The Systemic Kid

Dear old Amazon - 12 pack.

Good recipe for base tomato sauce: couple of tins of tomatoes - San Mariano are worth the extra cost, half an onion and a generous dob of butter. Melt the butter and add tomatoes and onion (uncut). Reduce down to whatever thickness you prefer. When finished, discard the onion. Season with salt and pepper and a little sugar.

Same boat here - ordered last week. Got shipping update yesterday. All good things..... and all that.

Budget of £400 will cover a machine/grinder combo with enough spare for bits and pieces - weighing scales, tamper etc. A separate machine and grinder is more capable of producing better tasting shots than a bean to cup machine but you will need to gain experience in order to get the best out of such a set up. So, there is a learning curve which shouldn't be too daunting if you have the commitment to take it on. You have to decide if the potential reward is worth the effort or to play safe and go for a bean to cup machine. You might want to consider some training. There's a brilliant one man outfit in St Ives - Mount Zion. He might be worth approaching depending where abouts you are in Cornwall.

The for sale section is supposed to be not visible until new forum members have built up a modest number of posts - five. If your budget is in the range of £300, you could source a Gaggia Classic - great first machine and pair it with a separate grinder. The BE is a compromise - it offers bean to cup ease at the expense of the best shot you can get, taste-wise. You have to decide what you want, i.e. ability to have more control or ease of use at the expense of getting the best tasting espresso.

Head over to the Northern Quarter. Idle Hands on Dale St is a must. Round the corner is Takk on Tariff St - great coffee and food. Nearby is Northern Tea Power on Tibb St - offering well made Hasbean coffees. If you want to be uber trendy - check out Foundation just off Dale St - offering Origin coffee. Big place, lots of choice but quality control, coffee-wise, not up there with the other three.

You can order them direct from SSP, South Korea.

The two machines are almost definately using a different grind to reach similar saturation times. Correct.

At 3 bar, my pre-infusion times can vary from 2/3 secs to 10 secs plus. Once lever is released and full pressure applied, shot tends to be complete in 25-35 secs at 1:2 -1:2.5 ratio.

Think you're mixing up pre-infusion time and pre-infusion pressure. On the original L I, pre-infusion pressure is set to 1.1 bar. You can't change that. The length of time you allow pre-infusion to take place before releasing the lever is something you can play with up to a point but are in the 5-10 sec range normally. The L R has a rotary pump so the pressure at the puck can be varied but is factory set to 3 bar at the puck but adjustable up to a max 6 bar pressure at the puck. This gives you a great deal of flexibility to play with.

Tried this using Chemex. Usual method takes around three and a half minutes. Following Hoffman's technique pushed this up to five and a half minutes. Tellingly, however, the coffee came in with an extraction yield of 20.72% - bang on the money. Will give it a go with V 60 and see how that pans out.

LM Strada baskets are made to the same spec as VST - they're made on the same production line. There's a mystique developing around the 15 grm VST. Good barista technique is the key to getting the best out of it.

Guess the nearest place for you would be Truro. Pop into 108 - they brew with Origin beans. Best give them a call first to see if they also sell beans.