I started to drink coffee at a later age than most people do, mostly because I couldn’t stand the taste of it. I tasted my parents coffee, my classmate’s when we were on school excursions and many other variants, and at last I swore that I never would be able to drink that black fluid. But while I was in Italy with my ex-girlfriend, we found a very good coffee place where I tasted my first, good cup of coffee.

Ever since that time in italy, I’ve dreamt about getting my own espresso machine. But my ex owned an espresso machine so getting a machine of my own was a bit dumb. But when we went apart, I wanted to buy one, but didn’t have the money for a good quality machine.

In my searches for a machine that was within my budget, I stumbled across the Handpresso, and I was so thrilled with the good reviews and especially the price, that I got one about two and a half year ago. And I was really impressed by the quality of the shots that I pulled with it. Not in the same class as the ones pulled on a professional machine, but several classes better than a standard filterbrewed cup. I still have it and use it often, as it is very fast to pull a good quality shot. But I’m still in the search of the perfect espresso so time and again I’ve looked around for a machine in my price class.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a La Pavoni professional – a so called lever machine – in just the right price range. That particular model has been around since the 70’s, and hasn’t changed much in the design since it’s introduction. And it’s a machine that has been praised for it’s good quality shots, as long as you’ve got the feeling for the machine and know how to use it correctly. My ex had the same machine, although not the professional one (but they’re not that different – only the size and a missing gauge on the non-pro one).

The machine was 11-12 years old, but looked brand new. I took it home and tried to descale it. Although I got a lot of dirty things out of the boiler, a look with a flashlight told me that I hadn’t been able to descale it properly – far from it. My guess is that the machine hasn’t been descaled at all since the previous owner bought it. So I went on with one more descaling with citric acid, but it didn’t clean the machine completely either. So I had to soak the boiler in citric acid for a whole day, and then I had a clean boiler.

When I tried it the first time, it leaked heavily from the group. Apparently the previous owner hadn’t changed the gaskets during the time he had it. So I bought a new gasket set and changed it. When I took the group apart, I found that it needed a serious cleaning too. But when it was reassembled, I had a machine that was almost like a new one:

I’s a very simple machine, as you can see from this view of the electrical parts: The old gaskets were hard and shrunk in size – no wonder the group was leaking heavily: All in all, I’m a happy Pavoni owner!