Video Overview | La Marzocco GS/3 Espresso Machine

Transcript

The GS/3 surpasses all expectations for home espresso equipment; massive water capacity, programmable PID and a commercial group head set it apart from any other machine of its size. Its performance is unbeatable, and in the classic Marzocco style, it looks and feels great too.

La Marzocco GS/3 Espresso Machine: Mechanical Paddle

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Features massive water capacity, programmable PID, and a commercial group head

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Hey. Chris here, from Prima Coffee Equipment. Today we are checking out the GS/3 espresso machine from La Marzocco. Welcome to the big leagues. This is the machine for professional use or light commercial use. So, catering or for small kitchens and cafes, but also the machine for home enthusiasts who want the top of the line for their home set-ups.

So, let's take a look at all of the features that make it what it is. We'll start it on the outside. We have a digital interface right here that controls a number of things. We have control of both boilers. That's right; there's two. So, coffee and steam boiler control, as well as programmable coffee boiler off-sets. So, you can control not just the coffee boiler temperature, but the actual brew temperature. So what's coming out of the group head.

Also, a couple of other cool features plugged in here: A shot timer shows up on the display when you start brewing, and there is also an auto-on feature. So if the main power is on, but the machine is not actually running, you can tell it to turn itself back on at a set time in the future. That was incredibly useful for us at the SCAA show in Boston this year, where we were able to tell the machine to kick on before we even got there.

A couple other things on the outside. We have a hot water tap right here with the blending valve. So it adds cool water to the water from the steam boiler so that you have a nice steady stream, instead of spurts or instead of a big cloud of steam or something. So, a really nice stream there for Americanos or for tea. We have an insulated cool touch steam wand over here. It moves both right to left, as well as omnidirectional steam actuator. We can move that in any direction, and if you push it up in the corner it will lock there. So that's a great part.

As you can see, this machine is the mechanical paddle model. So, it actually has a paddle at the top so you can manually control the pressure at different points during the brewing. You can start with a pre-infusion, so we move this to about 6 o'clock. We're going to drop down to two, three bars, just standard line pressure, and past that we're up to around nine or so for the actual brew pressure.

Now, we'll also look at the drip tray here. This is a particularly cool part of the machine. It removes very easily, and is really big so that you're not going to be often refilling this. And if you have this setup, you can also plumb this directly so that you never have to take it out and dump it or anything like that. So, this is really an awesome part.

Even cooler, right behind it we have the water reservoir. It slides out just right behind the drip tray here and is really easy to refill. It also holds a lot of water, so if you're not able to plumb in, even though this machine can do it, you're able to go for quite a while without having to refill or anything.

There is also a nice big cup warmer at the top, so you can keep the shot glasses or demitasse warm before you go.

Now let's talk about the inside a little bit now. Really big boilers in this machine. We have one and a half liters for the coffee boiler. It's almost as big as the [inaudible]. You're really getting that professional size in this small consumer footprint, with also a 3.5 liter steam boiler. So really, endless steam on this. You're only going to run into problems if you're steaming a lot for milk drinks and using a lot of hot water for teas and Americanos and such. Those two combined back and forth, can give you a little bit of issues, but if you're just steaming, or just doing hot water, you can really go for days.

So, let's go ahead and brew on this machine. I've ground about 20, 21 grams of coffee here, and I'm going to hope for about 30 to 32 grams yield. [silence] [inaudible] Start my pre-infusion here, pressure kicks down, winding down to a pressure of about two or three bars. about 10 seconds before I push further into full infusion. As you can see, the shot timer kicks on right away right here, but we're going just a little bit fast here. I'd hoped for about 30 to 32 grams in closer to 30 seconds. It looks like with the pre-infusion, we're about 24, 25 seconds. But this is the La Marzocco's GS/3.

Really awesome features crammed into a small footprint, pretty nice price point for restaurants in particular. It runs on 110, so it's really easy to find a spot for this and it works like a dream. Thanks for watching.