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cremina or londinium I
Hello,
I am drinking only two double espresso a day. I never use the milk frother. I like my espresso with lots of body, crema and buttery mouth feel. I am considering the londinium I or the cremina. Any opinion?
Thanks
I am drinking only two double espresso a day. I never use the milk frother. I like my espresso with lots of body, crema and buttery mouth feel. I am considering the londinium I or the cremina. Any opinion?
Thanks
Comments
Stability!!
I haven't personally owned a Cremina and perhaps others on here that have can share their experiences, but have owned a lot of lever machines including the Bosco sorento, which at £3200 is also a lot more expensive than the L1 and when I elected to change machines I asked myself what does the L1 offer me that the Bosco doesn't, the simple answer was stability, I leave the L1 switched on all day, step up to it and make a coffee simple, it offers me the same flavour profiles of the Bosco except I had to do a heating flush on the Bosco each time I went back to it. The L1 offered me everything I wanted in a machine at a price that allowed me to buy a fapntastic grinder to boot.
Cremina makes for a great aesthetic, is a nice size, and they are great as restoration projects if your into that.
Compared to L1 in performance the biggest thing would be thermal stability. From what I have read the Cremina is not as thermally stable at times.
Price-wise, I believe they are around the same, but I vaguely remember thinking the L1 was actually less expensive. However, this is something I researched before the L1 went up in price.
I don't mind that it went up in price though. Anyone who has their own business should understand that it is an unavoidable :evil: eventually.
I'm not sure, but I don't think the Cremina has it's own site with an intimate relationship with it's owner's and company founder's on it.
The service from Reiss and clients has been outstanding! With a purchase like this, it just makes any issues very manageable.
I ask you this Martin, which machine do you really desire to own? First instinct, go with that.
I own both and do mostly milk drinks. The Cremina was never my main machine, but I've used it a fair amount over the last 5 years. The Cremina will give you excellent espresso quite consistently. The consistency comes with some bit of practice, although not a huge amount. One question is whether you're buying new or used? If you're buying new, the new Creminas are really spendy, I think more than the L1, and you'd be much better off getting the L1. If you're buying used on eBay (like I've done 3 times for Olympias), it's a bit of a risk. I've always gotten beautiful machines with no use on them, but I've seen many get burned, some badly. The price in the US at the moment is about $1000, give or take. You should plan on rebuilding the seals (which brings up the point how handy you are).
Finally, the space factor: the Olympia is built for home use and, although not commercial, is by far the most overbuilt/long-lasting home machine I've seen and will last you decades. It is MUCH smaller than the L1.
In short summary, the L1 will give great shots more consistently that the Cremina for someone like myself who may use it every few weeks to months. It's hard to get a sink shot with it. If you used it daily, you would get great shots almost all the time. I love both machines and you won't go wrong with either. In case you have a guest who likes cappuccinos, both machines steam well. Hope this helps. Michael
I owned a Cremina for around two years and used it for espresso as my only machine (I bought it from Reiss when he was selling them in the UK). It's a great machine, especially for those that have limited space, but in my hands it's no match for the LI. The main issue really is the difficulty in getting consistent results, even after two years of daily use it took a lot of concentration to get similar shots one after another. For me this is down to the non-spring lever adding another variable to the process and possibly my technique not being as polished as it could be. Other areas where for me it doesn't compare well with the L1 are:
Steam wand is fixed and not as powerful as the LI, used it rarely and never got the hang of it
Very fiddly to service yourself unless you've done it before/ into that sort of thing.
Currently very expensive if you buy new
Small tank, and if it runs low you have to turn off and release pressure to refill.
Tends to overheat after 4-6 shots.
Having said all this, for such a small thing the cremina is impressive and you'll get great shots out of it if you put in the time. I have to say that I sold mine to buy the LI and have never looked back, the LI is more forgiving and much easier to get excellent shots with. I've had friends who have never made an espresso pull a decent shot on it with their first try, not a chance of that on a Cremina.
Feel free to ask any other questions
George
But both with make great espresso.
Looking at the two side by side... the L1 is visually the Big brother.
They both have pros and cons.... Both can produce great shots... Well that is if the owner providing said shot is using quality beans ;-)
But for the $$, as a cost management exercise, the L1.
If your truly restricted for space, the cremina at a pinch, if you must have a Lever.
you don't have to cool down & de-pressurise the machine to refill the boiler, and then wait for it to heat up again
and you won't get a steam burn refilling it either
the L1 has stainless steel sides, not powder coated mild steel
the L1 gives you hot water for teas, soups, hot choc, etc, which often makes it an easier 'sell' to your household
toggle controls mean instant on-off access to both hot water and steam
the steam and hot water valves and the group are commercial machine components, not domestic; that means they last, and you get better thermal stability from a bigger group and a thermosiphon over a dipper
when i purchased my cremina (new), which i think was in 2004 it cost about GBP1500, which i felt was quite a lot at the time but i could justify it on the grounds of durability and low maintenance
the problem is, and you can see this for yourself if you go to Oanda.com or any other site that will give you access to long term historical FX data, that the Swiss Franc (CHF) has been steadily appreciating - i haven't checked it since we launched the L1, but if you pull up a historical chart of CHF v pretty much any of the major trading currencies and you will see the problem
the appreciation of the CHF has priced the Cremina off the market - from memory i don't believe they have raised the price of the machine any significant amount since i purchased mine way back in 2004 - the price rise in currencies other than CHF is almost entirely due to the appreciation of the CHF
whilst I'm not against giving anything a hard time, i do try to make my criticisms fair. i think on this occasion i have been a little unfair as my comments could create the impression that the price of around GBP2400 was entirely attributable to excessive margins built into the price
bear in mind that the same thing has already happened to an extent with our products - the Sterling has appreciated significantly against currencies like the Australian and New Zealand dollar in the last 12 months, so the people who took a risk and backed me in the early days have been rewarded to an extent as i suspect the GBP is likely to keep appreciating some more
these things you can't do much about, but it means the UK domestic market will become more important to us if the Sterling continued to appreciate
I recently decided to acquire a second espresso machine, and I am curious to know if the Londinium I will provide a nice complement to my Cremina. After considering machines like the La Marzocco GS/3 and the forthcoming single group Slayer, I have decided that these more complicated and expensive machines employ more complex (and breakable) machinery to achieve a result that is matched or bested by a simple spring and a lever.
My dilemma - after the time invested into my Cremina, and the results I can achieve with it, will the L1 provide a different enough experience to run both machines side by side or enough of an improvement to sideline the Cremina? Having never used a spring level, I suppose I'm a little leery of giving up that feel and control of the shot pull and letting a spring do the work for me.
Once you pull that big spring lever down you'll be hooked and there'll be no looking back.... in my humble opinion at least.
thank you for posting on the forum
you appear to be in the UK - can you get along to try the machine at our place?
I've never talked a person into buying anything ever - i hate selling & marketing - so please don't think you'll be made to feel obligated
kind regards
reiss
Thank you for the offer, which I would gladly accept were I not located in the US. There's a vendor near me who sells the Quick Mill Achille, so I may stop into his place to give it a try. Perhaps it is similar enough to the L1 to give me an idea whether or not I'd like one?
they may have changed, but bear in mind that they use the twin spring in theirs - we use the single spring
best
reiss.
Since you have Posted nothing as to where you reside this offer might not pertain, but you are welcome to try mine.
Since you have Posted nothing as to where you reside this offer might not pertain, but you are welcome to try mine.
Good point, and thanks for the offer. I didn't realize location wasn't displayed on the forum - I'm in Austin, TX.