Ooooo. La Marzocco Strada; now there’s a thing.

 

Just got back from the La Marzocco Strada launch at Gourmet Coffee in Kuilsriver, CT.  It’s quite a thing; I’m not sure of any other machine that would either deserve such a hubub, or be able to cause it.  I got an hour or so to play around with it using a very nice Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence winning Origin: La Pradera – David Ariel Lovo Gutierrez.   First thoughts on first impressions:

1. It’s beautiful to look at, from both front and back. Classic Marzocco with a modern twist IMHO.  Loved the yellow writing on the MP, and the way it played off the chrome.   Oh, I now it’s superficial, but that’s what I saw when I walked in, and that’s what any customers will see when they walk into a Strada-ed cafe.
2. Use requires a mindshift.  By now you’ll probably know that the Strada offers tailored pressure profiling.  The pressure readout is on a dial atop the grouphead (which pops up when you activate the pump, increasing in altitude with the increasing bar – Nice).  So which do you watch as you extract, the gauge or the results at the spout?  It took me a while to try to adjust, and I didn’t get past looking from one to the other.  At high speed.   Hahaha.  Must have looked very funny.  Like a barista having seizure.
3. The paddle is sensitive.  A couple of mm movement can make 3 bar difference.  And, of course the pre-infusion doesn’t appear on the pressure gauge.  But again, it would just be a case of adjusting to how it works.  Quite confident could do this over time.
4. But I’m being fussy.  The better stuff is this: for a passionate, creative barista there is a lot of space for experimentation.  I pulled a 60 second shot at 2.5 bar.  It looked terrible, like a classic choker.  Drip, drip.  But it tasted pretty good actually.  Lower acidity, deep cocoa and orange notes – quite palatable really.  If any innovation (aside Gwilym Davies’ WBC signature drink performance) I’ve encountered undermines the notion of the perfect espresso, then this is it.  Given time I reckon it’s entirely possible to develop a number of really great espresso profiles from it, which you could fight over as being the origin’s ‘perfect’ extraction.
5. Respect and admiration to LM for developing such a machine and bringing it to market.  It’s kind of difficult to get any quantifiable benefits out of LM regarding the Strada.  It has this killer feature ‘pressure profiling’ but no-one is really sure how much of a difference it will make to espresso quality, actually, and how this affects the business case for it.  They’ve invested huge brand and financial capital in it so kudos to LM.
6. So it may have a business case, it may be the future of espresso, it may revolutionise cup quality.  But all I can say right now is that it is very cool, and puts La Marzocco firmly back up at the top of the chart of cutting edge espresso machinery.

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