UK Best Price & Read Reviews on Discount Kitchen Appliances for Sale

I’ve had this machine now for several weeks. Whilst the coffee has been excellent, I concur with previous reviewers regarding the plasticky nature of the product (although fortunately you mostly look at the stainless steel front).

It is worth noting that you will have to empty the drip tray quite frequently. When the machine does its self cleaning programme, it also does an internal clean with water ending up under the machine in the extended drip tray. So even if spillage is kept to a minimum, you’ll probably still have to empty it every other day. Speaking of the drip tray, the polished stainless steel tray is particularly prone to scratching – which is a pity.

The ‘pannarello’ steam wand is also placed quite low on the machine, so it is perhaps more difficult to get larger jugs under. The foam quality coming from the wand is also far removed from the elusive ‘micro foam’, so you can forget about doing latte art although some fixes have been suggested on the internet.

On the plus-side, I have no issues with the temperature of the coffee, which is hot.

Many Gaggia bean to cup machines have been notoriously poor quality (check out some of the Gaggia Titanium reviews available online), so we’ll have to see if anyone is willing to update their review in a year’s time or so. I’m keeping my fingers crossed…

The price for this machine (Amazon won’t let me add the amount to this review) seems on the steep side (despite its excellent coffee), particularly when you see that this machine sells for about a third less on the continent – which I think is a better reflection of the value of the product.

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LegendaryMrDude (Essex, UK) –

  

  

As bean-to-cup coffee machines go, this one is quite a gem. At £600 (Or thereabouts) it’s certainly not cheap, but if you LOVE your coffee then for a device that will take your favourite beans and turn them into a fantastically fresh cup of coffee in under 2 minutes at the push of a single button – it could well be worth it. At this stage, I will confess that I didn’t pay full price for mine – I bought it with a huge stack of Nectar points, plus £150 cash to make up the shortfall, but I’m more than happy with it.

Some of the key plus-points are:

– It’s small. I have a tiny kitchen and this fits neatly in a corner. You’ve got to leave the right hand-side of the machine accessible for cleaning, but it really is much smaller than I’d been fearing when I ordered it.
– The coffee brewing is highly configurable, from the grind of the beans to the strength of the brew, it can be customised to your taste (although it can be a bit fiddly)
– It takes beans and ready-ground coffee, which means you can have decaf & regular without too much hassle.
– It’s got two boilers so you can steam milk while your shot of espresso is still warm.
– Everything is really easy to access for refilling, cleaning etc.
– It uses 1W of power in standby (which it switches to after 60 minutes of not being used)

All of that is very good, but what’s the coffee like?

In a word – fantastic!

The coffee from this machine really is best enjoyed in a glass as it allows you to watch the crema settl on the top and appreciate the full richness of the colour (Bodum do some really nice (if fragile) double-walled coffee glasses). The crema is one of the best I’ve seen from a home machine, thick, rich in colour and with a really smooth feel.

Changing the coarseness of the grind is the easiest way to fine-tune the flavour of your coffee and there are other options for the truly adventurous but I’ve found that the finest grind setting and regular programme are perfect to my taste.

In use it’s simplicity itself. There are three strength settings which are factory set but can be changed (if you can be bothered to read the instructions) and an option for ready-ground coffee. Select the strength, and then choose whether you want a shot of espresso (2oz) or a longer coffee (8oz) and push the button. Off it goes, grinding enough beans for the job, compressing them into a tablet, forcing hot water through it at 15bar of pressure and out into your cup/glass, disposing of the used tablet in the interal waste compartment ready for disposal later.

If you want two cups at the same time just press the button twice. It will grind one set of beans, filling two cups, one from each of the two spouts and then grinding another set of beans until it’s given both cups a full measure.

The steam wand is a treat to use. The double-boiler system means that it’s ready to steam within 5 – 10 seconds of switching it to steam mode and it does an amazing job of frothing milk. Be warned – after learning to froth your own milk you’re unlikely to be satisfied by the poor attempts in most cafes ever again.

It all comes apart easily for cleaning and everything is well put together. The software in the machine is apparently set to tell you when it needs descaling, based on a medium water hardness, The manual recommends that you increase the frequency to before the warning light comes on if you live in a hard water area – the warning light first came on for me after about 2 months of use… the descaling process is a royal pain and the descaling solution is not cheap either, you have been warned.

It’s not without gripes but these are minor in the scheme of things.

– The water tank is hidden from view which means the only way to tell how much water is in the machine is to remove the tank and replace it. Sure, there’s an “out of water warning light” but this only comes on when there’s not enough water to do anything – so if there’s only enough water to make half a coffee, you’ll only find out half-way through making a cup…

– The side panel that opens for cleaning of the brew-set is only held closed by a magnet and frequently pops open when brewing, sometimes tripping a safety shutdown of the brewing process which can be annoying.

– If you over-fill the pre-ground coffee compartment, it throws the whole lot away – and while the instructions say that a level scoop is enough, I’ve found that just under a level scoop is safer (and much less wasteful) as often a full level scoop will be discarded.

– The water tank is quite small – at about 1.5l it runs out surprisingly quickly.

Despite being advertised as coming with a water-filter, mine didn’t ship with one – at least not one that’s visible. Brita Intenza cartridges are available (for about £12 each)…

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M. R. Greenhead “martingreenhead” (London) –

  

  

  

Customer Video Review Length:: 6:53 Mins

My first ever video review. The Brera is a really great machine which make superb coffee and can be used to heat milk for super hot chocolate. Also gives hot water on demand. I haven’t worked out how to “personalise” the strength of the coffee, I’m not sure this is actually possible (leave a comment if you worked it out).

Really recommened this machine, for both taste and ease. Expensive but will repay the investment many times over if you appreciate real coffee – it will be hard to go back to instant. Minor gripe around cleaning but that is the way to keep the coffee tasting great.

Top tip – make sure the machine is definitely finished before opening the ground drawer. It took me a lot of time to work out how to fix it when I was impatient (actually during the filming of the review – I cut this bit out!).

The video was filmed with a Sanyo VPC-CG100EXBK-B Xacti CG100 Full HD Dual Camcorder with 14M Photos and HDMI – Black on about the lowest quality setting to keep the file size down.

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