We were lucky enough recently to have the new La Marzocco KB90 sent to us on loan for a short time thanks to La Marzocco Australia. While it was here we underwent some intensive training on servicing the machine plus we held our very own industry night to allow local roasters and cafes check it out. The KB90 is a really nice machine with some fantastic technology built into it which Luke will talk you through in this video.
Video Transcript (auto generated)
hey everyone today we are looking at the
La Marzocco KB 90.
[Music]
thanks everyone for joining us um today
we're fresh off the back
of an amazing night we had last night
here at artistic roastery
and it was based around being given this
kb90 for us to have a good play with
pull apart and then share with our peers
locally here
so i've had a great night telling
everyone about the technology in it
how cool it is and i guess we've gone
through a few things we may or may not
like about this machine
the kb 90 is actually named after a guy
ken
bakke now if you're not familiar with
ken ken
has been a huge part of lumber zocco for
over 40 years
he's been in the states essentially in
his early stages helping with
prototyping and building parts for
lumozako and he was the ceo at some
stage as well
so kent is actually the first person
outside of the lumozako family
to actually have a machine named after
him
and if you ever wondered what the 70 80
and 90 meant
on the end of a model number it's how
many years of manufacturing that they've
been doing with coffee machines
so it's 90 years that lumozako has been
making machines
and kent has had a huge impact in the
business that they
named a machine after him so that's
pretty cool so let's run through the
features first and then i'll get into
some heavy tech
we've got the standard multi-boiler
units from lamazoko so you do have a big
rear boiler for your steam and your hot
water
then we have individual boilers that
allow you to have
a different temperature coming through
each head
now we have made those changes in here
and i'm going to show you those a little
bit later
the kb90 is running the same platform
that you see in the pb
so it's going to have the same buttons
the same menu and the same controls
and that's really nice because if you're
upgrading from one machine you'll be
able to know how to
navigate through things but there is
obviously a lot more in the menu
that you can change with all these new
features so the machines actually come
with individual pid controllers
so you can change the rear boilers and
obviously what's happening in each head
as well
they're really well insulated so they've
got a thermal covering around them
and that means that you're going to get
really good
heat transparency and use less power
essentially
with your machine so this machine
doesn't have the cup heater in it
so that reduces the power consumption
and allows it still to be
a 32 amp and that's really good here in
australia we find that a lot of machines
are commonly wired up for 32 there are a
few machines that hitting 40 and that
can be a challenge
in a lot of cafes so for me that's a
really good plus
the kb does have the hot water
economizer which allows you to change
the temperature of your hot water tap we
do set ours
ready for our long blacks because we do
do all of our tea
from a different water source and a
nicely temperature controlled kettle
with the machine it actually has barista
lights as well
that allows you to see what's happening
especially with the scales that are
inbuilt into this machine
this is the avr model so we do have this
set up
allowing us to showcase a few different
varieties
of how you can use that scale to upgrade
the software it does have the usb
port so that's nice and easy to be able
to upgrade to the new model of the
software when it comes out
and this does have the low feet i would
highly recommend getting the higher feet
because this is an absolute tank it's
about 120 kilos
so to be able to get in here and work on
the machine it is a bit of a challenge
and also how the cup tray which i'll
show you in a little bit
removes and where the actual point is
for the drain hose
it's a bit of a challenge to get into so
having a bit of flexibility with extra
height
is a huge huge benefit that i would
recommend
serviceability has been really thought
about in the kb90
you don't have to depressurize the
machine to either work on the new
steam taps the new straight in porter
filters
and you can actually isolate one of
these front brew
boilers if you need to and work on it so
right in the middle of service
we could still be working on half a
machine
and then the baristas can still be
pumping out lots of coffee so that's
really cool
that's going to allow a lot of cost
saving for cafes
not having to pay for overtime or out of
hours service charges
the one thing that's great about these
machines is the eco mode
you can see now that none of the lights
are actually lit up
and that means that we've made a setting
inside for the rear boiler
to drop down by 10 degrees which we've
chosen
so that when it's not working for a time
of 15 minutes
it will actually save a lot of power
so in peak times that 15 minutes is
never going to be reached
but as the day goes on there will be
chances where it can
allow that to cool down a little bit and
save you some power
to get back into service mode you just
got to press a button
all the lights light up and you're ready
to go
now you will notice that all the lights
aren't lit up
on each head and the reason being is
this new stration portafilter has some
really cool tech behind it
so you have to make sure that it's fully
locked in
before it's going to give you the
opportunity to actually
make a coffee it also has to be up to
temperature
so that's what's happening now the pid
is slowly going up
and when it reaches temperature these
lights will come back on and allow us to
brew coffee
while that's happening i want to take
you a little bit deeper into the new
straight in portafilter
so if you've been in the industry for
years you'll be aware that we always
have to
yank on those handles and if you're like
me when you've been behind a machine
a lot you end up getting sore arms sore
wrists and shoulders and there's just
days you don't want to turn up to work
so the australian portafilter is not
something that's new
lamazok has been working on it for about
30 years and there's been lots of
different models
so to see it here is really pretty cool
it's quite technical there's a lot
that's going on
but they really have allowed it to have
a great serviceability
so let me show you how it works right
now the handle is locked in
and you can see we're now back up to
temperature so it's actually allowing me
to brew a shot so i'm going to remove
the handle and you press the button
[Music]
now this part here is actually called
the yoke and the yoke is what holds the
handle in place
and you can see that we have straight
lugs
ready to go straight into the actual
machine
so it is quite a simple process to load
the handle in
just keep it nice and flat and level
slide it in
so that's certainly very easy from a
muscle
um and strenuous position if you're
pumping out coffees all day
it's also quite smart that if you don't
have it quite locked in this button
isn't going to
actually light up and allow you to brew
and there's a few reasons for that so
when we actually can brew
a coffee we can start our shop
i'm just going to stop it for now watch
what happens when we take the
water filter out it's starting to flash
at us
it's going to steam and then actually
purge as well
so it's got an amazing steam flush
system every time it's going to add
steam onto your shower screen
which is going to help get all those
oils and solids out of the actual shower
screen
and then a flush to get rid of them out
of the way
so it's a really cool way of making sure
that flavor or from old coffee or old
grind
isn't ending up in your next brew
you can fully adjust those time of the
steam the time of the water
and whether it actually is activating or
not so
it's up to you if you want to use that
feature but it's certainly really cool
the one cool thing that they do is the
steam that is generated to
clean that shower screen actually comes
backwards through your exhaust solenoids
so they're opening up a solid void
pumping that steam through which is
pretty cool
if you think about it from a tech
perspective so a bit more about the
steam flush there's actually three
solenoids that make each head work
this is the solenoid that's allowing the
water to go in
and there's a pipe coming out so when
the extra pressure after you've finished
brewing will shoot backwards down into
your drip tray
what they're doing is they're actually
got a couple of lines coming from the
steam
part of the rear boiler and that's
actually going through
another solenoid so it can pass water
one way
for back pressure then they open up the
solenoid shoots steam back through it
which is pretty cool
and then they just do another normal
flush like you would by activating your
button
so some really smart engineering inside
that mechanism
so what we're going to look at now is
the scales so this machine has three
different scales
one per group head which you can set up
in different ways we've actually set
this head up in the old way called av
which is automatic volumetrics
now that's just going to give us a flow
basically over time
using your flow meter this head here
is actually what we've set in mass mode
and once we activate our button
it's going to start to flash and tear
out whatever cup we put into this scale
and then give us a flow for the end
result that we've asked for
let's call it 30 grams what this head is
set up for
is in the abr version and that actually
allows you to
weigh your handle tear that in
pop your coffee in tamp it pop it back
on again
the system actually then knows the
calibrated weight of the actual handle
and then the coffee you've set inside
here in the in the memory
what recipe you're after and then when
you hit go
it will give you that recipe into the
cup
so you might have the first button as a
one to one ratio
and the second at one to two ratio so
that's a very cool way
for you to get very precise ratios based
on whatever coffee you're putting in
there
now to make it easy all the handles are
all
matched by weight and there's a little
sign or label on here with different
wording that will identify which handle
you have to order when you need another
one
and there's a little engraving bit hard
to see but i think it says the precision
portal filters and that symbolizes that
all of these
are the exact same weight and that's
important when you're starting to use
the scale
the kb has the new pro touch steam ones
that's a double line stainless steel
tube essentially you can hold on to this
and it is just so cool the tip though is
hot
so be careful make two coffees on the
machine now
using the middle head which is on mass
mode and we've actually got that set
at 91.4 degrees then i'll go and make
one
on the right hand head which is set on
the abr mode which means we've got to
weigh our
weigh our handle weigh our coffee and
then it'll be a brew recipe that's
actually going to be controlling the end
result
and that is actually set at 91 degrees
so a bit cooler
so let's get into it i've got my
22 and a half grams here of coffee
we want to distribute the coffee really
nicely
we've got our distribution tool can
never say that word
and we're tamping with a puck press so
we've already put this in that we want
as a double
it's actually our own recipe of two to
one
so what you've got to do is lock in your
handle pop on a cup first so that when
you do hit the button here
you'll see the light flashing and that's
actually tearing the scale with the cup
and then it'll start to pour you can
adjust fully that amount of time that
that's tearing for
so because we know we put in 22 and a
half grams we've set this
button as a double shot or two to one
ratio which is going to give us our 45
grams
and you can see it ticking along it'll
keep going until it gives us
that 45 grams
so there you go 44.1 so pretty close
for us on that time at 27 seconds that
is a little bit quick
we'd want a little bit more time on
there so how do we fix that that would
come down to
the either the amount of coffee which we
know we started with a constant
our grind size our tamping pressure and
the distribution of the actual coffee
so i'll make one now with the abr it's a
little bit different i'm going to use
the same cup as well we'll be able to
come back and have a look at them
so what we've got to do is press and
hold the first button
it's going to start flashing at us we're
going to pop the handle on there
it's recognized the handle now we've got
to add our
coffee in there 22 and a half grams
oops don't drop the cap
[Music]
distribute the coffee
okay pop the handle back on
press the button again and that will
lock it in
knowing that there is 22 and a half
grams of coffee in there so if we put
more or less coffee in
the recipe essentially would change we
can pop in our handle
lock it in pop on our cup
and i'll do the same so it is a ratio
now we've set this in the brain for two
to one
based on the coffee and the handle and
the weight that we've actually put in
there
we went through the same process of
tearing the cup as well
and now this is calculating how quickly
that liquid is coming through
and the rate of increase of weight per
second and then trying to reanalyze how
much liquid is actually in that air
so that it can stop at the exact recipe
that we asked it to do
so it's pretty cool tech and we're after
44.
no so we're after 45 grams which is two
to one
and if you have a look here we've got
44.8
just there so it's really close
given that we've weighed in the coffee
weighed in the handle then asked it to
give us a recipe
it did give a really good result at the
end
now when you're looking at these
different coffees you can see there
might be a little bit of an extraction
difference between the two
they are generally quite close
now one question that we always get
asked is can you see the pucks so i'm
going to show you the two pucks
so let's have a look here you can see
here the steam is going off in the
background there this is the
mass mode and this is the abr mode
so you can see that we do allow for a
lot of expansion there
there's not many little holders coming
through here they're just
a little bit spongy we're not over
packing the basket to be nice and hard
this is a little bit softer to be honest
but they are nicely brewed evenly brewed
we didn't use any pre-infusion so that's
up to you whether you want to allocate
that into this machine
but all in all that's a really nicely
brewed coffee
at a very specific ratio so it's pretty
so earlier in the video i said we're
going to have a look at the drip tray
and how the scales all fit in
so let's check it out now
so you've got these two little holes
here pop your fingers in
and you can pull out your top scale
now you can see here there's these pins
which actually attach
to the scale and you've got some little
um holes here you can see there's one
missing
and inside is actually a little magnet
now that magnet you don't want to lose
it
if you can get it out and don't drop it
in the hole
i'll get to that in a second we'll take
the other one out
so that's done it differently as well
these are nylon bushes
and essentially they're all held
together with magnets so there's magnets
to go
on the top and to go on the bottom
and you can see this one the magnet has
actually come out here so
you want to make sure it's always lined
back up when it goes back in
so maybe a bit of glue would just hold
that inside here a little bit better
seems to be a bit of a common thing you
just don't want to lose those magnets
you can then take a drip tray out
a bit of a tip up the liquid will go in
the back there
okay so this gives you an idea of how
the scales
um they're all braced across by one big
bolt and there is the individual scale
there
for each head and this is the connection
point here so it does move
up and down but it's locating in these
little holes
you don't want to get water in there you
definitely don't want to have this
head activating on its wash sequence
with this being open
so if you're not really sure make sure
you turn it off
if you lose these little magnets make
sure you grab them and put them back
where they need to be
if that goes in there yep
and then the drip tray which is a bit of
a tricky part with the setup it is very
tight it's quite hard to get to it's
right in under the back here
so definitely need some small hands to
be able to get in there and give that a
good clean up
that's why i said the high legs would
allow you just to get that hose
the drain hose on connected a lot easier
so relatively easy very smart design if
anything breaks in here it's very easy
to replace the scale
or the brain in there so pretty cool
tech
so overall the kb 90 has amazing new
features
with obviously the scales steam coming
through your heads
straight in porter filters and a lot of
flexibility to be able to play with
those things
given it's actually a significant
investment to have one of these on your
bench
and the weight of being able to move it
it is really good that they've allowed
you to service this machine
in place being able to pull the actual
whole piston out
and replace it very quickly is cool
but it is very expensive so i believe
we're talking about a swap and go style
system
for that kind of service which i think
will be a real benefit
for all businesses are getting bored
with the kb90
so i want to say a big thanks to
lamazoko for allowing me
to have this machine on our bench it was
sent here i had the opportunity to
look under the hood pull it all apart
learn how to service it
about five hour session so that was
really cool over a zoom session
um and the ability for us to be able to
play with it more in the next week
so we've had a great time making copy on
the machine and we look forward to
you know seeing what it can do over the
next week as well until we've got to
give it back to lamazoko
so thanks guys for watching if you've
got any questions about the kb90 hey
make sure you shoot us a question
we'd love to answer that for you thanks
guys have a great day
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[Applause]
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