11 ms·

Dishwashers are another example. You could buy a commercial one but it will come with no roll-out trays (you load up different plastic racks for different thing

Dishwashers are another example. You could buy a commercial one but it will come with no roll-out trays (you load up different plastic racks for different things and you can load a rack while the dishwasher is running) and it’s designed for an environment with lots of ventilation (you just open it when it is done and let the steam get ventilated away) which people are unlikely to have in their own kitchens. Other items tend to be designed for people who can put more work in regular cleaning and maintenance. You could buy a commercial espresso machine and coffee grinder to make yourself coffee every morning but the machine is designed to warm up at the start of the day, pull a lot of shots, and get thoroughly cleaned later. You will still need to warm it up and make sure it is behaving well before your coffee and you’ll still need to properly clean it afterwards.

user3939382 5y ago
Tangentially related: if you do want an amazing electric coffee grinder, feel free to piggy back on my countless hours of research and go with this: Baratza Virtuoso+ It is excellent.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  I’m suspicious.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  How much static electricity does it generate? That is my biggest complaint on burr grinders, they act like Van de Graaff generators and then the grounds get stuck all over the machine.
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    In my two days of usage so far…. not much. I read about other grinders having issues with grounds being stuck in the container but this one doesn’t appear to have that problem. I think I read that the + model has a redesigned ground container to tackle the static issue - had seen some mention that static was more of an issue with the older “non +” model
  - cjonas 5y ago
    Add a miniscule amount of water to your beans before grinding
    - Arch-TK 5y ago
      This is the way. The best way is to run the handle of a teaspoon under the tap and stir it through the grinds before grinding. It doesn't matter if "burr grinders suffer from static build up" when they're categorically far better than anything else when it comes to grinding.
    - Wistar 5y ago
      OMG. I have battled the grinder static thing for… years, decades, and did not know this. Thank you
    - birdyrooster 5y ago
      I assume distilled water?
  - NegativeLatency 5y ago
    Depends a lot on the roast for me. Darker ones seem to lace less flaky floaty bits after grinding
- divbzero 5y ago
  In the spirit of OP, the main navbar on Baratza’s website links to an article titled: STOP! Don’t Dump It – Fix It! https://baratza.com/stop-dont-dump-it-fix-it/ https://baratza.com/stop-dont-dump-it-fix-it/
  - CamperBob2 5y ago
    Impressive. Next time my Breville strips its gears, I'll try to remember to give these guys a try. It probably won't be long.
- na85 5y ago
  Concur. Nice to see my own conclusions validated, I really like mine.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Just bought one two days ago. Reviews were good, and I’m not disappointed. (Paired with a Moccamaster)
  - Wistar 5y ago
    Can I ask: What grind do you use for your Moccamaster?
    - tailspin2019 5y ago
      Currently using grind setting 18, 68g beans (darker roast) for a full brew on the Moccamaster
- BossingAround 5y ago
  What's the main difference between Virtuoso+ and Encore? From just a quick glance, Virtuoso+ has a number of features that aren't very useful (like a timer, or LEDs/display) while having seemingly identical burr system?
  - ValentineC 5y ago
    I believe the Virtuoso also comes with a better M2 burr set. The Encore can be upgraded to it.
  - NegativeLatency 5y ago
    I have one of these, the LED is dumb but the digital timer is really nice for repeatability in how much you grind. Wasn’t willing to pay even more for one with a scale
    - tokamak-teapot 5y ago
      I have a Macap M5D. This has a timer with three presets. It’s perfect and while expensive, even second hand, I wouldn’t say it’s overkill for home use. The timer means I don’t get the grind wrong. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want one. I suppose I’m quite good at ‘eyeballing’ the quantity now, but the timer means consistency.
    - BossingAround 5y ago
      Generally, I'd advise against storing coffee in the bean loader. They aren't really hermetically sealed, so your beans will go stale. I always grind to measure, in which case I don't need timer.
- tmountain 5y ago
  I bought an encore after much research myself and had to return it after just a few weeks. It started grinding my beans to an ultra fine espresso type consistency no matter what setting I used. After much troubleshooting, they sent me a new unit (in transit now), but not a great experience from the device perspective (customer service was great).
- ValentineC 5y ago
  On the other hand: if you drink 1-2 cups of coffee a day, and don't mind putting in some elbow grease — a manual grinder like a Comandante or Kinu often produces much better grinds for the same price, since money can be allocated towards a better burr set instead of a motor. I've had a few friends whose only experience with a manual grinder was a Hario Skerton or its clones, and get turned off manual grinding because of how bad the experience is. The pricier hand grinders have much better UX.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Absolutely. Much prefer a small hand-operated device that I can easily store in a cupboard to a big heavy device with a cord that needs to be near an outlet and takes up counter space all the time. I have come to really, really resist buying plug-in kitchen gadgets. I have a few, such as a toaster and a kettle, that I actually use. For anything else I've found that they just end up living in the back of a base cabinet and I forget that I have them.
  - ip26 5y ago
    I was ready to go all-in on manual grinders. But their supply chain completely evaporated in the pandemic, and I could not find one I wanted anywhere. For months. That ended that.
    - ValentineC 5y ago
      What brands were those? It looks like 1zpresso and Timemore are readily available, at least, and the 1zpresso JX Pro is top-of-the-line.
      - ip26 5y ago
        Kinu was the worst offender, and Comadante nearly as bad.
  - ateng 5y ago
    Life hack: link your manual grinder to a drill. Now you have a automatic grinder that’s reasonably priced and have a superb burr. Have not tried this myself but I was told by a professional this is way cheaper and better than any automatic grinder below USD$1000, if you’re spending around $200 for a top end hand grinder
- yojo 5y ago
  I have a Vario, that has struggled with a fine espresso grind. The burrs are ceramic but the carriage is plastic and it affects the tolerance. I gave up repairing/troubleshooting it and bought a beat to hell SuperJolly off EBay for $170. Dropped in a new set of burrs and have an unstoppable overkill grinder with a huge motor and all metal parts
  - Arch-TK 5y ago
    If you want espresso you probably want steel burrs mounted in steel with good bearings. If you are on a budget and don't want to spend £500 ($700 + tax and shipping) on a niche then you can usually find used smaller commercial machines. Research the burrs they use and see if you can find new burrs, this way you can spend probably somewhere around $200 on what would function like a brand new high quality burr grinder.
    - yojo 5y ago
      Yes, that’s what I did. The Super Jolly I bought is a commercial machine (by Mazzer) and I put new OEM steel burrs in it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rolleiflex 5y ago
  This is oversimplifying it a little. Yes Baratzas are great grinders but they are not one-size-fits-all depending on what kind of coffee you make. For example Baratza Encore is everyone’s darling with good reason (I have one and I use it for espresso every day!) but it’s not a great espresso grinder because fundamentally speaking its tiny motor just doesn’t have enough torque to drive big burrs, so it has small ones. Which means when you grind at espresso sizes it’s going to lose its tight spread and it’ll output some grains that are too big for espresso, some are too small and some are just right. Since espresso is very dense coffee, this is something that is very clearly tastable even to a skeptical non-expert like me. This spread of grain sizes is something to some degree any grinder does, but grinders designed for espresso have tighter spreads, so they provide much more of the size you want (so your water can actually pass through) and much less of what you don’t want. Incidentally this is something I like about specialty coffee industry compared to other connoisseur stuff like wine. Wine experts walk around talking about the earthy aromas, if some coffee ‘expert’ tries to do the same, someone in the audience busts out a refractometer and says ‘aight, let’s see’. It’s still a money pit, but it’s at least on a much more scientifically solid ground.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Thanks. I’ll add a pointer towards Mazzer grinders too. The key is to buy them when they are described as broken, then they are very cheap. As far as I can tell they are almost never broken as such. Either something inside needs plugging back in, or the on/off switch needs replacing (it’s got spades on it, so just plug a new one in). They are nearly entirely metal, with the few plastic components readily available. The are quite easy to sand and repaint too, so you can match them to other bits of equipment or decor. The correct colour choice is a 1970s orange.
- secabeen 5y ago
  And if you want an overkill coffee grinder, get a Kafatek Monolith, or a Weber Workshops model.
nextos 5y ago
You are right, but there are some exceptions. For example, I own a commercial Miele dishwasher and it's exactly like their consumer version but even more robust and simple. Furthermore, it's equipped with gigantic blades to destroy food leftovers. Other examples of overkill objects I like are some commercial vacuums for clean room environments with spectacularly good filtration and seals, therefore no itching if you are allergic to dust (e.g. some Nilfisk made in Denmark). Or industrial fanless PCs which are sealed and have fantastic copper coolers (e.g. Compulab, Tranquil and many others).
tialaramex 5y ago
Maintenance is huge. A lot of products even in the supposedly "disposable" everyday category people buy for lower prices have maintenance instructions that would significantly increase their lifespan if actually followed. Misuse resistance means consumer products generally still work if you skip maintenance the manufacturer told you was necessary (which industrial products might not), but it may shorten the product's lifespan, increase operating costs or reduce performance. My friend owns a dishwasher. Recently little specks of dirt were left on plates sometimes after the wash completed. Guess what, there's no salt in the softener re-charge. So that dishwasher is soldiering on with hard water instead of soft, and it no longer gets things clean. Fill the salt back up, and sure enough the machine's performance quickly improves. I'm sure lots of people are shouting "That's not maintenance". Well, it probably depends how you look at the problem. From his point of view he purchased "all in one" dishwasher tablets which said he didn't need salt. If he'd examined them very carefully they admit that actually you might still need to add salt periodically, but that wouldn't be very "all in one" so it's not emphasised.
- carlmr 5y ago
  TIL I should read the all in one tab packaging and probably buy salt.
  - MonaroVXR 5y ago
    Watch this video: Detergent packs are kinda wishy-washy (Dishwashers Explained) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04
  - imgabe 5y ago
    TIL dishwashers have a compartment you're supposed to add salt to? Is this the rinse-aid thing?
    - the-smug-one 5y ago
      Salt helps against hard water, AFAIK.
MonaroVXR 5y ago
This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Than business laptops like the Z-book, ThinkPad or insert Dell business laptop eg; Latitude 7000 series (Dell XPS isn't a business laptop from my perspective.)
- ta988 5y ago
  I agree, the Z-book are really amazing, but HP still has a bad reputation so it is hard to make people realize how far they went with this serie (from the old modela to the recent ones).
- jlkuester7 5y ago
  I agree that the Dell XPS line does not reaaly fit the "business" look-and-feel like a Latitude or Thinkpad. But after several years of doing heavy sofware dev on one, it is has earned my respect. It is nice to have a machine with a non-brick-like form that still does not compromise in performance (and you can bring to a businesses meeting and not look too RBG....). IMHO the XPS line is designed to compete with MBPs as high-end work-capable machines and it does a darn good job of it...
  - verst 5y ago
    Except my $3500 XPS 9500 (64GB RAM 2TB, 8 core CPU, Nvidia 1650Ti, 4K Touch Display) that thermal throttles so much that a 3 years older MBP gives much much better performance and I continued using that machine for work. Fortunately by switching teams at work I was then able to get a new Mac and I'm thrilled with my M1! I spoke with a very nice person from Dell via Twitter who out of personal interest went above and beyond to help me calibrate that XPS, but no luck. Booting Windows is enough for fans to reach max speeds and thermal throttling to begin.
    - jlkuester7 5y ago
      Yeah, I will concede that one to you. I have heard that the thermal paste on some of those XPS models was complete trash. Know some folks that had some luck re-applying new paste, but that does not really absolve Dell....
bayindirh 5y ago
> Dishwashers are another example. Commercial dishwashers, esp. the fast cycle ones beat the living light of any mugs/plates/etc. unless they're plain white. They use way more pressure and heat, and resulting clean is much more aggressive, shortening life of everything inside them. Only plain glass and plain porcelain came out relatively unaffected. All decorations doesn't stand a chance. This is why some mugs denote "Safe for normal dishwasher use".
- andai 5y ago
  I stayed at an art school that was housed in an old military barracks. They had a massive steel dishwasher that used hot water and pressurized air to just blast the dirt off. It was extremely loud, and only needed about 10 seconds. I want one.
- sitharus 5y ago
  I wondered why dinnerware said “for domestic use only”, but I now have an ex-commercial set and it’s an entirely different kind of china to domestic.
- justnotworthit 5y ago
  To reiterate for people thinking they might get a commercial kitchen dishwasher for their dream kitchen build: They're not the same thing.
Arch-TK 5y ago
You need to spend at least £600 to get a decent home espresso set up but it will get you something pretty close to good cafe grade coffee. The reason those big £3000+ machines are impractical for the home is not the cleaning or even the warm-up time (as both of those factors are the same for any espresso machine even the home ones) but rather with the fact that the bar grade espresso machines expect to be plumbed into a reverse osmosis filter and take up a shitload of space. Commercial machines may need a little bit more time to warm up but I still let my gaggia warm up for around 15 minutes before I use it otherwise I find consistency falls and I just get frustration. Regarding cleaning, the process is the same for home machines and just needs to be performed less often (I do this around once every week depending on use. I pour 1-4 shots a day every day). There are powdered detergents which are used to backflush the group head and solenoid valve to clear out coffee oils, this process takes about 5 minutes to perform and doesn't require much manual effort except for clearing out the drip tray and wiping things down a bit. When it comes to cleaning the boiler, this isn't done by disassembling the machine or anything crazy like that. An acidic solution of usually some combination of primarily citric acid and/or potassium bitartrate is added to the water reservoir, the boiler is then flushed to get the solution in the boiler, I will then usually leave it in for 15 minutes with the boiler turned off to prevent water from boiling (to make sure all areas of the boiler are in contact with water at all times). Then this gets flushed with clean filtered water to get rid of the acid. This process takes longer but also doesn't require much work. Anything under £600 will give you mediocre espresso (due to grind inconsistency and temperature stability problems) or fauxpresso (any pod machine or bean to cup machine basically maxes fauxpresso, there are very expensive commercial grade true-espresso bean to cup machines but these, even when dialled in correctly, still usually make a mediocre espresso). Any machine (even the fauxpresso ones) will likely require almost as much cleaning effort. Any manufacturer which claims otherwise (especially for bean-to-cup machines) is just trying to reduce the lifetime of your machine so it fails out of warranty and you buy another one.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  A commercial bean grinder is amazing but expensive.
- ValentineC 5y ago
lostlogin 5y ago
> You could buy a commercial espresso machine and coffee grinder to make yourself coffee every morning but the machine is designed to warm up at the start of the day, pull a lot of shots, and get thoroughly cleaned later. It is. But with home use you don’t pull 300+ shots, it can be cleaned less. I have a 20 something year old Cimbali and it’s just great. It’s on a smart plug to turn on early and warm up. It had a load of leaks and I decided to upgrade, but first talked to the local agent. He gave 4 washers and said try them. 20 mins later it’s completely fixed at a cost of $0. That’s the only repair it’s had in the years I have owned it. I thoroughly clean it every few weeks.
GuB-42 5y ago
A commercial dishwasher is like an entirely different appliance. It is designed to be fast. It achieves this by requiring rinsing, being hotter (and staying hot) and more aggressive, and by not having a dry cycle (you just open the door and let the steam out). Time is important in cleaning, and home dishwashers take advantage of that by running for several hours at low power, it is not like you are going to need these plates immediately after you have finished eating. About commercial espresso machines, another thing to consider is that these machines usually require plumbing. There are high end home espresso machines that are also built like tanks and will serve you better unless you are planning to pull hundreds of shots a day. Commercial machines have an advantage when it comes to temperature stability because they are so big and heavy but smaller machines are still able to do an impressive job.
derefr 5y ago
Presuming you have enough workspace to place one of the plastic racks down beside your prewash sink, loading the trays is way more ergonomic than loading+unloading a regular dishwasher. They don't just do it for throughput. Personally, I'd love to have a residential-class dishwasher that has that kind of modular load system. Would be wonderful on my back. > and it’s designed for an environment with lots of ventilation Speaking of, you know what the #1 thing I would design into a residential kitchen if I were building one from the ground up? A fume hood. Just a literal chemistry-lab fume hood box, but where the shroud folds away and the base of it is an induction cooktop. (In other words, it's just a really fancy above-the-range ventilation system.) Imagine what you could do with that: • No fear of burning your food setting off your smoke alarm — just drop/shut the shroud around the cooktop, and all the smoke would definitely be going out the vent, not into your house. * You can grill indoors (with e.g. a Hibachi) with no fear of CO / CO2 poisoning. (Just shut the shroud while the food cooks, and only open it at the end. As a bonus, the extra airflow will make the grill into a convection grill!) * You can vent your kitchen (and through it, the rest of your house) really quickly, if you're e.g. clearing something rotten out of your fridge. * You can do real chemistry to make stuff, if you like. For example, given a fume hood, it'd be safe to make a CO2 generator to refill your soda-carbonator gas canister. * Landlords would no longer have to worry about their tenants turning a house into a meth lab, because even if they did, the house would in some sense be safe to use as a meth lab, with much lower risk of volatile chemical explosions.
- yourapostasy 5y ago
  There is a lot I want to appropriate from chemistry labs for my kitchen besides fume hoods, which kind of makes sense because they both overlap in many similar activities for my use case (meal prep once a week to once a month when I have sufficient freezer space). I'm willing to pay the premium for repairability, maintainability and time efficiency to optimize that use case. Laboratory-grade flooring: epoxy resin. Durable protection, withstand frequent pedestrian traffic. Slip resistance. Impermeable, non-absorbent surface, resists chemical exposure. Low maintenance, easy and economical cleaning and sanitizing properties. Floor drains and gullies with oil/water separator. Compressed air supply. Chilled water supply. Overhead service carriers for power, chilled water, hot water, natural gas, and air. Lab-grade furniture, especially countertops. All packaged in a proven layout taken from modern submarine galley designs. This isn't from a lab (but from a sushi restaurant), to indicate I don't have a "kitchen as lab" fetish: circulating water Teflon-lined raceway behind all counter runs catches debris that is diverted to a auto-turned compost pile, and the excess moisture of the pile drained off to crops, which in turn drain off to an aquaculture pond. I could go on, but my ideal dream kitchen would at first glance would probably look like a very cramped lab. "Modern" residential kitchens cause me all kinds of unnecessary movement and labor for my specific use case.

user3939382 5y ago

Tangentially related: if you do want an amazing electric coffee grinder, feel free to piggy back on my countless hours of research and go with this: Baratza Virtuoso+ It is excellent.

faeyanpiraat 5y ago
I’m suspicious.
birdyrooster 5y ago
How much static electricity does it generate? That is my biggest complaint on burr grinders, they act like Van de Graaff generators and then the grounds get stuck all over the machine.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  In my two days of usage so far…. not much. I read about other grinders having issues with grounds being stuck in the container but this one doesn’t appear to have that problem. I think I read that the + model has a redesigned ground container to tackle the static issue - had seen some mention that static was more of an issue with the older “non +” model
- cjonas 5y ago
  Add a miniscule amount of water to your beans before grinding
  - Arch-TK 5y ago
    This is the way. The best way is to run the handle of a teaspoon under the tap and stir it through the grinds before grinding. It doesn't matter if "burr grinders suffer from static build up" when they're categorically far better than anything else when it comes to grinding.
  - Wistar 5y ago
    OMG. I have battled the grinder static thing for… years, decades, and did not know this. Thank you
  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    I assume distilled water?
- NegativeLatency 5y ago
  Depends a lot on the roast for me. Darker ones seem to lace less flaky floaty bits after grinding
divbzero 5y ago
In the spirit of OP, the main navbar on Baratza’s website links to an article titled: STOP! Don’t Dump It – Fix It! https://baratza.com/stop-dont-dump-it-fix-it/ https://baratza.com/stop-dont-dump-it-fix-it/
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  Impressive. Next time my Breville strips its gears, I'll try to remember to give these guys a try. It probably won't be long.
na85 5y ago
Concur. Nice to see my own conclusions validated, I really like mine.
tailspin2019 5y ago
Just bought one two days ago. Reviews were good, and I’m not disappointed. (Paired with a Moccamaster)
- Wistar 5y ago
  Can I ask: What grind do you use for your Moccamaster?
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Currently using grind setting 18, 68g beans (darker roast) for a full brew on the Moccamaster
BossingAround 5y ago
What's the main difference between Virtuoso+ and Encore? From just a quick glance, Virtuoso+ has a number of features that aren't very useful (like a timer, or LEDs/display) while having seemingly identical burr system?
- ValentineC 5y ago
  I believe the Virtuoso also comes with a better M2 burr set. The Encore can be upgraded to it.
- NegativeLatency 5y ago
  I have one of these, the LED is dumb but the digital timer is really nice for repeatability in how much you grind. Wasn’t willing to pay even more for one with a scale
  - tokamak-teapot 5y ago
    I have a Macap M5D. This has a timer with three presets. It’s perfect and while expensive, even second hand, I wouldn’t say it’s overkill for home use. The timer means I don’t get the grind wrong. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want one. I suppose I’m quite good at ‘eyeballing’ the quantity now, but the timer means consistency.
  - BossingAround 5y ago
    Generally, I'd advise against storing coffee in the bean loader. They aren't really hermetically sealed, so your beans will go stale. I always grind to measure, in which case I don't need timer.
tmountain 5y ago
I bought an encore after much research myself and had to return it after just a few weeks. It started grinding my beans to an ultra fine espresso type consistency no matter what setting I used. After much troubleshooting, they sent me a new unit (in transit now), but not a great experience from the device perspective (customer service was great).
ValentineC 5y ago
On the other hand: if you drink 1-2 cups of coffee a day, and don't mind putting in some elbow grease — a manual grinder like a Comandante or Kinu often produces much better grinds for the same price, since money can be allocated towards a better burr set instead of a motor. I've had a few friends whose only experience with a manual grinder was a Hario Skerton or its clones, and get turned off manual grinding because of how bad the experience is. The pricier hand grinders have much better UX.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Absolutely. Much prefer a small hand-operated device that I can easily store in a cupboard to a big heavy device with a cord that needs to be near an outlet and takes up counter space all the time. I have come to really, really resist buying plug-in kitchen gadgets. I have a few, such as a toaster and a kettle, that I actually use. For anything else I've found that they just end up living in the back of a base cabinet and I forget that I have them.
- ip26 5y ago
  I was ready to go all-in on manual grinders. But their supply chain completely evaporated in the pandemic, and I could not find one I wanted anywhere. For months. That ended that.
  - ValentineC 5y ago
    What brands were those? It looks like 1zpresso and Timemore are readily available, at least, and the 1zpresso JX Pro is top-of-the-line.
    - ip26 5y ago
      Kinu was the worst offender, and Comadante nearly as bad.
- ateng 5y ago
  Life hack: link your manual grinder to a drill. Now you have a automatic grinder that’s reasonably priced and have a superb burr. Have not tried this myself but I was told by a professional this is way cheaper and better than any automatic grinder below USD$1000, if you’re spending around $200 for a top end hand grinder
yojo 5y ago
I have a Vario, that has struggled with a fine espresso grind. The burrs are ceramic but the carriage is plastic and it affects the tolerance. I gave up repairing/troubleshooting it and bought a beat to hell SuperJolly off EBay for $170. Dropped in a new set of burrs and have an unstoppable overkill grinder with a huge motor and all metal parts
- Arch-TK 5y ago
  If you want espresso you probably want steel burrs mounted in steel with good bearings. If you are on a budget and don't want to spend £500 ($700 + tax and shipping) on a niche then you can usually find used smaller commercial machines. Research the burrs they use and see if you can find new burrs, this way you can spend probably somewhere around $200 on what would function like a brand new high quality burr grinder.
  - yojo 5y ago
    Yes, that’s what I did. The Super Jolly I bought is a commercial machine (by Mazzer) and I put new OEM steel burrs in it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rolleiflex 5y ago
This is oversimplifying it a little. Yes Baratzas are great grinders but they are not one-size-fits-all depending on what kind of coffee you make. For example Baratza Encore is everyone’s darling with good reason (I have one and I use it for espresso every day!) but it’s not a great espresso grinder because fundamentally speaking its tiny motor just doesn’t have enough torque to drive big burrs, so it has small ones. Which means when you grind at espresso sizes it’s going to lose its tight spread and it’ll output some grains that are too big for espresso, some are too small and some are just right. Since espresso is very dense coffee, this is something that is very clearly tastable even to a skeptical non-expert like me. This spread of grain sizes is something to some degree any grinder does, but grinders designed for espresso have tighter spreads, so they provide much more of the size you want (so your water can actually pass through) and much less of what you don’t want. Incidentally this is something I like about specialty coffee industry compared to other connoisseur stuff like wine. Wine experts walk around talking about the earthy aromas, if some coffee ‘expert’ tries to do the same, someone in the audience busts out a refractometer and says ‘aight, let’s see’. It’s still a money pit, but it’s at least on a much more scientifically solid ground.
lostlogin 5y ago
Thanks. I’ll add a pointer towards Mazzer grinders too. The key is to buy them when they are described as broken, then they are very cheap. As far as I can tell they are almost never broken as such. Either something inside needs plugging back in, or the on/off switch needs replacing (it’s got spades on it, so just plug a new one in). They are nearly entirely metal, with the few plastic components readily available. The are quite easy to sand and repaint too, so you can match them to other bits of equipment or decor. The correct colour choice is a 1970s orange.
secabeen 5y ago
And if you want an overkill coffee grinder, get a Kafatek Monolith, or a Weber Workshops model.

nextos 5y ago

You are right, but there are some exceptions. For example, I own a commercial Miele dishwasher and it's exactly like their consumer version but even more robust and simple. Furthermore, it's equipped with gigantic blades to destroy food leftovers. Other examples of overkill objects I like are some commercial vacuums for clean room environments with spectacularly good filtration and seals, therefore no itching if you are allergic to dust (e.g. some Nilfisk made in Denmark). Or industrial fanless PCs which are sealed and have fantastic copper coolers (e.g. Compulab, Tranquil and many others).

tialaramex 5y ago

Maintenance is huge. A lot of products even in the supposedly "disposable" everyday category people buy for lower prices have maintenance instructions that would significantly increase their lifespan if actually followed. Misuse resistance means consumer products generally still work if you skip maintenance the manufacturer told you was necessary (which industrial products might not), but it may shorten the product's lifespan, increase operating costs or reduce performance. My friend owns a dishwasher. Recently little specks of dirt were left on plates sometimes after the wash completed. Guess what, there's no salt in the softener re-charge. So that dishwasher is soldiering on with hard water instead of soft, and it no longer gets things clean. Fill the salt back up, and sure enough the machine's performance quickly improves. I'm sure lots of people are shouting "That's not maintenance". Well, it probably depends how you look at the problem. From his point of view he purchased "all in one" dishwasher tablets which said he didn't need salt. If he'd examined them very carefully they admit that actually you might still need to add salt periodically, but that wouldn't be very "all in one" so it's not emphasised.

carlmr 5y ago
TIL I should read the all in one tab packaging and probably buy salt.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  Watch this video: Detergent packs are kinda wishy-washy (Dishwashers Explained) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04
- imgabe 5y ago
  TIL dishwashers have a compartment you're supposed to add salt to? Is this the rinse-aid thing?
  - the-smug-one 5y ago
    Salt helps against hard water, AFAIK.

MonaroVXR 5y ago

This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Than business laptops like the Z-book, ThinkPad or insert Dell business laptop eg; Latitude 7000 series (Dell XPS isn't a business laptop from my perspective.)

ta988 5y ago
I agree, the Z-book are really amazing, but HP still has a bad reputation so it is hard to make people realize how far they went with this serie (from the old modela to the recent ones).
jlkuester7 5y ago
I agree that the Dell XPS line does not reaaly fit the "business" look-and-feel like a Latitude or Thinkpad. But after several years of doing heavy sofware dev on one, it is has earned my respect. It is nice to have a machine with a non-brick-like form that still does not compromise in performance (and you can bring to a businesses meeting and not look too RBG....). IMHO the XPS line is designed to compete with MBPs as high-end work-capable machines and it does a darn good job of it...
- verst 5y ago
  Except my $3500 XPS 9500 (64GB RAM 2TB, 8 core CPU, Nvidia 1650Ti, 4K Touch Display) that thermal throttles so much that a 3 years older MBP gives much much better performance and I continued using that machine for work. Fortunately by switching teams at work I was then able to get a new Mac and I'm thrilled with my M1! I spoke with a very nice person from Dell via Twitter who out of personal interest went above and beyond to help me calibrate that XPS, but no luck. Booting Windows is enough for fans to reach max speeds and thermal throttling to begin.
  - jlkuester7 5y ago
    Yeah, I will concede that one to you. I have heard that the thermal paste on some of those XPS models was complete trash. Know some folks that had some luck re-applying new paste, but that does not really absolve Dell....

bayindirh 5y ago

> Dishwashers are another example. Commercial dishwashers, esp. the fast cycle ones beat the living light of any mugs/plates/etc. unless they're plain white. They use way more pressure and heat, and resulting clean is much more aggressive, shortening life of everything inside them. Only plain glass and plain porcelain came out relatively unaffected. All decorations doesn't stand a chance. This is why some mugs denote "Safe for normal dishwasher use".

andai 5y ago
I stayed at an art school that was housed in an old military barracks. They had a massive steel dishwasher that used hot water and pressurized air to just blast the dirt off. It was extremely loud, and only needed about 10 seconds. I want one.
sitharus 5y ago
I wondered why dinnerware said “for domestic use only”, but I now have an ex-commercial set and it’s an entirely different kind of china to domestic.
justnotworthit 5y ago
To reiterate for people thinking they might get a commercial kitchen dishwasher for their dream kitchen build: They're not the same thing.

Arch-TK 5y ago

You need to spend at least £600 to get a decent home espresso set up but it will get you something pretty close to good cafe grade coffee. The reason those big £3000+ machines are impractical for the home is not the cleaning or even the warm-up time (as both of those factors are the same for any espresso machine even the home ones) but rather with the fact that the bar grade espresso machines expect to be plumbed into a reverse osmosis filter and take up a shitload of space. Commercial machines may need a little bit more time to warm up but I still let my gaggia warm up for around 15 minutes before I use it otherwise I find consistency falls and I just get frustration. Regarding cleaning, the process is the same for home machines and just needs to be performed less often (I do this around once every week depending on use. I pour 1-4 shots a day every day). There are powdered detergents which are used to backflush the group head and solenoid valve to clear out coffee oils, this process takes about 5 minutes to perform and doesn't require much manual effort except for clearing out the drip tray and wiping things down a bit. When it comes to cleaning the boiler, this isn't done by disassembling the machine or anything crazy like that. An acidic solution of usually some combination of primarily citric acid and/or potassium bitartrate is added to the water reservoir, the boiler is then flushed to get the solution in the boiler, I will then usually leave it in for 15 minutes with the boiler turned off to prevent water from boiling (to make sure all areas of the boiler are in contact with water at all times). Then this gets flushed with clean filtered water to get rid of the acid. This process takes longer but also doesn't require much work. Anything under £600 will give you mediocre espresso (due to grind inconsistency and temperature stability problems) or fauxpresso (any pod machine or bean to cup machine basically maxes fauxpresso, there are very expensive commercial grade true-espresso bean to cup machines but these, even when dialled in correctly, still usually make a mediocre espresso). Any machine (even the fauxpresso ones) will likely require almost as much cleaning effort. Any manufacturer which claims otherwise (especially for bean-to-cup machines) is just trying to reduce the lifetime of your machine so it fails out of warranty and you buy another one.

SyzygistSix 5y ago
A commercial bean grinder is amazing but expensive.
ValentineC 5y ago

lostlogin 5y ago

> You could buy a commercial espresso machine and coffee grinder to make yourself coffee every morning but the machine is designed to warm up at the start of the day, pull a lot of shots, and get thoroughly cleaned later. It is. But with home use you don’t pull 300+ shots, it can be cleaned less. I have a 20 something year old Cimbali and it’s just great. It’s on a smart plug to turn on early and warm up. It had a load of leaks and I decided to upgrade, but first talked to the local agent. He gave 4 washers and said try them. 20 mins later it’s completely fixed at a cost of $0. That’s the only repair it’s had in the years I have owned it. I thoroughly clean it every few weeks.

GuB-42 5y ago

A commercial dishwasher is like an entirely different appliance. It is designed to be fast. It achieves this by requiring rinsing, being hotter (and staying hot) and more aggressive, and by not having a dry cycle (you just open the door and let the steam out). Time is important in cleaning, and home dishwashers take advantage of that by running for several hours at low power, it is not like you are going to need these plates immediately after you have finished eating. About commercial espresso machines, another thing to consider is that these machines usually require plumbing. There are high end home espresso machines that are also built like tanks and will serve you better unless you are planning to pull hundreds of shots a day. Commercial machines have an advantage when it comes to temperature stability because they are so big and heavy but smaller machines are still able to do an impressive job.

derefr 5y ago

Presuming you have enough workspace to place one of the plastic racks down beside your prewash sink, loading the trays is way more ergonomic than loading+unloading a regular dishwasher. They don't just do it for throughput. Personally, I'd love to have a residential-class dishwasher that has that kind of modular load system. Would be wonderful on my back. > and it’s designed for an environment with lots of ventilation Speaking of, you know what the #1 thing I would design into a residential kitchen if I were building one from the ground up? A fume hood. Just a literal chemistry-lab fume hood box, but where the shroud folds away and the base of it is an induction cooktop. (In other words, it's just a really fancy above-the-range ventilation system.) Imagine what you could do with that: • No fear of burning your food setting off your smoke alarm — just drop/shut the shroud around the cooktop, and all the smoke would definitely be going out the vent, not into your house. * You can grill indoors (with e.g. a Hibachi) with no fear of CO / CO2 poisoning. (Just shut the shroud while the food cooks, and only open it at the end. As a bonus, the extra airflow will make the grill into a convection grill!) * You can vent your kitchen (and through it, the rest of your house) really quickly, if you're e.g. clearing something rotten out of your fridge. * You can do real chemistry to make stuff, if you like. For example, given a fume hood, it'd be safe to make a CO2 generator to refill your soda-carbonator gas canister. * Landlords would no longer have to worry about their tenants turning a house into a meth lab, because even if they did, the house would in some sense be safe to use as a meth lab, with much lower risk of volatile chemical explosions.

yourapostasy 5y ago
There is a lot I want to appropriate from chemistry labs for my kitchen besides fume hoods, which kind of makes sense because they both overlap in many similar activities for my use case (meal prep once a week to once a month when I have sufficient freezer space). I'm willing to pay the premium for repairability, maintainability and time efficiency to optimize that use case. Laboratory-grade flooring: epoxy resin. Durable protection, withstand frequent pedestrian traffic. Slip resistance. Impermeable, non-absorbent surface, resists chemical exposure. Low maintenance, easy and economical cleaning and sanitizing properties. Floor drains and gullies with oil/water separator. Compressed air supply. Chilled water supply. Overhead service carriers for power, chilled water, hot water, natural gas, and air. Lab-grade furniture, especially countertops. All packaged in a proven layout taken from modern submarine galley designs. This isn't from a lab (but from a sushi restaurant), to indicate I don't have a "kitchen as lab" fetish: circulating water Teflon-lined raceway behind all counter runs catches debris that is diverted to a auto-turned compost pile, and the excess moisture of the pile drained off to crops, which in turn drain off to an aquaculture pond. I could go on, but my ideal dream kitchen would at first glance would probably look like a very cramped lab. "Modern" residential kitchens cause me all kinds of unnecessary movement and labor for my specific use case.