Breville The Razor Precision Dose Trimming Tool For 54mm Filter Baskets

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You have almost double the number of grind adjustments, or grinding steps, on the Barista Pro vs the Barista Express, at 30 Vs 18. It looks great, it screams “home barista”, I like the look of the portafilter, the tamper and the dosing funnel, but that's where the impressive stuff ended for me , and it's mainly down to the 8 grind settings. If that assumption is incorrect and you're in the States or Australia or some other country which is probably warmer and drier than the UK, you'll probably know this machine as the Breville Barista Pro.

So if you know you're going to be using freshly roasted beans, using the traditional single-walled baskets, you're going to find things a bit easier with the Barista Pro, which has the OPV set to 9 bars. Third wave specialty coffee sees coffee as an artisanal food, produced to achieve the ultimate taste experience. When it comes to replicating third wave specialty coffee at home, there’s no cutting corners. That’s why Sage created a range of automatic and manual espresso machines that honour tradition and techniques that define the very fundamentals required for third wave specialty coffee. You don't need to go mad with it, you will probably find that with new burrs with no wear if you just take it down to five, you'll be absolutely fine. Less noise ESPRESSO MACHINE WITH GRIND SIZE DIAL: Simple and intuitive giving you control over the grind size no matter what type of bean you're grindingChoose one, and three icons appear on-screen: Grind, Brew and, where relevant, Milk. Below each icon, you’ll see the default settings for each stage. Tap these, and you can tweak the settings to your heart’s content. They're a bit messy where grinding is concerned, the “tap and go” grinding feature is a bit of a joke, as you have to hold it down, so how is that tap and go? But they're cheap, and I've not seen any Sage Barista Express alternatives that I think are any better.

READ NEXT: Our guide to buying the best coffee machines Sage Barista Touch review: Design and Features You swipe and touch the screen to select the coffee you want to make, and the machine takes you through the process and allows you to customize that particular coffee to your taste. The Barista Express comes with the Razor tool, a really clever little device that is used after tamping to ensure the precise dose.

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Can’t be bothered with any of this faff? Then take a look at our guide to the best coffee machines below. There you’ll find plenty of fully-automatic bean-to-cup and coffee pod machines which will provide good, if not the best, coffee – but with the absolute minimum of hassle.

If you're one of the many people I speak to who want to go down the home barista path but aren't super fussed about exactly dialing in and are more than happy with getting somewhere in the ballpark, then the Barista Pro would suit you fine. If you want to get perfect results with each coffee bean you buy, though, the grinding range is possibly going to frustrate you. This is why I'm such a fan of Sage coffee machines in general because they're all about getting the best possible results from freshly roasted coffee beans. Not only that, but you can completely customise each coffee by tweaking the strength, amount of foam and milk temperature, and you can save these settings, you can also create and name your own personalised coffees. Sage Barista Pro Vs other Sage espresso machines There's only one thing I don't really like about the Sage Barista Pro, and that's the integrated grinder – which I know is a bit ironic given this is one of the main selling points of the Barista range, but hear me out. If you're planning on using mainstream supermarket (not fresh) beans, then as long as you know that you need to use the dual-walled baskets, then the Barista Express is cheaper, so it makes sense to go for that, but if you're wanting to use freshly roasted beans, I think you'll find you'll get on much better with the Barista Express Impress.OK, the bean hopper has a tight-fitting lid, but still, you'd be better storing your beans in an airtight container and just putting beans in the hopper that you're about to use.