Over the years I have exhausted several coffee roads I was traveling on.
The example that brought me to do this is 2 such roads. Moka pots and espresso shots. Some might be thinking it's crazy talk something like giving up espresso but some of the more obsessive types of us have probably been there before where thousands upon thousands of hours and dollars bring you to a place where you have sort of done all there is to do on that trip so moving to a new adventure only makes sense.
I had made that change already when I moved from pump machines to leavers. It made sense..
Over some years I had done everything I wanted to do there and lost my desire to go further.
Anyhow I had also given up moka pots many years ago and last month started thinking I wanted to revisit a moka pot so I started researching to see what cool stuff might be out there these days..... didn't find anything that made me buy one. :/
Then I was reminiscing and remembered the wild times I had building huge chocolate bomb crema shots with my beloved modded up Carezza.
On a whim I googled "best cheap espresso machine" and the Delonghi e155 kept coming up.
I went on YouTube and searched "Delonghi e155 shots"
And immediately saw videos where people depressurized the portafilter, made it bottomless, and are pulling those Guinness 100% crema bomb shots.
Went to Amazon... They are $84.
I will get this thing tomorrow and update as soon as I figure out if I can pull a good shot out of an $80 machine or not.
It sounds crazy but 1) I'm crazy and 2) I don't mind too much if this doesn't work out because I'm only doing this as an experiment. I don't need this to work out any certain way but from what I saw on YouTube I think I can have more than $84 worth of fun with this project.
Updates in a few days.