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A lot of people would tell you to get a separate grinder and machine as you may want to upgrade them separately, but I think that only matters if you intend to go down the espresso rabbit hole - I like that its a fairly compact all-in-one unit.
Ease of use is very subjective though. It takes a bit of effort to work out the best grind setting for each bag of beans you buy. Then you need to learn how to get the correct dose and tamp it. None of which is hard, but it's not a press-a-button and get a coffee out kind of machine. It probably takes about 10min to make a cup of coffee with letting the machine heat up, grind, tamp, steam milk, pull the shot, pour the milk. Which is fine if you don't mind it being a bit of a hobby.
they always buy the same coffee so I think once it's set, they won't need to faff about with the settings too much.
I honestly love this machine though, it makes great coffee and it feels like really nice high quality piece of kit to use.
(Also note the the UK company "Breville" is now unrelated to the Breville/Sage company - confusing or what!)
Then my standard "there are loads of ways of making truly incredible coffee that does not involve 5-9 bars of pressure and a noisy pump".
The machines above are fine, with the caveats that the built in grinder is, at best, quite poor, and falls out of alignment sometimes, leading to gushy shots because you can't grind fine enough. Sage will repair under warranty, though, and they do stand by the warranty.
Baskets and portafilter, I think, are non-standard size so it's hard to get a premium version. Again, not really target market.
I highly recommend the coffeeforums site. Loads on there have/have had these machines and you'll get a feel for the pros and cons. I sold my espresso machine and replaced it with a completely 100 percent manual espresso because I get better results, cheaper, quieter, with less hassle and less countertop space than I did with an Italian-made machine that I modified...
https://www.cafelatstore.com/products/robotpowdercoating
Is there a generic approach to descaling? We use the Delonghi acidic liquid stuff at the moment, but can't help wondering if there's an alternative or even homebrew recipe.
https://www.hasbean.co.uk/collections/cleaning-products/products/urnex-cafiza
It hasn`t been faultless - it`s had two problems and each time they sent someone out and then sent us a replacement machine. So happy to recommend their customer service too.
One of the engineers had a detailed take on coffee beans with my wife, and all beans are not equal and they need to be fresh! He recommended Rave Coffee, and we now get a regular weekly delivery of fresh beans every Wednesday. Genuinely much, much nicer than the ones bought in the local supermarket that have probably sat for ages.
Good to hear their customer support is good as we bought our machine from Amazon too (apparently!)
They often have codes if you sign up to their newsletter, like on Mother's Day etc.
I used citric acid, cheap and effective.
In the dark days of owning an espresso machine! Couldn't pay me to use one now.
I'll give that and the stuff Raymond mentioned a go.
I always use filtered water now to avoid problems but I recently stripped down the E61 group head on mine after having owned it for two years and it was pleasingly free of any substantial deposits.