You’re underestimating the utility of the lever machine, namely the precision/accuracy is just as good as you can personally make it. I’ve been fine tuning my Flair technique for over 1000 shots at this point. I know the precise pressure profile I like, and I can make fantastic espresso every single time. Even in the middle of the wilderness on a propane burner.
i'm not denying that, but how much time have you invested into it and how much time do you think the average person can afford to? how much extra time do you spend for each cup compared to a regular semiautomatic machine? do you have the one that heats the brew head, because if so, that's not a 100$ machine, it's a 500$ one ( https://flairespresso.com/flair-58-first-look/ ). if not, how much extra time you add to preheat it?
how hard is for someone else from your household to do a shot with your machine?
by a very simple technique (measuring the time to run a very specific weight of output coffee) you can do great espresso on a semiautomatic machine. doing that on a manual one is much harder, but not impossible.
the sum of all of these small details is what makes the difference in pricing. what i dissagree is to put an equal sign between a cheap espresso machine and a prosumer one (like Lelit Bianca for example). don't get me wrong, i think flair makes awesome manual machines, i've sunk in the espresso rabbit hole a few years ago and i'm still not out of it :), but we have to see that these machines are for people who have this as a hobby and really love doing it.
The full process takes me <5:00 in the morning. I don't know how long a semiautomatic machine would take, but I'm lucky enough to have 5:00 minutes to spare for a generally meditative ritual each morning.
I don't have the heated brew head, but my process involves preheating the brew head while I'm "packing the bowl" (so to speak), so there is no "down time".
I brought out the stopwatch this morning, the general breakdown is as follows:
0:00: Fill up kettle, put on stove
0:15: pour beans into commandante (measure by acquired knowledge of how 15g looks in the device coupled with bag-specific fine tuning)
0:30: Begin grinding
1:15: Grinding complete, begin to disassemble and clean equipment, restore plunger position to top of brew chamber
2:00: Cleaning complete, pack bowl while waiting for boil to finish (main bottleneck/downtime).
3:00: Boil complete, pour water into upturned brew chamber placed on granite slab for watertight seal
3:30: Preheat complete, transfer chamber onto device, begin main pour/press procedure.
4:15: Espresso complete.
As you can see the main bottleneck is the water boiling. If I can get the exact right amount for the preheat and brew it will cut the time down a good bit, but if I undershoot it takes considerably longer to bring new water up to boil. An electric kettle (220v??) would help too, but I want a setup that works off-grid.
The nice thing with this setup is that it's so simple to clean that there's no time at all dedicated to long-term cleaning or maintenance. With the daily washdown which is already integrated into my workflow while waiting for the boil, I keep the machine in pristine condition. Compare that to larger equipment which needs occasional breakdown/descalding/etc. procedures.
Yes you do have to, but I developed a technique to make it pretty easy. The flair videos have you using a bowl of some sort as a water container and submerging the chamber entirely, whereas I just place the brew chamber on a piece of granite. The lapping of each is sufficient to form a watertight seal, and I use the minimum amount of water possible, which is nice because waiting for the boil is the longest component of my process. All in all the preheat probably adds <1:00 between time spent actually preheating and the additional time it takes to boil the extra water needed for preheating.
That said I do prefer more acidity in my brews, so I only opt for a single flush of preheating water. Some people do 2 or even more, which would obviously take more time.
