Profitec
Pro 800 Lever Espresso Machine

I love this machine. I replaced a several years old Breville Dual Boiler and was looking for the next step. Though I generally tend towards high tech devices, I found the manual aspect of the lever and the mechanical simplicity to be very appealing. It took me a few bags of coffee and a visit to Clive for some tips to get things perfect; now I am making some amazing coffee with minimal daily effort. Grind, weigh, distribute with BT wedge (no tamp!), then pull lever and that's it. Delicious shots every morning. I even put it on a smart plug to automate the warm up. If you have the space, I cannot recommend this machine highly enough.

As espresso shops in town began to step up their skills, my trusty old Isomac was no longer measuring up. The Profitec Pro 800 has me back to pulling some of the best shots around.

The support at Clive is amazing. Everybody I chatted with was patient, helpful, and encouraging in my quest to find a machine that matched my needs. I highly recommend the Pro 800 and encourage anybody looking for the perfect espresso maker to purchase it from Clive.

Truth be told, it's more fun and way less finicky. I've had the Pro800 for over a month and got it plumbed it finally. (An aside, the Clive kit makes it easy in one package but..the first rule of DIY plumbing is "If you plumb it. it's gonna leak'. Second rule; "If you fix that leak it will leak somewhere else".) But once you get it done - and it's really not that hard - it's a joy.

I have an '84 Cremina, '65 and '58 Faeminas, La Pavoni Pro pre-millennial and an early 2000s Elektra MCaL. All make great espresso but they are all like a British roadster. You either are willing to get under the bonnet and get your hands dirty or you keep a mechanic and his family on retainer.

Not the Pro 800. It's the perfect lever for newbies because if you just pay attention pulling shots you are proud of is a piece of cake. But it's also fun for old vets like me. Experimentation is easy. Keep a few baskets of different size around to play with and enjoy.

It's a bit spendy but if you love levers and want to have the coffee time of your life, it's worth it.

I had some pretty heavy gear lust for this machine since Profitec released it. I like simple designs that last, and this machine is that, plus it's just plain beautiful. No picture or video I have seen does it justice!

There is not much to learning the machine that has not already been covered by reviews or posts, but I will say that I have not had a "sink shot" yet on it. It just always seems to produce coffee that is beautiful...not just "good"...

Great folks to talk to at Clive; I spoke to Victoria, Tim, and Ben. All were enthusiastic, patient, and genuinely seemed to want to welcome me into the club of the home enthusiast. This continues even months after the sale. If I lived in Portland, this group would make me want to be a "store rat"...probably would be cool to yap with even if coffee were not the topic.

Ben had challenged me with dose, timing, and output variables on the machine by grinding to the point that it would take a full minute to extract a 30 gram shot! Previous experience had told me that this would be awful, but...the following are some notes that I sent to Ben on my findings...

As a recap, you had suggested that I test out my shot timing to take a minute to pull on my Pro 800, down to 30 seconds to see the differences in flavor profiles that this would bring. I am brewing with a 1:1.5 ratio; 20 grams in, 30 grams out. I stir each shot ten times with a spoon before I taste.

- The longest shot I pulled was 75 seconds; this included a 5 second pre-infusion. It was hilarious to watch the shot pour; the coffee sort of "wimpered" out of the bottomless PF drop by drop, and finished as though it was glad that it was finished. That said, it tasted amazing. The coffee blend I am using is a lightish medium roast that is intended for espresso, with Apple, Molasses, and Dark Chocolate notes. This pull had a sharp acid hit on the front end, with the emphasis of the taste being a very dark chocolate finish that lingered pleasantly for quite a while. Though great as espresso, I found that I like a little more acidic body for a milk drink. The shot was a little linear, although delicious, with not much complexity in the shot.

- A slightly coarser grind produced a 50 second pull with the 5 second pre-infusion. This pull reigned in a bit of the dark chocolate base, but seemed to add some of the complexity that I was missing in the previously mentioned marathon shot. The acidic front end lasted longer as well. If this shot were a guitar amp, it was as if I turned the Bass from 10 to 7, the Treble from 6 to 8, and the Mid from 0 to 5. I have yet to make a milk drink with this, as I'm just kind of riding the wave of delicious 'spro on this jam...I'm sure I'll hit it before too long.

- I'll continue to coarsen my grind a bit for the timing, but again, I'm kind of enjoying the 50 second pull pretty good for now.

Some notes on the machine:

- Man, I love love love love love pulling shots on my Pro 800! The similarities between manual versus automatic cars and spring lever versus vibe or rotary pump machines cannot be overstated. It is truly fun to pull shots on this machine. And it's so beautiful.

- The weight of the shot seems very directly affected by the pre-infusion time. Further, I would guess that there is some water that remains in the detent chamber for some time after you pull a shot or flush the group. In other words, with the same grind and same dose, I will get more output on the second shot than on the first shot with the same pre-infusion time. I typically do not flush prior to my first shot of the day, as the machine is on for at least an hour before I will pull my first shot. My reasoning was that an hour is enough time for the group to be thermally stable and so therefore does not need a flush. Probably bad practice for consistency's sake, but it is certainly a point of interest.

- I turned the PID up to 258 to increase the steam pressure to 1.4 bar. Don't know how much this affects the water temperature at the group, but that little .3 bar increase from 252 degrees is tremendous for steaming power.

- You had talked about allowing the lever to fully extend and to allow the whole shot to finish in order to enjoy the benefits of the declining profile of the lever, and boy, you were not kidding. That last little bit of coffee that comes out, maybe 5 seconds or so, really levels out the shot; kind of rounds it out, if you will.

Bottom line is this: I can't think of a machine I'd rather have than the Profitec Pro 800. And I can't think of a company I'd rather have bought it from than Clive Coffee. To me, it does no good to have a great commodity such as this machine, without having a great product to back it up, such as the welcoming Customer Service from Clive.

Cheers!

A perfect machine, very unique.