Sage the Barista Pro Espresso Machine, Bean to Cup Coffee Machine with Milk Frother, SES878BTR - Black Truffle

Product Information

The Sage Barista Pro, where precision meets speed. Brew perfect espresso at home with this incredible coffee machine. Under the hood, Sage has made a few key changes to differentiate the Pro from its cheaper manual bean-to-cup models. The two biggest are the addition of the firm’s custom Thermojet heating and volumetric pouring. Unlike some machines, the Barista Pro isn’t smart, and doesn’t come with any form of app support. As the name suggests, it’s also fully manual. Newbie users won’t find on-screen instructions for lattes or auto settings for specific drinks. With a single touch, the integrated conical burr grinder with dose control delivers the right amount of coffee on demand, for maximum flavour. Adjustable grind size and dose.

Barista-quality performance with a new intuitive interface that provides all the information you need to create cafe quality coffee at home. The built-in grinder delivers the right amount of ground coffee on demand, for full flavour. With a 3 second heat-up time and precise espresso extraction, you go from bean to cup, faster than ever before.Once I was in the rough ballpark, the coffee was good; once I’d spent some time tweaking the settings, it was exceptional. At around 20 seconds, the coffee’s sour notes were taking precedence; once the timer neared 30, those flavours were balanced with the bitter notes from the final few seconds of extraction. And these sour and bitter flavours were beautifully balanced with the rich body of the coffee. While this process can be rather hit and miss with cheaper machines – and that means you might only get one really good shot for every so many attempts – the Barista Pro delivers the results consistently.

All that said, there’s something hugely cathartic about the process of making coffee with a manual espresso machine of this quality. The whirr of the grinder, the quiet tap of the portafilter on the scales, the buzz of the pump and the quiet drip of coffee pouring into the cup. What makes it doubly satisfying, however, is that the Barista Pro demands relatively minimal time and effort yet still delivers consistently good results.Bar pressure is applied during the extraction process via the 15 Bar Italian pump. The steam wand textures the milk to a velvety mouthfeel. Creating silky micro-foam capable of composing silky latte art. Another key feature is that this is a volumetric machine. This means that it accurately measures how much water it’s pushing through each time and does so consistently. Cheaper machines simply run the pump for a set amount of time, so how much water actually makes it through the coffee grounds and into your cup depends entirely on how finely you grind the coffee and how hard you tamp it down. Suffice to say, if you want a consistent espresso, both in terms of flavour and amount, a volumetric machine is a giant leap forward from lesser machines.

Confusing grinder settings and the Barista Pro’s completely manual steamer will be intimidating to first-time manual machine owners, however. The two-cup capacity and single bean tray also make it inappropriate for larger shared houses. Design Longer-term you’ll need to sporadically run descaling and general cleaning cycles, both of which can be activated in the machine’s settings menu and simply require you to follow a series of on-screen commands. You should buy it if…The Barista Express is a mid-range model, it builds on the entry-level espresso machine - the Bambino - by adding a built-in burr grinder to dispense freshly ground coffee right into the portafilter. But unlike the more automated bean-to-cup style machines from other brands, this one allows you to flex your barista skills. You’ll need to tamp the coffee yourself, use the razor tool to get it to the perfect level, and steam your own milk, all of which might take a bit of practice to perfect, particularly if you’re a novice.