both by your grinder and espresso machine and i am strongly considering pre-ordering both.
here's my little laundry list of unanswered questions:
1. workflow/usage video! i know it's come up but i definitely am keen to see the grinder and espresso machine both in use.
2. particle size distribution for the grinder would be really cool. i know that distribution isn't everything, but this is a whole new style of burr and people (myself included) are going to be (or already are) very curious about how they compare to existing conical and flat burrsets. also, any word about retention?
3. can the trefolo do pressure profiling? if so, is that profiling based on pre-set shot profiles, or is it live profiling via the knob input, or both?
4. is the group electrically heated, or does all of the preheat temperature come from the hot water? especially for very light roast espresso, i've found that it's just impossible to brew at 96-98°C without electric heating, and there are some shots that i've only been able to get balanced up at those temperatures (they were just pulling way too acidic even at 94).
5. does velofuso have any social media accounts we could follow? where should i be keeping my eyes out for videos, project updates, etc?
Thing thing I was most impressed with here was smeeeeeeeeeeeee's username and the fact that it's bright green. What does that mean? 8-\
It means it's an early post from a new account
Honestly, I think you should go on Shark Tank and find a way to get millions of people to see your product. The products are visually so distinct from anything anyone has seen before. I think they'd do better with a stronger marketing /presentation.
Looks amazing! Good luck!
just 649, why so cheap ? why not charge a subscription along with the base price of 10,000 ?
Don't worry, I am actually working on incorporating a language model that will replace the control knob ($49 per month for 3 use tokens per day) as well as blockchain based coffee batch identifiers
Mad props for offering a pump kit!
Rare to see a physical product release here. Congratulations!
On the surface, the problem you are solving looks clear and the product itself looks amazing.
But curious what actual baristas think of your product. I don’t see any product reviews on YT, but I suppose it’s not entirely unusual for a brand new product.
Good luck, definitely keeping a tab on this product. Need to migrate away from buying to making it at home. And this product would be perfect for the limited counter space I have.
i'm not a big fan of this space ship design.
This is nice!
Looks neat!!
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My brother in Christ... $1400 for a coffee grinder and espresso machine?!
I am into mechanical keyboards and IEMs and that feels outrageous to me. I'll spend $40 on a pen, but that price point feels insane to me.
Maybe I just like my garbo Aldi's whole bean coffee with cream & sugar, so I am not your target market... I hope you find your niche - I am sure it is out there if you went this far. But man.. I couldnt ever spend that much on the tools to make coffee.
The espresso space is notoriously targeting well-off people. That is a pretty normal price range. At the high end you can find espresso machines for 13k [1] and grinders for 3.6k [2], still aimed at consumers.
[1] https://www.lamarzocco.com/ch/de/produkt/leva-x-1-group/
Believe it or not, it's pretty reasonable price for mid-high end quality coffee stuff. Seeing the picture and description I was expecting an at least $1000 range price for each. And I totally not am an SF engineer with that much excessive money for buying something like that.
Coffee enthusiasts are borderline insane, maybe something with the involved molecules.
That’s actually pretty cheap, especially if it delivers on the promises. I spent about $6k on my current setup.
A "higher" end home grade espresso machine, that is also a huge gunk of plastic and prone to issues/expensive maintenance is over $700 alone.
So for a self made, low production run of quality components, this is not bad.
We know very little about the quality of this product, but it's competing with the likes of Flair 58 and Niche Zero, which makes it adequately priced. But again, if the quality is there.
This is inline with entry level setups. My setup costs this much.
The thing is the expectations for these machines are sky-high. They're built like tanks, last forever, are servicable, and generally very high quality.
If you think this is an "entry level" setup, you're in too deep!
No, I don't believe I am. I had a retail-level setup and I can absolutely tell the difference.
It's not so much that I can make better espresso, but it's far easier, quicker, and more consistent to make not-totally crap tasting espresso.
