I've been more or less obsessed with the idea of varying temperatures between group heads on the same machine for quite some time and with the race on to achieve pressure profiling, I feel like this discussion has been swept under the rug. Hypothetically, if I'm using two coffees for espresso that are widely dissimilar - washed lighter roast and an unwashed darker roast, for instance - wouldn't the ability to set my group heads to the respectively appropriate temperatures be more advantageous than having to compromise on temp and be able to change pressure? If you only use one espresso blend and your only concern is temperature stability then the choice is clearly between any of the new pressure profiling machines, but for the multiple espresso crowd, the Astoria ""Plus 4 You" seems like the Holy Grail.

Am I reading this wrong or oversimplifying?

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You are totally right, but Astoria isn't the only company doing this.

Synesso, and Nuova Simonelli have been doing it for a while now.

This just made me crave a Synesso all over again :(
I have 2,
its halping when you have 8 grinders 6 SO and fresh coffee from day of roast you can play hard game whit all 3 parametars temp-pres-grams
enjoy in it saw many new staff 53 works well in busy envirement - 8 grams quite nice body on SO evan on Brasil and Honduras...ask for help and see topic +4u
Chadwick Rookstool said:
You are totally right, but Astoria isn't the only company doing this.

Synesso, and Nuova Simonelli have been doing it for a while now.

This just made me crave a Synesso all over again :(

I thought that Synesso was only a dual boiler system that allows you to change the temp of all groups simultaneously but not each individual group. The same with the Nuova Simonelli but with heat exchange instead of multiple boilers.

Also, the matter of preinfusion and pressure profiling was not addressed in the other threads. Is the +4u able to do either?
Nope, independently heated and controlled brew groups. Not sure about pressure profiling between groups though.
Chadwick Rookstool said:
Nope, independently heated and controlled brew groups. Not sure about pressure profiling between groups though.

Different pressure profiling per group head is available on the Synesso Hydra I believe, but yeah, it's just the temps on the Cyncra.
i think astoria does an alright job of keeping up with the new things, but i've worked with all their other equipment and there are some things i don't care for. There portafilters delaminate quickly, their group heads are made of brass, so they are a bear to clean. I've had problems with steam wands needing to be prematurely rebuilt because of poor design. There are other machines, in my opinion, that could do the same thing with a higher reliability and quality overall.
There is also another machine that you can program each boiler for each group head independently using your laptop or a hand held programmer. It plugs into a port in your espresso machine and then you can do diagnostics, change parameters, and also get POS information. I sell the machines so I am biased, but they are amazing as far as the technology goes. They are extremely well built and for service everything comes out top or front

It is the Dalla Corte

Also Conti made a machine the twin star with independent boilers for each group head.
I work with a Synesso Cyncra 2 group of which both groups can be changed independently temperature... In fact, one of the group is not holding its temp too well atm. :'( One group is at 203, the other is at 176. In other words, ditto, to Chadwick.

Ryan Soeder said:
Chadwick Rookstool said:
You are totally right, but Astoria isn't the only company doing this.

Synesso, and Nuova Simonelli have been doing it for a while now. This just made me crave a Synesso all over again :(

I thought that Synesso was only a dual boiler system that allows you to change the temp of all groups simultaneously but not each individual group. The same with the Nuova Simonelli but with heat exchange instead of multiple boilers.

Also, the matter of preinfusion and pressure profiling was not addressed in the other threads. Is the +4u able to do either?
Here is a little more information in a link so you can see more about machine (Dalla Corte). It did fair well in the quest for Barista Champion machines and much has been written about it and some good roasters are using it and really enjoying it for all the reasons discussed such as temperature and the ability to really dial in each coffee for each group head.

http://public.me.com/dallacorteusa

It is a lot of fun to use and also fun to play with the programming on your laptop using the port built into the machine.
Quite a few machines (most already listed) accommodate temperature changes on a per group basis, and there are a few that allow pressure and temperature on a per group basis (although I'm unsure what has been released and what hasn't yet).

As far as per group temp boilers go:
-Synesso
-Nuova Simonelli
-Dalla Corte (painfully underrated machine, and I don't sell them, just know their solid)
-Astoria

There may even be more that I am unaware of.

Not sure if fully released yet, but Slayer (what is up with those guys anyway, their blog started moving very slowly after SCAA... Launching the new line?) has both temperature and pressure profiling for each group.

And I believe that La Marzocco is also developing temperature/pressure profiling on a per group basis, but you'd want someone else to back that up before you take it to the bank. I just remember playing around on that beautiful machine in Atlanta that LM had in their booth with a mechanical paddle and accidentally sending it up to like 11 bar my first run through. Don't know that I ever looked under the machine to see if it had readouts for individual boilers for each group. Either way, fun stuff.

-bry
Thanks for all the info, guys. I've been looking at Synesso for quite a while and this has really helped. Slayer is intriguing. I'll look forward to seeing how that pans out for them and, depending on when they launch, will consider them in the running.
r u opening a bar or you ask for info for demo version...
if bar works well with 53

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