The Bench

Chanhassen

1970s Gaggia Orione

Spring-Lever · Single Group · Full Restoration

The showpiece. An early-1970s Gaggia Orione spring-lever machine that came out of Chanhassen in rough, unsafe condition — and is the deepest restoration to pass across this bench.

The job was a complete strip-down: asbestos insulation removed and disposed of properly, every gasket and seal replaced, boiler ports assessed and made sound, a new pressurestat and certified safety valve fitted, and the entire machine rewired from scratch to modern 240V standards. What you see here is real brass and copper, cleaned and reassembled — not plated or painted over.

Fifty-year-old lever machines are exactly the work most shops turn away. If you have one sitting in a basement or a back room anywhere in the Twin Cities, it is very likely saveable.

Gaggia La Nera two group commercial espresso machine running again after service, steam and hot water restored, Minneapolis

Minneapolis · Eat Street

Gaggia La Nera, 2-Group

Two Group · Heat Exchanger · Deep Service & Decontamination

Collected from a restaurant on Eat Street (Nicollet Avenue) in Minneapolis. Full teardown and decontamination done, and this is it back on its feet — copper boiler, a heat exchanger circuit per group, and the brass fittings all went back together after everything got serviced properly.

The data plate tells the real story: it reads Visacrem La Nera, 2GR, 230V, 2800W. Visacrem is one of the Barcelona brands, which means this machine and the BUNN below are effectively cousins from the same Spanish factory — and parts for both come from the same channel. Knowing that is the difference between “obsolete” and a routine repair.

It also uses the industry-standard 58mm E61-family group, so portafilters, baskets, gaskets and screens are common parts rather than proprietary ones. This one needed a full teardown, decontamination, and descale before any bench work could start.

Outer Hennepin County

La Cimbali M21 Junior DT

Single Group · Heat Exchanger · Volumetric

Out of outer Hennepin County, and one of the cleanest machines to come across this bench — a heat-exchanger, volumetric single-group that looks barely used behind the panels.

La Cimbali builds serious commercial equipment, and the M21 Junior is the compact end of that line: 120V, auto-dosing, NSF listed, and small enough for a tight café counter or a demanding home setup. This one was stripped, inspected, and gone through component by component.

It now serves as the loaner machine. When a café’s machine has to come back to the workshop, this one can go out in its place so the espresso never stops and the doors stay open.

St. Paul

BUNN Espress ES-1A

Single Group · Commercial · Valve Rebuild

Picked up in St. Paul. It wears a BUNN badge, but underneath it is Spanish: the ES-1A was built by Gaggia of Spain and is essentially a rebadged Futurmat Milady. Futurmat and Visacrem are both Barcelona brands under the same parent, which is why this machine and the La Nera above share a parts channel.

That matters, because looking up “BUNN ES-1A” parts turns up very little — while the same components are catalogued and available under the Futurmat name. It is the difference between telling a customer their machine is dead and simply fixing it.

This one arrived with a hot-water faucet that would not shut off. Bench testing confirmed the boiler heated correctly and the steam side was fine; the actual fault was a broken retaining spring inside the hot-water valve, plus a tired stem O-ring and seat gasket. Orphaned and rebadged commercial machines are a specialty here.

Ramsey County

Mazzer Super Jolly Timer

64mm Commercial Grinder · Burr Service

From Ramsey County. The Super Jolly has sat next to more espresso machines than almost any other grinder — 64mm flat burrs, a heavy cast body, and a doser built to survive a commercial bar.

This photo is the part most people never see: the adjustment collar off and the burr chamber open. That collar is reverse-threaded and hides a stop screw, which is why grinders get returned “stuck” by people who forced it.

Grinders are the ignored half of the setup. When a café says the espresso “tastes flat” or “won’t dial in,” the machine usually gets blamed while the real culprit is a set of burrs well past their service life. Burr inspection, replacement, cleaning and recalibration are part of every visit here — not an afterthought.

Cottage Grove

Brasilia Portofino Super America DEL2

Two Group · Commercial · Service & Assessment

A two-group Brasilia out of Cottage Grove, loaded up and headed for the bench. Brasilia was a mainstay of Italian commercial machine building for decades, and the Portofino Super America is a proper café workhorse — two groups, a large boiler, volumetric dosing on both sides, and the capacity to run a real morning rush.

Machines like this usually surface when a café closes or upgrades, and they get written off as scrap because the original importer is long gone. In practice they are conventional Italian commercial machines built from standard components, and they respond very well to a thorough service.

If you are sitting on a two-group machine in the east metro that has not run in years, it is worth a look before it goes to the scrapper.

Curtis commercial bulk coffee brewer opened for electrical repair in Cedar-Riverside, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis · Cedar-Riverside

Curtis Commercial Bulk Brewer

Batch Brewer · Commercial · Electrical Repair

A Curtis bulk brewer in Cedar-Riverside — and the first paying job this business ever took. This is it opened up: the tank, the solid-state relay, the high-limit and the terminal block that most of these faults trace back to.

Note the plate on the inside wall — Dual Voltage Unit, 220VAC 3W+G. Brewers like this can be wired more than one way, and getting that wrong is a common cause of “it just stopped heating” after a move or a remodel. Reading the machine before touching it is most of the job.

Bulk and batch brewers are the quiet backbone of cafés, restaurants, offices, churches and convenience stores. Nobody thinks about them until the morning they will not heat, run slow, leak, or trip a breaker — and then it is an emergency, because a whole room is waiting on coffee. Curtis, BUNN, Fetco and airpot systems are all serviced here alongside the espresso work. If it makes coffee, it can be repaired.

Twin Cities Metro

Rocket Appartamento

Single Group · Heat Exchanger · Boiler Head Rebuild

A customer’s Rocket Appartamento came in with a maddening intermittent fault: the machine would cut off completely — heat, steam, everything — then reset itself minutes later with no pattern to it.

Bench testing traced it to the boiler head, where both the safety thermostat and the pressure switch had failed internally — each one drifting between near-zero and open-circuit resistance even fully disconnected from the machine. Heat damage and browning were visible on the connector housings, with embrittled crimp terminals that need re-terminating alongside the two switches. The heating element itself tested nominal and was ruled out.

Genuine Rocket parts are not stocked by the big US parts houses — they route Rocket owners straight back to authorized dealers. Sourcing correct OEM parts for dealer-locked and orphaned machines is routine work here, not a reason to write a machine off.