It never ceases to amaze us how there are salespeople in every industry who will fabricate facts and create a story in the hope of selling stuff.
In an Australian web forum, we read today that in espresso machines with vertically oriented boilers, “water level changes are detected earlier with a horizontal boiler so refills are triggered more regularly. This means a vertical boiler has slightly smaller temp swing.”
It’s incredible that any vendor can come to this (mis)understanding when the overwhelming majority of heat exchanger and multi-boiler commercial espresso machines on the market today use horizontally mounted boilers. Multi-boiler commercial machines sometimes employ vertically oriented brew boilers and the reasons can often be packaging based and also that brew boilers are always completely full, be they vertical or horizontal. So, we say rubbish. Simple logic dictates that the larger water surface area within a horizontal boiler would actually produce the opposite with respect to boiler fill behaviour. Regardless, the performance of any boiler under the control of an autofill control board will be influenced primarily by how the board is programmed and how well the autofill probe is communicating with the board.
The salesperson’s statement above was one of many made to sell a particular brand of domestic machine which would not be acceptable to us within the Talk Coffee range for a host of reasons. Whilst businesses are free to sell whatever they choose to and their prospective clients are free to purchase as they wish, incorrect information can influence purchase decisions.
To those researching a purchase, we say beware of fabricated stories supported by fake “facts”. Snake oil is not likely to cure anything much at all.
The moral of the story? Caveat Emptor….