OneBlack writeup.

Ordered 6/27 by phone. Received 9/23. Extremely well packed. Very dense single wall cardboard with about a half dozen layers of bubble wrap around the machine.



Manual is simple and terse. It's pretty much the same as his other machines. No empty tank shutoff. Steam valve has to be bled on each power up before you get steam. Not a problem. Power up. Wait for the group to get hot (15-20 minutes). Bleed the steam wand. Good to go in about 90 seconds.

It is short. Nice for filling. Not as nice for cup height. If you want to brew into a cup you have to lose the PF spout. I tried a naked PF. OK, but I tire of the occasional spritz. My personal solution was to cut the nozzle off a Rancilio PF. That gives me (just) enough clearance to get a big latte cup under the PF. About a mm has to be taken off a Rancilio PF's flanges for them to lock in. If you round the flanges too much, the PF can walk out of the head under pressure. DAMHIKT. Do most of it with a belt sander, and then finish with a flat file.

This is a 3" tape measure housing.



The shipped double basket really begs for about an 18gm dose. I get away with 15gm with a Rancilio double basket . So I use the Rancilio. Just a personal preference.

A single 3mm allen bolt holds the cup warmer on. Very convenient to remove if you want to dust the innards etc. The outer case removes in less than a minute with four stainless phillips screws. Very nice. You can use the machine just fine without the covers - as everything functional is attached to an internal frame.







The water tank. It does get up to about 135 degrees F, but that's about it. I don't see any evidence that affects flushing. The flash boil flushes have been no more that 1.5 ounces - if that. I see no functional problem with the heat of the holding tank. Filling the tank is really easy, and the way the fill port is designed it's very easy to fill without overfilling. Much less of an issue than I had expected.

As shipped the cap on the tank makes way too much racket when the pump kicks in. I fashioned a yogurt lid gasket to calm that down. IMO Salvatore should ship such a (10 cent) gasket with the machine.

OK. The coffee. Honest to God, I cannot seem to make a bad cup with this thing. I do a careful weigh/dose/tamp with a SJ grinder, but still. It's weird how good the coffee is. Smooth tiger striped crema that seems to go blond much, much later than with a Silvia. The pump is just a little Ulka. Someone with more knowledge than me will have to explain why it oozes crema the way it does.

Steam. The shipped steam wand head is different than pictured on the Salvatore web. It's basically a cylinder with side holes to accommodate air injection into the stretch phase. It took me at least a dozen pulls to get anything but slurp with it. After getting serious and using the soap drop technique I started getting it. Essentially I don't have to go to the side of the milk, and controlling the stretch is easier with the volume knob than with wand depth. Most of this is I'm sure attributable to the fact that all I knew was a Silvia, and the OneBlack is a little steaming beast. It really cranks.

The valves. What nice things. Smooth as silk. Solid. Functional. And the way the steam and water arms fold up over the tray and then unfold out to the sides is just good design.



Drip tray. Smallish, but you can remove it very easily. Non-issue.



The big honking pstat. It does click a lot, and you can hear it. Someone might object, but I would have to work at it to be annoyed by it.

Maintenance. The manual has clear back-flushing instructions. The process is easy and effective. Not hard to get in the habit of at all. You have to sign a waiver that you will only use soft, filtered water, and mail that back to Salvatore.

What else.... You get a few extras - pictured here.



I'm happy to answer questions as best I can. I owe a lot of good coffee drinking to this web site.


-bruce campbell

Hi there - great initial review! I wish they were still taking orders for this one - maybe towards the end of the year (though I doubt it). Most people seem to have a legendarily good experience dealing with Salvatore - did you find all of your interactions with them were satisfactory?

Very interesting. I'd love to read more of your coffee experience with the machine:

• Coffees[s] you're using.
• Some details of dose vs. flavors you get with it--more descriptive than a "good" cup.
• Of course, some extraction/steaming/results pics would be great. It's always fun to have a visual cue to what we're reading about. Your pictures of the internals are very helpful.

Thanks for doing this. There appears to be a distinct lack of publicity for Salvatore machines out there, so this will likely be very helpful for prospective buyers.

You need to lighten you photos 1 f-stop.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a couple of rubber boots to cover the heater terminals. They will protect you while working on the machine and the terminals from any stray moisture. Shame on Salvatore

Thanks for posting your review. I was wondering when we were going to hear from the folks who bought the first run of Salvatore's new machines. Looks like an excellent value for the money.

It's hard to tell from your pictures what the gauge on the front reads. Is it for boiler pressure, brew pressure, or both? Also, you mention the drip tray is small. Any chance you could measure its volume? Again, it's difficult to tell from the pictures how deep it really is.

Thanks again for your excellent thoughts. Enjoy the 'spro.

I am surprised that they made the machine so short. One thing I love about my machine is the cup room.

This is a mistake that would be easy and cheap to have fixed. (I think)

Thanks for the review!

Beezer wrote:

It's hard to tell from your pictures what the gauge on the front reads. Is it for boiler pressure, brew pressure, or both?

This is a question I'm confident I can answer - it is a boiler pressure gauge. I recently called them to ask about the semiautomatic and asked if you could get a brew pressure gauge installed and they said that they didn't install them because as long as the brew pressure was correctly set at the factory there was no reason to monitor it as a user (and that since the pump isn't adjustable by the user it wouldn't help to know what it was reading anyway). As someone who has never used a nonlever machine, this seemed to make sense, but I wondered why so many machines include a brew pressure gauge if they aren't useful to the barista. I'm curious what those with more experience think.

In any event, it certainly looks like the one black is a great buy and unique in its price range.

Not enough cup room. Too bad. Seems like a nice machine but the shortness is a "show stopper" for me. Maybe he'll make some changes once he gets some feedback. If so, it would definitely make my shopping list.

da gino wrote: As someone who has never used a nonlever machine, this seemed to make sense, but I wondered why so many machines include a brew pressure gauge if they aren't useful to the barista.

To me the gauge is a useful indication for maintenance for one thing. OPV performance can change over time (and with help of scale) when using a vibe pump. Same can happen for rotary pump, lately mine was creeping and fluttering a lot lately +/- 0.2 bars I'd say, caused by a used o-ring and scale on the piston controlling the pump pressure. It's always nice to get all the feedback you can get from your equipment.

I'll try answer your questions in turn.

shanghai)

I called them to place the order, and I think there were two followup emails. It was pretty much exactly what I would expect from a small, busy shop who doesn't have the resources/time to yak with me. My emails were replied to within one day. There were brief, polite, and accurate. When I ordered the machine the projected delivery was 6-8 weeks. Turned out to be 12. That did not surprise me. When I first saw the announcement I didn't see how they could keep up, and it looks like that is maybe what has happened. I am completely satisfied with my interactions with them, but I can imagine a scenario where a certain type of customer might not feel like the Salvatore's were giving them the attention they wanted. I would probably side with Salvatore in those cases.

cafeIKE)

Thanks. I didn't even think of those bare terminals. I will try to do some better pix when the rains start here, but don't be surprised if it doesn't happen.

shadowfax)

I am new to this. No expert in any sense. I do have a small roaster and I order greens from Sweet Marias. My sophistication is limited at this point to roasting just into the second crack and then cooling down. I have used three coffees so far with this machine - Rwandan, Ethiopian, and a SM blend.

The thing about this machine compared to a Silvia is that the pulls are just more consistent. With a Silvia, it seemed to be quite easy to set up a basket that would wash out (go blond/watery) within 10 seconds or so. This machine almost always seems to go at least twice as far into the pull before the darker veins in the pull go away. Taste wise, I just don't get bitter or sour cups. If I got sloppy with the silvia, the taste was the first thing to go. Not so with this puppy. I am getting more and varied flavors and aromas, but for me that is a result of bitterness not getting in the way. As to a more nuanced recitation about cup differences between machines, I've read that sort of stuff, but I'm just not sensitive or experienced enough to write at that level, at least not w/out feeling I am BS-ing myself a bit. Maybe I'll get there.

And I will try to do some steam/pull action pix, but it will most likely have to wait until the weather goes foul here - which is only a (very) few weeks out right now.

Beezer)

Yes, it's a boiler pressure gauge. As shipped the pstat cycles between 1.0 and 1.2 bars.

Endo and Sweener)

If you really want the elegant streams coming from a PF spout then this thing is no good for you. But if gizmo dominance is an issue in your kitchen, then the shortness starts to be a plus. It has a very polite presentation.

-bruce