Pavoni Europiccola

If you love the ritual of making coffee as well as drinking it then save up for a pavoni. They look beautiful and make a great cup of coffee. You need to heat it up before it makes a good cup, so you need patience, but you'll be rewarded.

If you like to master machines you'll love the Pavoni. If you're lazy and just want things done for you then this is not the machine for you.

I've had mine for almost 10 years in which time it's had one service (seal's replaces etc).

It makes great coffee if you put the effort in. In particular you'll need your own grinder and will have to spend some time investigating the best beans/blend for you taste. Then there's the milk frother, perfecting this takes time (there a few different techniques which you can google up on or experiment yourself). My girlfriend can't do the milk for cappuccino (but hey, she can't reverse park either).

I've had two La Pavoni in the past thirty years. It is the best machine available for home use. The model I use now is the Europiccola. I've been reading some of the above comments, and frankly I don't understand how one cannot make a great cup of coffee with this machine. Two things that are crucial when making coffee....first one is the water you use. Don't use tap water, it's full of chemicals that will alter the taste of your coffee. The second most important element, is the quality of the coffee.....don't be skimpy, get real coffee, in beans....not grinded. Grind them at the very last moment, and with a good grinder. I use an old Peugeot manual grinder, those square wooden boxes...they are great, are garanteed for life, and are much better than the blade grinders who have this knack of overheating the beans and giving them a burnt taste. Of course if you can get your hands on a professional grinder, go ahead. But a good one is very expensive.One more thing to consider when using the La Pavoni, is to replace all rubber seals every three to four years, they are cheap, and very easy to change yourself, if you are a little mechanically inclined.And even if you are using good water.....clean the inside with vinegar every six months. It'll get rid of the accumulated calcium that blogs the element.

The bad points ? If you ever need to buy new seals.....think ahead of time, and don't count on distributors to have them in stock. I buy them on internet, because the people at La Pavoni could be a little more helpfull....they will always send you to your local distributor, and my experience with that has been less than good. I live in Spain, Barcelona....and here they asked me to wait six months to get the parts ....which is unthinkable...as this would mean that I would have to go without coffee for six months !!!

I`ve bought my Pavoni Europicolla 8 cups a month ago. After pounds and pounds of coffee beans I am anxious to get in the morning to have the best Caf Latte in the world.

Since I have learn to play with that machine, I went to Second cup and Starbuck and they don`t have a good one like La Pavoni will give you.

I have owned my Pavoni Europiccola for over 15 years and have had a bit of a love/hate relationship with it. It has taken me a long time to get the perfect cup of coffee but now I get perfect results every time. Here are a few tips. Put about a quarter pint of boiling water through the system, with an empty filter and the filter holder in place, before you make your espresso, in order to heat up all the parts of the machine. Buy a proper sized metal tamper and press down the coffee into the filter with a lot of pressure and a rotating motion. Get your coffee out in no more than 25 secs after lifting the handle. Experiment with different coffees. Taylors Espresso from waitrose works best for me.

I have been toying with the idea of buying a Nespresso machine as the machines are very easy to use and the results are good, but I do enjoy the ritual and process/challenge of getting a good coffee from this machine.

I have had the Pavoni Europiccola for about 15 years and have not yet replaced any parts. It produces fine and not so fine expresso coffee. Aside from what it is supposed to do there are a few mandatory steps. You must grind the coffee beans to their finest and just before you turn the power on. Before pulling the lever down make sure you release the air that is inside the upper side of the water container. If you like a long espresso pulling the lever down a second time will, obviously, spoil the espresso. Good luck!

It was impossible to produce a hot cup of espresso with this Pavoni Europiccola Coffee & Espresso Machine. I have been making espresso for 15 years. This was my 3rd machine & I had high hopes. In the end I gave up after over a year of persisting. Luckily John Lewis accepted it's return & gave me a 90% refund. Looks great but doesn't work. All form and no function - typical Italian really.

Owning a Pavoni is a bit like having a hobby with coffee - you need to enthuse and relate to the machine. Understand it and learn to get the best. The rewards are high though as you can personally affect the quality of coffee you make by tweaking and fiddling with all inputs and variables. My wife has not bothered to learn how to use it, citing the 'complexity' as a problem. I bought mine from an Italian web site and imported without problem for £100 less than high street prices in UK.

I have had my Pavoni Europiccola for six years and I love it. It is however a bit like owning a tempermental motorbike, I get great coffee 8/10 times now but in the early years the succes rate was under 5/10! Its a relationship you have to develop with this machine! Despite what another reviewer writes I find the frother is fine, it's the milk that varies a surprising lot. A really fun machine, I'd buy another.

You need to pay attention while making coffee with a Eurpiccola Espresso machine from La Panoni. It is not a machine for dilattantes, but when it hits, there is nothing better. It looks good on the counter, and can become part of a routine easily, but you must take your time to learn the nuances of this great espresso maker.

You don't really have a precise measure of the pressure applied to the grounds, which allows you to be very lax in ground control. You can get something out with very coarse grounds, and you can get something out with very fine grounds, though you may need to press rather hard. This is good if you do not want to waste coffee, bad if you want consistancy.

Steaming is also a problem compared with the bigger boiler machines. You simply run out of juice faster than you do on any bigger machine (I am not sure about the bigger La Pavoni level machines) which can cause some problems when you are trying to entertain.