01/15/2026
It’s four AM, and I just finished part two of our complete LM Strada rebuild. Just before Christmas we pulled the brew group boilers apart for a complete descale and rebuild, and tonight was the steam boiler’s turn. I can’t decide which part of the machine is more complicated and challenging to work on. The three brew groups mean triple the work, including overhauling mechanism each group uses to slowly ramp pressure up and down with the paddle for your espresso shots. The steam boiler on the Strada is unique, using a heat exchanger and mechanical mixing valve to preheat water to the brew groups to ensure the temperature doesn’t fluctuate when pulling shots. Taking apart and manually cleaning every square inch water travels through before it reaches your coffee allows one to appreciate the thought process used by LM’s engineers to solve several of the problems of previous generations of their dual boiler machines (GB5, Linea). Many of the improvements are small and incremental, and are easy to overlook individually, but together allowed baristas to go from a machine that treated quality like an on/off switch, to a machine that allows you to shape the coffee, while doing so 100% mechanically. A new generation of one group lab machines (Decent is one, Wendoughee is another) now allows total and instant control of temp and pressure, but does so via computer, removing some of the quality control guardrails that mechanical delivery provides. I think both systems are great, but my appreciation for the one that delivers quality in an elegant, simple and repeatable way, even after 13 years, makes me excited to come to work every day to share great coffee with Saskatoon and beyond.
