ebeans = Vibiemme Junior HX

After a little over a week and saving a lot of ebeans over the months it has finally arrived, a Vibiemme Junior HX

/files/u13866/vb_in_box.jpg" hspace="10" height="308" width="410" align="left" />I gotta say that I am almost rather embarrassed by receiving this wonderful machine in return for writing these blogs, comments and reviews of some of the coffee/equipment on this site that I have a little bit of knowledge about. However, I am not going to give it back and many thanks to Roaste.

There was a little hiccup with getting this machine to me, the seller accidently input the wrong address. Well, wrong state specifically. Luckily as with all my dealings here it was an easy fix. All I did was send a quick email to the seller and they were able to get the address changed mid-shipment and the folks at Roaste were right there making sure it got taken care of.

The wait from ordering the machine was probably the hardest part of this, not the months of ebeans it took to get to that point. However, it was nice seeing the tracking going across the US, starting on the east coast going to Chicago, then Denver, a stop at Salt Lake, then off to Reno and finally to California in it's new home.

The machine was really well packed as you can tell from the photo, double boxed surrounded by packing beans and then wood frame to ensure it doesn't get crushed.

So far so good with the machine, as noted above it is an heat exchanger machine, which means there is only one boiler in the machine with a tubing going through the boiler to heat the water for brewing quickly, while still being able to steam. It also has an E61 group which is there to maintain the temperature of the shot throughout the shot. One of the good things about the Vibiemme line is they make sure the group doesn't get overly hot while idling like other E61 groups can get excessively hot, thus needing a very long flush of water to make it cool enough for espresso.

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It's also relatively small for this type of machine, as from the photo for perspective it has about the same width as the Gaggia Classic, but has much great depth. Still fits well on the counter.

As far as the shots, very smooth from the ones I have taken thus far. The Classic could at times be a little angular if that makes sense and these one are just butter in comparison and I have not had much time to get the hang of this. So I am assuming it will get better too. I wasn't expecting to see such an improvement with my first shot from the machine, but it was really eye opening to taste something that was in my opinion such an improvement.

The steaming has been great thus far, real easy and quick. Weird too being able to make a latte in under minute brewing and steaming at the same time. Will post more later but for now I gotta go back to pulling shots, and thanks again to folks at Roaste.