Sage the Bambino Plus Espresso Machine, Coffee Machine with Milk Frother, SES500BTR - Black Truffle

Product Information

You may find the coffee a touch cooler and the taste a tad more bitter compared to some top-of-the-range professional machines

The symmetry of both machines’ control panels is notable– with single and double shot options on the left side and steam or water buttons on the right side of their respective control panels.Effectively, with the right beans and grind size, The Bambino Plus can hold its own against the best. Milk drink quality The ThermoJet heating system achieves the optimum extraction temperature, 93, in 3 seconds. PID temperature control with the Bambino Plus maintains the water temperature within +/- 1 , allowing the profile of coffee to be showcased.

Coffee connoisseurs will scoff at machines like the Bambino Plus. Admittedly, it’s not what we’d recommend for people who’ve already honed their skills on a cheaper fully manual machine. But, just as its high-end Touch models brought manual espresso excellence within the reach of less experienced home baristas, Sage now wants to encourage everyone to take the manual espresso plunge. Breville Bambino Plus has a hands-free automatic frothing wand. The plain Bambino requires manual handling. The Sage Bambino Plus is a great machine for those wanting to start brewing espresso at home. Delivering quality performance, the 54mm portafilter can extract 19 grams of ground coffee when used. Making a good espresso relies on quite a few factors, and one of them is making sure the coffee grounds are well compacted. To help you do this, a metal tamper is provided, and unlike on many other machines this isn’t attached to the machine itself, which makes it much easier to apply even force to the grounds. Lots of espresso machines also have a plastic tamper, so it’s good to see a more sturdy metal tamper here.They both have pre-programmed settings and are easy to use, making them perfect for espresso novices. However, a few key differences may make one machine better for your needs than the other. Flashing lights indicate when upkeep is needed (although a digital screen would have been preferable) For our tests we used the same good-quality ground coffee that we’ve used to make hundreds of cups of coffee with a French press, but we found that the Bambino Plus surpassed our expectations, and gave us a smoother and tastier cup of coffee. Note that you won’t be able to grind beans with this machine as you can with Breville’s pricier Oracle Touch machine. The Bambino Plus is also a good value for money, offering more milk-frothing features. Finding another compact machine that makes such excellent and reliable milk texturing is hard. However, besides advanced frothing features, the other benefits of the Breville Bambino Plus don’t seem attractive enough to pay that extra money.

If you like cappuccinos and lattes, then this is the machine for you. The Bambino Plus’ thermojet-powered steam wand produces one off the silkiest and creamiest micro froths in cappuccino land, and you can set both the temperature of the froth mixture and its consistency from low to high. There’s nothing to complain about in terms of the finished product. The crema was nice and oily, with a fine texture without bubbles, and it lasted for a couple of minutes after pouring. I measured the espresso temperature at 55ºC, which is just a little on the cool side. Whichever you choose, using the Bambino Plus couldn’t be any more straightforward. Three large round buttons on the front allow you to choose a single shot, double shot, or begin the steaming function, and two smaller buttons adjust the milk temperature and amount of foam. There’s precious little waiting around, either: the machine is good to go just a few seconds after prodding one of the front buttons to wake it up. Bean-to-cup coffee machines: These gadgets are all about convenience: they grind and press the coffee beans and make espresso all in one go, so you get fresh tasting coffee every time. The thing to be mindful of is price, as some models can be expensive. If you're using your machine every day, they may also require more regular cleaning, especially those with a fresh milk operating system.

Next on our testing agenda was to see how well the steam wand worked. We chose to opt for the medium texture setting on the Bambino Plus, and the medium heat setting. We used the automatic setting, and placed the milk jug on the sensor so that the machine would know when the milk had reached the desired temperature. The noise level when the steam wand was in action was even lower than when we were making espresso, reaching 51 decibels while the milk was frothing. When we added the milk to our coffee, it retained a velvety texture that lasted all the way down our drink as we sipped it. Manual espresso machines can be notoriously complicated to use but this one does most of the number crunching for you. In essence, it has just two extraction buttons, one for a short and one for a double. The default for the single shot is short, barista short – as in a single mouthful. However, extraction length can easily be customised to suit your size of cups. The same applies to the double shot function.