Bean to cup coffee machine

[Hot Flatus]

AIUI Italians normally use a moka pot at home and espresso machines are left for commercial premises.
  My cousin-in-law is from Florence so I could ask her.

Yes, this is true. Every home will have a Moka pot, but machines are quite rare. Bars with espresso machines are everywhere and IME it's rare to find a bad coffee.

[T42]

I might have another go with mine, though I'd have to turf the spiders out of it first.

[Beardy]

Given the success of our new B2C machine over the last few days with the metropolitan crowd that my children have become, I predict the purchase of at least one new B2C in the very near future.

I’ve not used my Moka pot in a very long time because I never really liked its product. With the benefit of knowledge and experience, I think experiments with coffee variety and grind might produce a cup I’m happy with, but given the machine that now occupies the shelf in the corner and the product it is providing, I can’t see me expending any tuits on the moka pot any time soon.

[Hot Flatus]

To be honest I've always found that whatever you put in a Moka pot it comes out tasting the same. ie treacly.  It's not  that I don't like it, I do, but not not all the time. I only have it when camping.

[rogerzilla]

That's some crema. I would have to waste hours/days to achieve it

S'easy.

Just use coffee with a bit of robusta in it. When you look at the names of Italian big brand coffees like Lavazza (the worst of the big brands) you often see things like 'super crema' or 'gran crema'.  Just means it's full of lower quality robusta* beans but easy to smash out espressos that look good.  There is this mystique about crema but if you dip a spoon in it and taste it then you realise it tastes horrid, like a mouth full of ash. It adds something though, probably oily content, but more is not always better. There's a weird quality to it when it's not great quality, it sort of collapses on itself.

* and to be clear, there is good robusta and bad robusta, but this is usually of the bad variety.

This is the stuff I use

https://www.trolley.co.uk/product/sainsburys-fairtrade-intense-roast-coffee/RAS188

I don't know what's in it but it is far better than Lavazza  and makes Hot Lava Java taste like Mellow Bird's.

[Hot Flatus]

I don't know what's in it .

No idea, but it's likely to be either Brazilian, Colombian or Indonesian mixed in with a bit of Vietnamese robusta.

[De Sisti]

Anyone heard of Ritual Coffee Rosters? They are located less than 1/2 mile from my house.
They brew good coffees in there. It is now an unofficial post-ride meet-up caf we use after
our Saturday morning runs.

[pumpkin]

To be honest I've always found that whatever you put in a Moka pot it comes out tasting the same. ie treacly.  It's not  that I don't like it, I do, but not not all the time. I only have it when camping.

I watched James Hoffman on You Tube 're the Moka pot. I got better results after his 15 mins.

[T42]

This morning I weighed the damp pucks after pulling a single and a double on the Delonghi B2C.  Results:

Double: 22 grammes
Single: 23 grammes

Allowing a few grammes margin, since the pucks break when they fall into the grounds box and you can't be sure to get it all out cleanly, it's the same quantity of coffee every time, it's just the volume of water that changes.  Doubles aren't as sweet as singles, which isn't surprising, but they probably contain proportionately more caffeine.

[Beardy]

Our Gaggia does two shots when you ask for a double. You can also choose the amount of coffee per shot (from 5 presets) Best addition to our kitchen I’ve ever made.

[T42]

From what I've heard most of them one after the other.  Delonghi must think its clients will be too chuffed at pulling two at once to realize.  I have to admit that I didn't know until https://youtu.be/-5ndWUZ-n2k mentioned it.  My machine's about 5 years older than the one he reviewed so they've been doing it for a while.