the Nuova Simonelli Musica, an update.

I have been playing around with the Nuova Simonelli Musica for about two weeks now and I'm ready to give an update. First of all, the machine was aquired from a defunct restaurant for a very good deal (less than 1K) versus the 3K that a new Musica (plumb in version) goes for.  I spent about a whole afternoon to clean this up, now it is a beauty.

Even though this is a direct connect version, I have no way of plumbing it in so I'm running it off of a big water bottle, which is hardly the ideal situation. In the near future, I will be purchaseing a Flowjet setup with an accumulator; so with that said, the potential of this machine might not be fully realized at the moment. Even though this is a direct connect version, I was very surprise to find out that it does not have a rotary pump like I was expecting. I think that is is a let down on Nuova Simonelli's part. In this class of machinery and at this price range, they should have included a rotary pump vs. just a normal vibratory pump due to the issue of durablility usuallly associated with vibratory pump.

On the functional aspect, one very positive thing that I noticed about the NS Musica is the steaming performance; quite simply state, it is a steaming moster. However, it was extremly easy to use this power to tranform milk into microfoam due to excellent competition steaming tip that is included with the machine. Quite litterally, I had the best microfoam I have ever had the first time I steam with this machine; YES, it is that easy to get microfoamed milk on this machine!!!!

The espresso had been very good as well; I have been tuning and dialing in the shot; after the first week, I did have to turn down the the pressurestat to have it iddle around 1.2BAR from before which was 1.6BAR. The steaming performance suffer a little bit but the espresso was better and require less cooling flush. I must say I do enjoy the speed of making a cappucino with this machine, I can pull everything off under one minute by steaming simultaneously with pulling shot! This machine would be very good for entertaining a crowd at your home!

Here is a picture to prove the worthiness of the Nuova Simonelli:

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