When it comes to cooling down after steaming milk, the heaters are flushed with water to cool down, which sounds a bit like dropping cold water into a hot pan (I always enjoy doing that, I'll never grow up!). With the Barista Express, as it has the bigger original thermocoil, this lasts longer, a few seconds, vs a split second or so with the Barista Pro and the other thermojet machines. There are people who buy Sage coffee machines because they've heard that they make better espresso than other bean to cup machines, but the point is, they're not bean to cup machines.

I'd highly recommend using the razor tool, as it allows you ensure the dose volume is the same every time, without that you have a constantly changing variable as you're dialing in. You want to geek out with your coffee machine but your significant other, or someone else in the home, would rather poke themselves somewhere tender with something pointy than start faffing around with scales, tampers, barista tools and so on. It has the same original thermocoil as with the Barista Express, but there's no pressure gauge, and no shot buttons, you literally just grind your coffee, dose the basket, turn the dial to the left – the shot will start along with approx. 8 seconds of low pressure pre-infusion, then when it's done you turn the dial to the right and toggle hot water or steam via the selector button. These machines work differently, and the espresso they produce is different. It's actually closer to cafe crema, a very popular drink in Germany, Austria & Switzerland, which may be why bean to cup coffee machines are hugely popular in these countries in particular. For example, I was a grind size 13 for Chocolate Brownie Blend when I was putting the machine through it's paces in the studio, and I topped up the hopper, and the next shot pulled too fast followed by a message on the screen that the shot was to fast, change it to grind size 8.

Partly Assisted Coffee Machines

Not only that, but if you can't be bothered messing about with stuff like this and you just want the best quality coffee possible, you can just select “gold” which is SCA approved setting where all these variables are concerned. I've not done any blind tasting yet to really put this to the test, but my opinion at this point is that most people who're considering either the Oracle Touch or the Barista Touch Impress, probably wouldn't quite have a sensitive enough coffee palate to be able to tell the difference. So if you enjoy mainstream big brand coffee beans, and you're looking for the best value for money integrated grinder coffee machine from Sage, then the Barista Express is a great choice. At the time of writing, all machines in the Sage range except the Barista Express, have the European Etzinger burrs, so the Oracle has better-shot potential due to the superior temperature stability and precision, but mainly via bypassing the integrated grinder and pairing with a premium espresso specialist grinder. Re the heat up time, we're talking a difference of around 27 seconds, but there's not much in it when you weigh up the fact that the brew path, group & portafilter will be stone cold, so they'll need heating up anyway, which takes about the same amount of time on the Sage Thermocoil machines as it does with the machines that have the faster thermojet.

So this machine, the entry level in the Creatista range, has the ability to blow just about any other Nespresso machine out of the water, where milk texture is concerned. If you're looking for an impressive pod machine for an Airbnb for example, as I know some people choose these machines for, you can't get much better than this – unless you splurge a bit more on the Plus or the Pro, which so more or less the same just with one touch pre-sets for milkies, and more settings.The precision brewer is a brilliant filter coffee machine, and it's a new breed of filter machine vs the original old school machines that simply deliver water into a filter holder and have a hot plate to keep the coffee warm.