Plus 4 U
Not a new highstreet chain store or a Prince song but an extremely sexy espresso machine with more gadgets than an Apple branded Swiss army knife.
Yes that’s right, it tells you the ambient humidity! - No, I don’t know why…
EDIT: This just in from Alberto Dal Cin at CMA
When you have humidity and it’s raining the coffee is course, when the day is dry the coffee is fine. The coffee is hidroscopic and absorbs a lot humidity for this motive when raining it’s neccessary to widen the burrs of the grinder to get a perfect espresso in the cup.
Yes it’s new toys time and Origin have hooked me up with one of these bad boys. Tom and I had a play with it yesterday and it is being fitted tomorrow. Obviously it’s going to take a bit of time to get to know the machine and the menu system but here is a quick rundown of what i’ve seen so far.
The menu is customisable over 16 different options. One point of particular interest are the brew head temperature control which can be altered by increments of 1 degree. I know there are some machines available where the increments are 0.1 degree which is obviously nice to have but i’m not ready to get that accurate just yet! You can also adjust things like auto standby and power up so she’s running like a treat ready for that morning cup. The energy usage bar on the bottom of the dispaly is a nice touch, you can see from the first picture that the bar is right down the bottom and the machine is running at 4%. Now take a look at this picture with steam arms open and boiler running, you can make out the bar along the bottom of the display…
It’s also a 2G, which is smaller than my current 3G but I need the space and to be honest the 3rd group is wasted at present. I asked for it to have the 53mm portafilters as well, i’m sure they produce a better shot.
Steam pressure is controlled independently so there should be no loss of pressure during a busy service. This is the first one that Tom has got hold of and it should be good fun messing about with the parameters and experimenting with brew temperature on the Origin blends. I’ll try and do a ‘One month on with the Plus 4 U’ report (in a month) to document any other findings.
Looks really nice. I didn’t know that CMA is doing 53mm groups, too - are they really ‘better’?