[Mark70]

@stephenmI have had my machine since last March and never had a problem The talk about build quality is rubbish It's not a super shiny traditional chrome lever and if that's the style you want go for one I love it for its small form factor quick heating and it makes wonderful espresso It rare to get a sink shot although I had two today with a new espresso - Rocco mountain needed a surprisingly course grind I use a profile with pressure and flow limits when using a new espresso which usually compensated for an incorrect grind but today this was far to far out

There are loads of profiles but you usually settle on one or two I generally use a lever profile and I must admit if I had the space I probably would have a lever machine but then again I love the Decent

Diaspora is great for sorting issues either by the Community or by Decent personnel Where else would you have daily access to the CEO Most issues are simple and owner induced like not cleaning the machine properly Yes there are complaints about the software largely from software writers who don't like the language The software is regularly updated through an iterative process and I find it just works If you want to do you own programming you may get frustrated. Other complaints resolve around the lack of a proper manual. There is a manual but it's on Diaspora and some find it hard to use- it's never been an issue to me. There are also loads of Decent You Tube videos with guidance on cleaning and using the machine

Bottom line is is it perfect no but it's not far off

If mine got stolen tomorrow I would immediately buy another

 

[decent_espresso]

My article on "What Decent Espresso has learned from lever machines" is now readable online. It starts on page 34, in issue 4, at http://thelevermag.com

You can jump to that issue here https://thelevermag.com/pages/issue-4 and then tap "34" into the page # to jump to.

The "controlled water dilution" article starting on page 38 is really great, but I would recommend you just read the issue cover-to-cover, as there's lots to learn here.

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

New Decent profile for making tea in a regular portafilter basket.

There's a new profile for making tea with a regular portafilter basket, now in the Nightly version of the de1app, and which is shortly about to become the STABLE version. It's hidden by default, so tap the eyeball icon to check it and thus unhide it.

I spent the past two weeks making and tweaking this recipe, because I went on holiday with my Decent, a tin of loose leaf English Breakfast tea, and a very distraught girlfriend, when she learned that I'd forgotten to pack the Tea Portafilter.

This makes an acceptable mug of tea, very similar to what a kettle + steep would produce in flavor. I would not say it is superior to kettle brewed tea, unlike (for me) the Tea Portafilter, which makes a better cuppa, to my taste buds.

However, what it is, is much, much more convenient when making loose leaf tea, since you can just "knock out" the spent tea leaves into your knockbox. No mess, unlike normal loose leaf tea brewing.

I like my English Breakfast tea to be weaker, and without milk, so I make a 2nd extraction after the first "British Extraction" for Bugs, which does take milk.

One good test, for me, of an extraction method, is whether a 2nd extraction is possible, and whether it is indeed weaker than the first. If yes to both, then the extraction method is likely fairly good.

Approach-wise, what tasted the best, was eight alternating 10 second pauses (brewing) followed by relatively low flow (3 mL/s) rinses of the leaves, lasting 10 seconds. Not alternating (ie, trying a constant constant low flow) produced a much more tannic drink. Total time of 3 minutes is the same as kettle-brewed. 2 minutes wasn't strong enough, and 4 minutes started to produce tea and the end that was too weak for this style of drink.

A 105ºC temperature attempt "steamed" the tea, and was a pleasant flavor, but too much water was lost to vapor, and the cup was very much not full.

Lower than 100ºC produced a weaker brew. I did not try this approach with more delicate teas that require lower temperatures. It might work; I'd love to hear how you fare.

Sometimes, necessity is the mother of invention.

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

Financial Review AU article on Decent

Not where you'd expect to find an exceptionally well informed article about high end home espresso machines, but I was very pleasantly surprised to be told about this article today in the Financial Review magazine of Australia.

The direct link is behind a paywall, but readable on the Internet Archive, and various other places too:

This data-driven coffee machine brews the perfect shot – in your home

It’s the miraculous confluence of water temperature, pressure and flow that, when combined with the right bean blend, produces the ideal cup of espresso.

tinyurl.com

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

The "magic" grinder setting on my Niche

I wanted to ask you guys something, as I find this very confusing.

I sometimes fall on a "magic" grind setting on my Niche, where the coffee just POPS and tastes amazing. Even as the beans age and the shots go from 35 seconds down to 22 seconds (18g in, 36g out), they still taste amazing.

The shot shouldn't be this good: a 22 second shot is, intuitively, too fast a flow rate. Yet, it does.

And... as I weigh my milk for every drink, the extraction tastes like the same EY%, because I'm still putting 140ml of milk in.

When I open my coffee bag, the shots slow down to 35 seconds, sometimes even 40 seconds, and I maybe even lower my dose to 16g. As the beans age, I up the dose to 18g, the shot time eventually (after 10 days) comes down to 22 seconds, but still tastes great.

But here's the weird thing: if I grind finer to get my shot time back to ~30 seconds, the shot tastes much less good. A bit stale, over-extracted. Or if I coarsen the grind with the new beans, to get a 30 second shot with 18g, the shot tastes "simple".

There's just this magic grind setting that seems to make the shot tastes its best.

I should mention that I'm using the "Adaptive" profile on the Decent, which automatically holds the flow rate after the shot pressurizes, at whatever flow rate occurred when the puck pressurized. And the pressurize step "times out" after 5 seconds, so if the shot can't reach 9 bar, reaching (say) only 7 bar, at (say) 3 ml/s, then the shot runs to 36g in cup, at 3 ml/s.

That's why this profile is called "Adaptive" -- it adapts to whatever flow rate was achievable, in a reasonable amount of time, during the pressurize step.

I'm wondering if others have experienced something similar?

As an aside, ever since I've thought of the idea, I've wanted a T-shirt that says "Zero Retention" on the front of the shirt, and "Niche Grinders" on the back. It's just such a funny in-joke. I was going to ask Niche if they'd mind if I made such a tshirt. Would you be into it?

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

New shopping cart feature: how fast is shipping?

When people add accessories or a DE1 to their cart, there is now a link to six-month real delivery times to their country.

The footer on that page explains:

"Our delivery time calculation starts from when we box each order until the courier tells us it was delivered. This includes time needed for local pickup and customs clearance. We box all orders each morning at 8 AM, Hong Kong time zone, from Monday to Friday. Current time in Hong Kong: Wednesday, 8:55 AM"

I hope that the monday-friday, 8am explanation above is clear, and helps to answer common questions people have.

The Cart page no longer shows the courier's estimate of "Days" as that was partially a lie from them to get you to pay for more expensive shipping options.

You can also change the recency of the analysis, for instance to just see the past 30 days. You also can see how many packages we've sent to your country, for any given time period.

For a good example of this information for your country, see:

DE1XXL white 220V v1.43

DE1XXL white 220V v1.43

decentespresso.com

then:

• Click on the link next to the DE1:
  [view a chart of espresso machine shipping times]

and also

• Click on the link next to the shipping option:
  [view a chart of coffee accessory shipping times]

This feature has taken quite a long time for me to program, as I'm pulling real delivery tracking directly from the API of each courier we use, for every single package we've ever sent. There's no marketing fluff here, this is real data.

To my knowledge, this is the first time a company has been totally transparent about what its shipping, giving real data, for every courier and every country. If you know of another company doing this, I'd love to know about it, to see how they present this information.

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

New IKEA BROR coffee cart options

IKEA seems to be expanding the options on the BROR line, which is good news, since we're making and selling modifications for their tables.

We sell precut-for-coffee-cart tops for both sizes of BROR, more-robust wheel adaptors, and long bolts for wrapping the cart in your foamboard signage.

There's now white versions of the smaller and bigger BROR carts, as well as a closed cabinet version of the smaller bror.

More info about the Decent Coffee Cart at

Decent Coffee Cart

Our coffee cart is based on the IKEA BROR cart.

decentespresso.com

and some of the new IKEA BROR stuff:

BROR Cart with closed storage, black/wood - IKEA

BROR Cart with closed storage, black/wood This storage system is our interpretation of heavy metal – sturdy, durable and flexible. Also easy to assemble, complete as needed and is robust enough to withstand moisture, dirt and heavy loads. Can be used indoors in damp areas.

www.ikea.com

BROR Table, white, 431/4x215/8" - IKEA

BROR Table, white, 431/4x215/8" Heavy-duty, our way – a sturdy storage system that withstands moisture, dirt and heavy loads. Also easy to assemble, complete as needed and fits everywhere thanks to its clean design. 10-year limited warranty. Read about the terms in the warranty brochure.

www.ikea.com

BROR Utility cart, white, 331/2x215/8" - IKEA

BROR Utility cart, white, 331/2x215/8" Heavy-duty, our way – a sturdy storage system that withstands moisture, dirt and heavy loads. Also easy to assemble, complete as needed and fits everywhere thanks to its clean design. Can be used indoors in damp areas.

www.ikea.com

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

Improving the humble Espresso Gasket

One of the few parts that wears out on an all espresso machines, is the rubber gasket that forms a seal between the group head and your portafilter.

We've been working on how to improve "life with a gasket" from every angle we could think of.

REMOVING: Firstly, there's "how to remove the gasket". We're trialing various tools, with the intention of including that tool for free, along with any gasket we send you. So far, this double-ended one in the photo is our favorite. And in our latest gasket design, we've added a notch on the inside ring, to slide that tool into. There's also a light chamfer at the edges, to help you slide that tool in.

MATERIAL: A lot of people in the Home Barista community prefer silicone rubber gaskets, instead of traditional ones. However, when making design choices for the v1.0 DE1, I was concerned that we were already "way too innovative" for a lot of people's comfort zone, and I worried that an unfamiliar "locking feel" to the portafilter would freak some people out. Sort of how people judge a car by how the driver side door closes. So: I decided to use MBR rubber, as that is what I found as the material used in virtually all professional Italian espresso machines. Now, 7 years into making our machines, I feel that our audience can now deal with a bit more unfamiliar-but-better design choices from us. So, our new gaskets will made from silicone.

COLOR: gaskets fail for two reasons 1) coffee grinds mashed into them and 2) the rubber gets brittle. Our gaskets have been black, which is the only choice with MBR Rubber. Other vendors (such as Cafelat) use red or blue. In deciding what color to pick, I wanted something that wasn't garish, but from a functionality standpoint, I wanted a light color, that would clearly show coffee grounds stuck to it. That would make it much easier to help our customers, and see if their gasket leaking problem could simply resolved by removing the gasket and cleaning the coffee grounds off. And so, our new gaskets will be a light grey color.

FREE: we're still a few months from getting these into production (and getting the removal tool, too) but once we do, the gasket and removal tool will be available for free, on demand, to DE1 owners, as part of any other purchase they make with us. And new machines we make will transition to this new design as well.

For those without a DE1, these are 8.5mm, 58mm gaskets, and should work on other machines that use those standards as well. However, we're not in the gasket business, so ours will continue to be more expensive than Cafelat's excellent gaskets. Plus we don't use resellers like Cafelat does, so shipping will likely be more expensive. Cafelat's gaskets are likely available in your country from a reseller. Thus... I don't really recommend this gasket for non-DE1 owners.

Because we're a small company (50 people) and still have a fairly new product (7 years old) we tend to order parts in short runs, and each time we re-order, we look to see if there are ways to further improve it.

If you have thoughts on how to improve the humble gasket, please share them!

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

Decent customer Edward Lelchitsky shared this video today of his coffee cart.

He built it using the low cost "bigger" BROR table from IKEA, modified with the replacement top that we make, which is precut to accept a DE1, knockbox and pitcher rinser. A pump for the DE1 and the rinser are mounted upside down to the bottom side of the wood top. Two water containers (one clean water, one for dirty water) finish up the project.

The slightly larger tablet that he chose allows him to put two grinders on it, and still have space for a tamping mat.

I've put a few years of my life into designing and optimizing this little project. We stay out of the furniture business, because IKEA does that so well, but then take over to help you convert it into a coffee cart.

There's a long informational video I made, showing how to make the cart, as well as all the bits you might need.

Decent Coffee Cart

Our coffee cart is based on the IKEA BROR cart.

decentespresso.com

Besides feeling a sense of accomplishment at making your own cart, the design I chose tries to strike a balance between a polished appearance, and giving you flexibility to modify the cart to your preferences.

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

Decent Collab with Blue Willow Tea

Tomorrow, I'm spending the day with Ali, the force behind the impressive Blue Willow Tea: Shop All

They're a direct-from-the-source tea importer, only do loose leaf teas, and they give temperature and brew instructions with each tea they sell.

I'm working with Ali to try to optimize the Decent tea portafilter recipes, to work best with her teas.

They have a tea shop in Berkeley, California (behind Tokyo Fish Market) and I've been exceedingly impressed by the quality of their teas, and the seriousness of their commitment to source, technique, and history.

The recipes I've made for the DE1, using the tea portafilter, are my attempt to follow the gongfu technique, of several short infusions with small amounts of water. Except that with the DE1, 4 infusions are made, and blended together into a single 200ml serving.

I'll report back soon, on how the collaboration is going.

My goal is to work with Ali to make recipes that take advantage of the DE1s strengths, namely accurate temperature control (each brew can be different), timing and repeatability. Since she has a serious import/mail order business established, those of you wanting to recreate what we're drinking, can order from her, and then use the recipes we collaborated on.

I also really like how they have a very, very strong foundation in traditional teas, especially Chinese. They also have tisanes, but don't venture off into the "soda pop" style of brews that you see in supermarkets. My British girlfriend has been an English Breakfast person her whole life, but has been converted to the "Simmer Down" blend of chamomile, lemon balm, ginger, lavender and sage.

This is serious stuff.

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

Decent reorganizes forum access, searching and docs

I've today completed a new section "tech support" page for DE1 customers, which now:

• Tap your name on the top bar of the Decent website, and you're automatically logged in to the new support site.
  • when you bought from us, we gave you a cookie to make this happen automagically.
  • you can logout of support, if you want your browser to be forgotten.
• you can now join the "famous" Diaspora Forum, on your own, immediately after paying.No need to ask for "early access" or to wait for us to ship your machine.
  • Instructions are also given on how to turn off email notifications <grin> as the forum can be VERY active.
  • We also automatically recognize used machines that were resold, and grant the new owner rights to the forum.
    • The new owner writes to us at What is your email address?
    • We'll confirm the sale with the previous owner and transfer the serial number and all rights, to the new owner.
• give you direct links to search the (1) the Diaspora forum (2) Manual and the "Coffee knowledge for Beginners" book (written by Dennis Hew) and the (3) recently-created FAQ.
  • You can now search each of these separately.
  • Searching Diaspora has been improved.
    • So much has been discussed, over 7 years, that it's often been difficult to find the relevant historical message for your question.
    • As of today, by default, now only the "first post" on a topic is searched. Comments are not searched for your keywords.
      • This first post is usually the "anchor" for the conversation, and contains most of the valid keywords. It's also what people are generally looking for. People are usually not looking for their keywords to appear in one of the comments.
        • But you can also search only the comments, or both, at once.
        • I'm finding search results to be much more useful now that I'm restricting the search only the first post in a topic. Before, too many not-useful results were returned.
    • The FAQ and both books are now separately searchable, with dedicated pages for that.
      • You can add your own questions to the FAQ. My staff will answer you and organize your question into a findable category.
• A button to create a "I have a problem" message, so we can help you, is in the tech support section.
  • This creates a message in our "Problems" subforum of Diaspora, where my staff and other owners, will come to your help.
• The "5. Maintenance & Cleaning" section of the manual has been extensively rewritten, reworked, by Shin, Dennis and Mirjam. This has been the weakest part of our documentation, subject to a lot of complaints, but I think it's getting better.

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

Mood boosting March at Decent Espresso

A big THANK YOU to the 39 Decent customers who have bought my staff cake:

Decent Shopping Cart: buy espresso accessories

Decent Shopping Cart: buy espresso accessories

decentespresso.com

Because COVID is raging in Hong Kong, as many as 2/3rds of our staff has been out of the office at time. Some are in quarantine, others with COVID. About half are in the office now, just those dedicated to machine building and boxing orders. All the computer-task jobs are being doing at home. Estimates are that about half of Hong Kongers have contracted COVID now. But the worst seems to be over, and we're in the downward curve, with things projected to be "normal" and the end of April.

To thank those who are putting the extra effort to come to Decent HQ in person, we've asked our chef to make "extra special" meals at lunchtime for everyone.

And on Fridays, everyone at the office gets a personal-sized cake with a note.

Of course, without the customer donations of cake, we'd still be doing this, but the gifts from customers make the gesture extra-meaningful. It's not just the bosses who appreciate them, but those who benefit from Decent stuff.

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

Two new tea profiles, for Blue Willow oolong and sencha

I spent yesterday with Ali, the owner of tea importer Blue Willow Tea Blue Willow Tea

We tried 4 different teas, making them 3 different ways:

• with a French press and a temperature controlled kettle
• gongfu style, with a small ceramic vessel, and 4 separate short infusions
• with the DE1 tea recipe, which mixes 4 separate short infusions together into a single mug

The "mind-blowing" result (according to Ali) was the (Taiwanese) Black Honey Oolong on the DE1, at 94C, which produced a 10oz/300ml cup that closely matched the second infusion made by hand, with the gongfu technique. The second infusion is considered the best, and the fact that the Decent made an entire mug that tasted like that, was totally unexpected.

The Tsuyuhikari Sencha was more difficult to brew well on the Decent, but we think we cracked the code. The temperature was brought down to 140ºF/60ºC, and only 3 infusions were used. The 4th infusion tasted over-extracted and so we discarded it. The end result was a cup that tasted very close to the french press, 3 minute brew at 150ºF/65ºC, which we liked best.

Both these recipes are now available in the NIGHTLY version of the de1app but Decent owners can also download the profiles from the Diaspora posting, and put them in their tablets' /sdcard/de1plus/profiles/ directory.

Ali tells me that the Sencha is sadly out of stock online (a small number remain available in-stock) as she buys direct-from-the-farm and last year's harvest is done. However, current season Sencha deliveries will start next month. The Black Honey Oolong is happily in stock, and I really recommend you try it, if you like tea and own a Decent.

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

Solid black resin handles for black DE1?

Just received these photos from a new supplier, of solid-black-resin handles that we're doing a sample run of.

The photos, to me, look really nice. What do you think?

These are not moulded, so there's no seam or parting line. These are made like our wood ones are, on a lathe.

I've been looking at replacing the painted-black wood handles, for black DE1 machines, with something solid-black. The reason, is that:

• small scratches or "dings" are fairly visible with the painted surface, and the wood is a bit soft (for example, complaints about the portafilter stand damaging these)
• banging the black painted wood handles on a knockbar can cause paint damage
• water ingress on the wood can cause paint to flake off the top, near the head
• La Marzocco, for instance, uses a heavy rubber for their handles. Much more heavy duty than our wood approach.

We'd tried to find ebony, or a chemically treated wood to make it black, but both are not doable. Ebony is unobtainable in large quantities (too expensive) and the chemical blackening doesn't look good.

We made samples of various resin effects, and the resin mix (black/grey, bottom photos) was a candidate:

The white DE1 machines don't have this same issue that black painted ones do, as they're a lightly varnished natural wood color, so that dings/scratches are not especially visible.

In a few weeks, I'll have the solid resin handles in front of me.

The original DE1 handle prototype from 7 years ago, was made of resin, so I know how it feels. Solid, heavy, and dense. It didn't feel like "cheap plastic" at all. Hopefully these will feel similarly.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Currently the black wood handles are one of the only parts of the DE1 that show any age with use (the other major one is with some Android tablets having swelling batteries or air bubbles). I'd like DE1 to look as brand-new with age as possible. The tablet issue should get solved in a few weeks, with a firmware upgrade we're doing, but the black handles still need to be resolved.

So, I'm thinking of changing our handles to NEVER be "painted", but to show their natural color, ie:

• black resin (either solid black, or with some grey mixed in)
• oak wood
• reclaimed Italian olive wood (optional accessory)

I'm also trying to decide between the solid-black and black/grey mix.

Feedback very much sought...

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

The most Decent Cities in the World

Ben and I are working on an updated world map of the locations of DE1 worldwide.

There are now 6000 Decents worldwide, which is more locations than Google Maps can normally handle. The last time we updated the map was December 2018, and Google "barfed" quite a bit at my data, back then.

A big surprise is having Singapore be #1. It's a serious coffee town, and a neighbor, so that's really cool.

Seattle, San Francisco and Austin all make sense, as coffee and tech are both big there. And then you get to the world meta cities (New York, Shanghai, London....)

I should mention that we have poor visibility into the cities in the Arab world that have Decents, as 255 DE1 were listed as going to the Hong Kong address of Aramex, to be forwarded on.

If you'd like to have a try at creating a map from this data, I've made the CSV available here: http://magnatune.com/p/city_locations_of_de1.csv - You'll need to combine alternative spellings of some cities (ie, Wien/Vienna) to get correct sums. And some addresses have non western spelling, and Excel corrupts that, so stay out of excel if you can. LibreOffice handles the non-Western characters correctly.

Here's the top 50:

| count | city | country
| 100 | Singapore | SG
| 87 | Seattle | US
| 74 | San Francisco | US
| 63 | Austin | US
| 59 | New York | US
| 57 | Shanghai | CN
| 55 | London | UK
| 51 | Brooklyn | US
| 47 | Los Angeles | US
| 46 | Hong Kong | CN
| 41 | Beijing | CN
| 36 | San Diego | US
| 34 | Chicago | US
| 33 | Seoul | KR
| 32 | Munchen | DE
| 32 | Berlin | DE
| 31 | Portland | US
| 28 | San Jose | US
| 26 | Zurich | CH
| 26 | Toronto | CA
| 19 | Vienna | AT
| 19 | Dallas | US
| 18 | Washington | US
| 18 | Oakland | US
| 18 | Houston | US
| 17 | Atlanta | US
| 17 | Chengdu | CN
| 17 | Suzhou | CN
| 16 | Cambridge | US
| 16 | San Antonio | US
| 16 | Shenzhen | CN
| 15 | Miami | US
| 14 | Bellevue | US
| 14 | Taipei | TW
| 14 | Pittsburgh | US
| 14 | Denver | US
| 14 | Munich | DE
| 14 | Hamburg | DE
| 13 | Palo Alto | US
| 13 | Orlando | US
| 13 | Mountain View | US
| 13 | Long Island City | US
| 13 | Las Vegas | US
| 12 | Jersey City | US
| 12 | Vancouver | CA
| 12 | Arlington | US
| 11 | Charlotte | US
| 11 | Albany | US
| 11 | Calgary | CA
| 11 | Bangkok | TH

 

[decent_espresso]

Ben today made an internal-only use map showing exact location of every customer. That's too detailed :-D to share the URL with you, but I can share images here, so you can get a much better idea of where Decents go.

If there's a region you're curious about, leave a comment, I'll take a picture.

 

[GrahamSPhillips]

@john what would be interesting is a list of coffee shops who use the Decent?

 

[decent_espresso]

@john what would be interesting is a list of coffee shops who use the Decent?

Unfortunately, there's no way for us to know that someone is a cafe ordering a Decent, unless, sometimes, they use a cafe name in the shipping address, but even then, we'd have to look at it and interpret the name as a cafe.

Currently, our best understanding of what cafes are out there, is looking at the cafes who tag us on Instagram:

Login • Instagram

Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.

www.instagram.com

 

[decent_espresso]

Most Decent Countries

After cleaning up the address data (mostly, different spellings) here is a current list of what countries have Decent Espresso Machines, and how many. Note that while Hong Kong is not a country, it is split out separately here in this report, because most of those machines are forwarded onto the Middle East.

It's interesting to note that except for Singapore and Canada, all the countries in the top 10 have online coffee forums that we are very active in. I do think that Decent's participation on forums is part of our success. But I also think there's a different correlation at work, namely that countries that buy a lot of Decents, are also the same countries that have active coffee-related online forums, simply because they're the same group of people.

Countries with online coffee forums we participate in: USA (HB), the Arab world (Telegram), Australia (Coffee Geek), China (Wechat), South Korea, UK (CFUK,TalkCoffee) Germany/Switzerland/Austria (Kaffee Netz). If you'd like to participate in your countries' forum and don't know how to join, please ask me. There are other coffee forums (for example, Israel, Japan) that talk about Decent, but we're not actively part of those discussions.

The US is almost half our sales, followed by MENA countries, China, Germany, South Korea, UK, Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Singapore. Though the US is our anchor, we do really work at supporting the rest of the world, as that's more-than-half our sales, and also a wise strategy for stability in such an unstable world.

The source data is available here: http://magnatune.com/p/decent_countries.csv http://magnatune.com/p/decent_countries.xlsx

-john

 

[decent_espresso]

John's "best of" v1.39 de1app - release announcement

A new version of the de1app (v1.39) is now available, the result of about 6 months' work by a variety of contributors.

Here's my personal summary of the most interesting things in it:

New espresso making profiles:

• new "D-Flow" user interface and espresso profile from Damian. Anchored on the Londonium recipe, but D-Flow gives you coffee-related user interface controls. The recipe magically alters itself to conform. Hugely simplifies recipe creation, when your anchor recipe is the very-popular Londonium LRv2
• Two new "Turbo" profiles (TurboBloom, TurboTurbo) by Joe D, extremely popular new fast-shot espresso making method (search Youtube for "turbo shots")
• new "Adaptive" profile, which mixes "best practices" from several profiles (temperature profiling, Blooming/Londonium bybrid) and adapt-to-the-grind qualities from Jonathan Gagné's research. Currently, it's most used profile on Decent Espresso Shot Visualizer
• New Filter 2.1 profile from Scott Rao, for making filter coffee from an espresso basket. http://instagr.am/p/CUX9Zlave3v/
• New "I got your back" profile from Shinguk, an attempt to make a profile that always produces a pleasing drink, no matter what dose or grind
• New "tea in basket" profile, for making brewed tea in a normal portafilter basket

Plugins:

• Visualizer plugin to Decent Espresso Shot Visualizer now lets you download all the parameters other people used to make their shots, so you can mimic them
• Support for Acaia Lunar 2021 scale
• Big improvements to Enrique's DYE (Describe your Espresso) plugin, a kind of "notebook" for keeping track of your drinks. Also includes a history and shot comparison viewer.

Contributed skins to the de1app:

• New "Mini Metric" skin from Barney, super simple, colorful.
• New "dark mode" version of Insight skin
• Removed the more geeky chart lines to make everyday experience with zoomed Insight charts easier to read at a glance. Checkboxes to turn those back on (ie, Puck Restistance, and Weight Detail)

Other:

• quickly change the temperature of all steps in a profile, all at once, with new +/- buttons on the Profile preview page.
• new "move on to next step, by scale weight" feature added by Johanna
• Make hot water start faster. Use heater metal temperature as gate instead of mixer hot input value.
• Espresso water can go up to 105ºC, useful for tea infusions and some espresso extraction ideas

A lot is planned for the next de1app, as the overarching goal for this just-finished version was stability: stamping out bugs, making everything work well together. This is the most stable and well rounded version of the de1app, and I'm very proud of what we've all accomplished together.

This is a "stable" release, and is available to all DE1 owners for free. It's fully compatible with all models, all the way back to v1.0.