I am working up a review of the ECM Cellini Rocket espresso machine. It is currently living in my lab on the University campus that I work on. Which everyone is kind of excited about. Truth be told, my work area is a portal for virtually every method of coffee and espresso brewing – the only constant being a Newco OCS-8 thermal carafe brewer.
From time to time, I bring some of the big toys into the work area. So between 40 fluid ounce brew pots of exotic single origin coffee (served twice a day), I serve up surprises.
And the ECM Cellini is a big one. At 61 pounds of shiny stainless steel, brass and copper – it is a beauty. And dollar for dollar, it represents one of the best values in semi-commercial or prosumer espresso machines.
A couple of big pluses. It has a 1.8 Litre boiler – that is a lot of water in a stable environment – kept supercharged (just over the boiling point) to have hot water and steam on demand for all your tea drinking, cappuccino sipping and latte sharing. It uses the classic Faema E61 heat exchanging brew group – with some creative mods to make it even better at handling a varying workload – and in the Cellini’s case, up to 40 shots of espresso per hour!
That means plenty of drinks for my friends, co-workers and I.
Dig this: What is more fun that being surrounded by your youthful co-workers as you wow them with some of the best espresso and specialty coffee beverages that can be made? I have the good fortune of having, not one but two, coffee professionals in my immediate circle – and that translates to the periodic throw-down… where yours truly gets the stuffing kicked out of him. All in good fun.
The other interesting thing about this particular sample of the ECM Cellini Professional… is that it was dropped about 10 feet… onto concrete. Yup. It had its face pushed in quite seriously. I have given it a semi-pro fix while it waits for some replacement steel components. Which makes an important point: This machine is built like a tank! Stay tuned.