Espresso Machines
Running a coffee trailer and being a very avid home coffee enthusiast comes with one specific thing I have a love hate relationship with. People constantly asking for advice on what to buy. On one hand I love it because it allows me to be super nerdy and explain why I would choose this machine over anther. On the other hand I hate it because there are so many factors to consider when you are buying equipment. One of the biggest being budget. So I figured I would make a few sections on my website that I can send people to after talking to them to give them the run down on the machines or equipment and why I chose them.
Qualifications for Espresso Machines
I think the best place to start on this is to fully understand what I am talking about when I say espresso machine. When I look for an espresso machine I am looking for a few things. Number one, does it use pods….. If it does, it is off the list. Sorry Nespresso people. While these machines can make coffee conveniently, the coffee is already ground, who knows when it was roasted, and you have no control over any of the process. Most of the times the coffee you are getting out of these machine is going to be a watered down shot. Which is going to leave it with a sour taste and could even make you run to the bathroom after because of how old the coffee is. What I am looking for in a machine is the ones that have a portafilter where you put the grounds into the basket, tamp it and tighten into a machine that pushed water through to create the concentrated espresso that you want to mix with milk drinks, or drink by itself. These machines need to be reliable and not made of complete plastic if you are using them every day. While some of the cheaper ones I will recommend will have plastic pieces, they are used in a ton of households around the world with great results. Now a quick disclaimer, some of the machines that I will recommend I have not personally used. I will make sure to make that clear when I type the reasons why I would recommend these machines. Most of the the time I will have used a machine similar or from the same brand. At the end of the day these are just my recommendations. I will never claim to know it all or event be right on some of them, but I like to think I know what I am talking about.
My Recommendations
The way I am going to arrange this list is start off as cheap as I feel comfortable going and then just go up in price from there. One of the trends you will see in this list is, I like the Breville machines. I recommend them all the time to people and there are a few reasons for that but one is their customer service and reliability. So lets start the list.
Breville Bambino
Now this espresso machine is near and dear to my heart because it is what I started on. My very first espresso machine. I would make coffee for my family every single day and some days I would be making 5-6 lattes on this machine and it wouldn’t have a single hick up. The pros of this machine is obviously the price point that it is at. For a machine that heats up in 6 seconds or less and pulls a 9 bar shot of espresso you can’t ask for much more. The cons with the machine, well they come with the price tag. For one the portafilter is not a stainless steal portafilter which is ideal for retaining the heat of the water that is being pushed through. It also feels cheap. Not cheaper than some machines but you can tell it has a cheaper price point. This machine also doesn’t come with a grinder which I would recommend buying anytime you buy an espresso machine to make sure your beans are freshly ground every single shot. Now some of these things can be fixed when you throw in a little more money and buy a grinder and new stainless steal portafilter, but that means you are spending more money. Having said that though there are ways with this machine you can pull already ground coffee through it with the baskets they provide so if you are just wanting to get a machine then invest into it later that is also an option. I will have another blog that will talk about some of the tools and grinders that I would recommend as well.