Passion#1 Espresso

12 month ago I bought my first espresso machine - a beatiful Pavoni with a manual piston. Shortly after I realized that a real high quality coffe grinder was necessary to get closer to the perfect espresso. I added a Rancillio Rocky grinder and was quite happy with the results. I found a great micro roastery Risteriet that supplies the greatest fresh roasted espresso blends. I started having a really good relation to the guys in the shops....and I tell you these guys are coffee geeks if any. At risteriet I tasted some really great espresso, and realized that I was still at the very bottom of the learning curve with my performance on the Pavoni. But as most people that have tasted a really good espresso I was hooked. A perfect espresso tastes like the smell of fresh grinded coffee, and has nothing to do with the sour, bitter substance that one gets at most café's.
So one day I went for 500g of coffee and came back with a 25Kg full blown italian espresso machine - La Valentina. This started a new era for my espresso shot performance and also a new era of heavy coffee equipment investments.
My current setup consists of the La Valentina Espresso machine, A Mazzer Mini E grinder and finally a I-roast2 (yes I did end up roasting my own coffee from green coffee beans).
Well to finish this short posting on my #1 passion I suggest that you stop by either of the following websites

http://www.risteriet.dk/ (the micro roastery in Copenhagen)
http://www.e61hx.com/ (A great finnish guy that has a really good webpage on espresso)

And for me...I'll just continue my pursue of excellence in coffee making and await that perfect shot of espresso.