Anyway, I really like my Flair. It is fun to press the thing manually. And it is nice to have espresso still during a power outage (as long as I can get ground beans and fire).
I think this is a different definition of “do it yourself” though, hahaha.
Simple, not that expensive, extremely easy to clean and yet has less annoying maintenance than a fancy machine. Extremely unlikely to break. Very good control of the process and very good coffee.
Obviously the weakness of the flair is the turnaround time. (I don't have the Flair 58). But I am the only one in my house who actually drinks Espresso. For the amount I drink I don't think the Flair actually takes much more time than a very expensive automatic machine, because I would leave the fancy machine turned on and hot and ready to make coffee.
If everything is going well, I’ll usually just do one shot right after the other (no cleaning), like a barbarian. It works fine and I don’t have to heat up the water chamber again, haha.