Drinks
Lungo
A longer pull through the same dose. Easy to get wrong: past a point the extraction turns thin and bitter rather than simply bigger, which is why temperature stability matters more here than raw pressure.
- SageBarista Express BES875A PID, a real wand and a burr grinder in one body, which is why it is the machine most people learn on. It is also messy to dose and makes you wait between brewing and steaming, and both are the price of the format.Espresso8.6
- GaggiaClassic Evo ProA commercial 58 mm group and a real wand at a domestic price, with a brass boiler since the E24 revision. No PID, so you learn to time the warm-up — and almost everything on it can be replaced by hand.Espresso8.5
- SageBambino PlusThree seconds from cold to ready, and an automatic wand that textures milk better than most people do by hand. Buy it for the milk and the speed; buy the grinder separately, because there isn't one.Espresso8.4
- RancilioSilvia V6A 300 ml brass boiler and a wand borrowed from Rancilio's café machines: steam that does not run out halfway through the second jug. Heavy, no PID, and a reputation built over nearly thirty years.Espresso8.3
- JuraE8Sealed, one-touch and built to repeat itself for a decade. The brew unit is not meant to come out, which is the trade: you get consistency and give up the ability to service it yourself.BeanToCup8.1
- De'LonghiMagnifica S ECAM22.110Fifteen years on sale and still the bean-to-cup most British households end up with. The brew group comes out for cleaning, which is the feature that decides year five, and the two finest grind settings jam it.BeanToCup7.8
- NespressoVertuo PopThirty seconds from cold to cup, and genuinely decent coffee for a capsule machine. The machine is the cheap part: the running cost lives in the capsules, and the tank is small enough to notice.Pod6.5
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