Hello, and today we're going
to be talking about the Breville dual boiler espresso machine.
One of my beautiful Covid acquisitions, no regrets.
I love this frickin thing.
And we're going to go into a full review of this.
It's going to be a long one because this thing is feature packed.
Let's start with unboxing.
So after removing the item from the box in the most elegant matter,
if you purchased this espresso machine or really any espresso machine,
you know, comment below.
Sure. This is real, if you know what I'm talking about.
And it comes with everything
that you need to make a good espresso except the grinder.
So you got a stainless steel, 16 ounce frothing joke.
You have two cleaning tables that will help you with two cycles of back flushing.
You have four baskets, the single, the double dose pressurized
and the single and double dose not pressurized basket You have the temper
and the leveling razor, but that's kind of useless.
And I would just chuck it, to be honest.
Well, don't like chuck it. Keep it.
So a 50 millimeter portafilter, which is a good size font, E61 grouphead.
If you get one from a third party, just make sure that it's compatible.
Otherwise you're going to have fit issues.
You also have a little needle to clean out the steam wand holes.
If you purge one before and after using it, you really needing this anyway.
A blind basket insert for backflushing, also known as the cleaning disk.
It comes with one water filter as well, which will help with water,
hardness and decreasing calcium deposits.
And it also comes with the hardness strip.
This is very user friendly in the manual.
They'll walk you exactly through
all the steps that you need to do very clearly to get started.
So I'm going to skip
through that in the video, because it's going to take forever, if not.
And on the machine itself, there are tons of instructions as well
to make sure that you do not mess up.
So that was the unboxing.
Let's get to the specs, actually, you know what, this seems super tiny.
This machine is not actually the smallest.
I'm going to just bring it forward.
It's got this convenient little pop, rock and roll
machine lock and roll, a lock and roll situation
like that. They should patent it or I should patent it.
They find this pretty big.
I don't remember the dimensions, but I will overlay
the dimensions right here in post.
Not the smallest thing.
Some general specs real quick, 15 bar pump,
but you're only going to really be using nine bars of pressure.
And then you have your pressure bar right here, which is really great.
If you're between eight to 10 range,
that's generally where you want to be for espresso.
This is one of the things that I look at to just see if I'm in the right zone
for making coffee. And I find that very helpful.
There is an OPV valve, but it's inside and Breville
really doesn't want you to be opening that up to adjust.
It can be adjusted.
It will void your warranty, but it can be done.
I wish they made it easier.
There's hot water as well with this little dial.
You can actually do a mod called a Slayer mod, which is apparently reversible
and would allow you to pressure profile, making this machine
an even bigger pressure.
Profiling just means you can play with the amount of pressure
that's coming out into the puck instead of it blasting full pressure onto the puck.
But there's also preinfusion on this.
But the difference between the preinfusion is the preinfusion
would just put water into the puck for a certain amount
of seconds at a certain amount of percentage of the full amount.
Like maybe 60 percent of a full amount.
And that's all things you can program, the time and the flow rate.
And then it would blast everything at full pressure.
Whereas with the Slayer Mod pressure profiling, which is on much fancier
machines, you can slowly play with how much pressure you want out,
and it'll slowly with the puck to whatever
you're playing with in terms of flow rate.
There's a lot of information.
I know I'm trying to try to do my best - I'm doing my best here!
I don't know if I'll do it.
We'll see. So far, I'm content with it as is.
So this is called a dual boiler.
And the reason for that is because there are two boilers.
One for the espresso, one for the milk.
If you don't drink milk based espresso drinks,
I don't see why you would get this.
You you wouldn't need this.
It also means that I can do
both at the same time because I don't need to temperature surf,
because the temperature between espresso and milk is different temperatures.
I don't need to do any waiting.
I can actually pull a shot and steam them look at the same time.
And now that I've gotten better
at making espresso, I actually do do them at the same time.
And I just watch the time
and I watch the volume with the scale on pulling a shot. And I stop it.
I do everything manually just because I find there's small variations
still when I'm making my shots.
And so I rather just do that.
I thought I was going to program them. I haven't used that at all.
I just I prefer having full control.
Time is the of all the variables,
the least important and doesn't have to be as precise.
So if it's a second or two off,
as long as that yield I'm getting is actually the correct amount.
So just a little sidebar.
There is a water tank that's all the way in the back.
The water will last me probably three days because I also do
clear water back flushing,
which just means that you put this I think they call it a blind basket inside
and run the water because there's a three way valve, that
three way solenoid valve that releases pressure from the group head.
That water actually comes out from a little pipe
that's here and goes directly into the drip tray.
When the drip trays install, the water will go right in there.
If you're new to espresso, all of this might sound a little bit confusing.
So I'm going to try and be as clear as possible,
but also not make this video 40 minutes long,
because I could I could easily talk about this for 40 minutes.
But I will spare you a good size drip tray, which can hold quite a bit.
I usually empty this, oh, maybe every two days and just wash it right away
with some soap so it doesn't get all gucky with all that oil coffee residue.
Just like anything, the more you regularly maintain it, the better.
There is a little thing that can pop out that says, empty me.
I never have it that hole anyway.
And you have your steam on with this little rubber piece right here.
Three Holstein one.
It gets hot, though, so make sure that you use this.
If you do want to move it around,
you have a fifty eight millimeter porta filter. Oh, whoops.
I forgot to clear the coffee oopsy.
I will take care of that later. You have the steam lever on the side.
At first I was upset that I wasn't a knob.
I thought that would be way cooler.
But actually, I like this so much more.
It makes it so easy to activate on and off.
And also, I can set my espresso machine,
but it up right up to this panel because it's a steam lever.
And I don't need to reach down there and try and turn a knob.
And it makes it so much easier now that I have a steam lever instead of an arm.
You know, what I'm actually kind of happy
I have is the novelty of the knob would have worn out pretty quickly
and I've read some issues with knobs anyway, having leaking issues.
Maybe a steam lever will too.
But so far I've not had any issues with that.
You have a heated group head here as well,
which means that your coffee will not drop in temperature.
Once it reaches here, it gets to your cup.
You have a heated top.
My cups are always a little bit warm, which is perfect.
So Bravo gets a really bad rap
in the espresso machine world because it's an appliance versus a machine.
It's not as easy to fix it yourself. They have full control.
You can't even bring it to any repair center yourself.
You have to really contact Breville.
And that customer service of Breville is uh....
Depends who you deal with. It could be good. It could be bad.
I've heard of a lot of people sending the machine, getting a brand new one.
They don't even bother refurbishing or fixing it.
They just send you a brand new one.
I tried to contact Breville because I had pressure issues.
They were really not the best with customer service.
They ended up not calling me back.
I may or may not have opened it up and just adjusted the OPV myself.
So it gets a bad rap because it's not necessarily the easiest
to repair yourself.
And also because it's just Breville and you see it everywhere.
You probably have at least one friend that has a Breville barista express.
I know at least three people just off
the top of my head for maybe five that have the Breville Barista Express.
That's a really great entry level way to start in the espresso game.
I just went a step above because after playing with the Gaggia Cardona,
I kind of realized I was going to be into this.
And I am I'm into this.
I love coffee and I love the science of coffee.
I feel like it also just gets a bad rep
because some people in the espresso community are a little bit snobby.
It is a good machine.
I really do like it for its features.
I don't have experience with other machines.
I only had a super auto for like two weeks.
A Gaggia Cadorna barista plus, which I also reviewed,
but I've been doing a lot of research,
having seen a lot of other things, after having seen other comments..
For the price and for the features that you get, I don't think you beat this.
They've added so many things in here that just are such good design choices.
Underneath the drip tray, you have a unlock wheel, which is very convenient,
and it pops machine up, makes it easy to move,
and then you pop it down and then it locks if you really apply a lot of pressure.
You can definitely still move machine with this lock in place
generally on issue, the water tank view here.
You can refill it from the front to say you have to keep pulling it in and out,
which is the case for a lot of machines.
So I can pretty much leave it back there.
And it's not in my way.
I find myself just refilling it regularly anyway,
just because it's so easy to refill when you since you have the water
level here, that's only then all the special machines have.
And that is mighty, mighty, mighty convenient.
So you never end up in a situation where you run out of water.
And also behind here, you have a little extra convenient tool storage.
And this is where I keep all my tools. That's very convenient.
And I love that there's a magnetic timbre, which is really cool.
The plug on the back, really, really flush here.
And also there's a cord storage there.
You can put some of that extra cord in their.
The cord itself, You have this.
You can easily pull it out of the outlet.
I'm not going to get
into cleaning schedule in this video if you want me to make a video about that.
Leave a comment below and I will put that together.
It'll be applicable to pretty much all semiotics,
but really basic ones that I tend to do just on a daily basis.
When you're using it.
Before I use the steam wand, I purge a little bit
after I use the steam wand, also purge a little bit.
When I'm done with the coffee, I pull this out knock it into my knock box,
and then I run some water just to clear out a little bit.
Then I put the blind basket in and do a clear back flushing
just to get all of the oily residue a little bit out of the three way valve.
And it goes right into the drip tray that just clears everything up.
And that's just on a daily basis. It sounds like a lot.
And it sounded like things that I didn't want to do
and I was annoyed with, which is why I originally went with the super auto.
But once it becomes part of your routine and that takes like
a day or two to really get used to,
it becomes so simple and second nature, and it doesn't become steps in your head
and it's actually not really that long.
So let's talk about the menus on the Breville and the different things
that you can do with this to turn on the machine.
Press the power button, of course.
It takes about four to five minutes for it to get to temperature.
But I would suggest that
you have the machine running for about 10 to 15 minutes to really make sure
that all of the parts are warmed up before you were to make a shot.
You can go into the menu.
You can play with things like the 1 cup and the 2 cup volume, which is here
you can go by time or by volumetric.
But I prefer time.
I'm pretty much manually pulling a shot, just gives me more control.
And if my puck wasn't perfectly done, then at least the yield is always set
because I can look at how much yield
is coming out with my scale and then just manually stop it.
Then you could set the shot temperature and the shot temperature goes from 190
to 205 Fahrenheit, which is a good amount of variety.
And then you can autostart it. Right now it's set
off because I accidentally reset it
earlier and I can have it to go at 10 a.m., which is perfect
for when I wake up for my workday
and then roll out of bed and I don't usually make my coffee right away.
So by the time I do it nice and ready, this is to do your back
flush with the tablet that comes with once you run out of those tablets.
And even before you do, I would suggest you get this Cafiza powder,
and it will last for a long, long time. And it's cheap.
And you can also use it
to soak your portafilter, which will get rid of some of the coffee.
Most important, I would say, to do that.
Now, there's also another menu once it's
on, if you press down the up and down, you can play with preened fusion.
You can play with the duration of the preinfusion.
So the amount of water that goes into your just to prevent the puck
before the full pressure goes on.
You can also play with the flow rate.
So 60 is the default.
And they recommend 55 to 65.
I remember watching a video from Seattle Coffee Gear
They played with it and the 60 (was the default) worked well with them.
This is what I was talking about for the Slayer mod.
If you want to manually play with that flow rate
that would basically override this and you would be able to play with that
pressure that's hitting the puck, then you can also adjust the clock,
of course, so that it works with the autostart.
But wait, there's more!
If you long press here and you click on power,
you now have an advance menu.
Most people, I would say, are not going to run into this.
But, you know, it's there.
This is deskilling, which is something you'll.
I have to do once in a
while to get rid of the limescale, especially if your water is hard,
you adjust the water hardness anyway with the little strip that they give you.
Then you could play here with the temperature,
you can set it to Fahrenheit or you can play with Celsius.
This is steam temperature.
I've just left it at the default.
But you can play with the same temperature as well.
This is the machine sound machine
sound off low or high.
By default, it's set to low.
You can play here with volumetric control.
You can work by duration or by volume.
And by default it's by duration.
And that's it for the advance menu.
So let me go through the steps
of making an espresso now just to show you real quick what it can do.
By the way, my latte art I worked on it pretty good right now.
Like I said, the grinder, you need your own separate grinder.
So I have a Sette 270.
Make sure your machine is all nice and warm.
Ready to go. You'll
grind your coffee into the porterfield through the dose that you want.
You'll level it, you'll tamp it, lock your portafilter in.
You will start the extraction and you'll check your yield
that you want in about the time frame that you want.
Hitting the bar pressure of the 7-10 acceptable or preferred range.
That's also debatable, but that's generally
the range that you're looking for.
And if you're going for a milk base drink, you would steam your milk
and then pour it.
I've pulled shots for a few people.
Some that are very big coffee aficionados,
and they really liked the shot that I made.
So I think I'm quite there. Through a lot of trial and error.
You'll get it if you follow some basics.
You'll also understand it quite quick.
I did a lot of research, a lot of reading, because coffee is science.
It actually is science. It's fascinating.
And so I have all these notes here
to help me understand what's going on and develop my taste palette and be able
to tweak the different variables based on the results that I'm getting.
And then the result that I want to get to, it's really, really fascinating.
If you want to see a video about this, let me know in the comments below.
I might make one, but there's so many more professionals
that can help you with this.
I got information just Matt Purger and James Hoffman, for example,
two people you can look up to find information
with that you'll have plenty, plenty, plenty, plenty to go off of.
That is true of many people that I consulted.
Well, not personally consulted, but referred to in terms of understanding
the science of coffee and being able to get a better espresso shot.
So that is my review of the bubble.
Dual boiler going over all of the features.
I love this machine design wise.
I find it very it's very boring looking.
That's the only thing that I really don't love about it.
It's a little bit bigger than I would have wanted as well. But, you know,
you can't win in everything in terms of features.
I could not be happier with this machine.
I don't really see myself changing this anytime soon.
If I do, it's not because of lack of any features,
but because I just want something just a shiny or fancy machine.
But this was not necessarily the cheapest.
So this is not a machine that I'm going to let go of.
Breville is a company that tends to go on sale quite often, though,
especially like Black Friday, Christmas, whenever.
So I would say if you're on a rush, keep an eye out on those sales.
This machine was seventeen ninety nine Canadian.
I got it for thirteen ninety nine Canadian because there was like a 20% off sale.
Definitely higher
than I would have thought when I first started this espresso journey.
And that's just the coffee machine. That's not including the grinder,
but espresso's not a not a cheap thing.
Now, I understand why they charge so much at a coffee shop.
They're not even actually charging that much.
It's expensive, especially if you go for third wave coffee, which, you know,
you should just better quality and usually better for the environment,
better for the producers,
better for the farmers, better for just better for everyone.
It's not cheap by any means, but it's an investment and it's now my hobby.
And every morning, this is something that I look forward to.
Sometimes it's pretty much the only thing that's going to get me out of bed
because I really don't want to get out of bed.
Not a morning person.
Then I think about making my coffee.
And it just brings me joy.
Sometimes I feel free to me, but usually brings me joy.
Let me know if you have any questions below. I think I covered everything.
I tried to cover everything.
I tried to make it as short as I could. Like, comment. Share.
If this helped you out, that would help me out, you know,
and subscribe if you weren't already.
I'm planning on releasing more coffee content.
I'm also planning on releasing a video of some additional accessories
I got for my entire espresso game that are also budget friendly.
So stay tuned for that and check the description.
It might already be in the description there.