I often have conversations with Owen Egan about going crotchless. My coffee geek friend was the first to tell me about folks who saw off the bottom of espresso machine portafilters (the part with a handle) so the coffee streams directly into the cup without the interference of spouts, making it easier to monitor the output. We also talk of godshots (the ultimate espresso) and thermocouples (the gizmos you can rig up that tell you the exact temperature of the water).
He buys old machines off eBay and soups them up in a basement workshop (which I made a panicky late-night visit to once with my non-functional Expobar - it was just a disconnected wire, fortunately).
Owen really cares about his lattes. And he was among the first to rush to Caffe Art Java when it opened. The cafi's regular espressos are actually doubles, and their doubles are triples, and they're producing possibly the finest commercial lattes in town.
photo: Dominic Gauthier