It's an unbeatable machine.

For some time I use to buy green beans from the Algerian Coffee House in Soho here in the uk and roast and blend my own. I eventually gave up and tommorow I have a delivery of 9 different blends to home in on what is currently best with our home water. I have the same machine in another home but because the water is so different there we find Illy to be the best there.

As we use a water distiller I tried distilled water today and we enjoyed it. It has the bonus of reducing scale to a minimum and the coffee seemed silkier and cleaner tasting.

The issue I'm finding with the blends I'm buying is the absence of blends containing robusta - all seem to be proud of being 100% arabica which means a weaker crema. I may have to resort back to roasting and blending!