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The Bricoletta has the potential to produce truly great espresso under the right circumstances. During this test, there were at least a half dozen shots that were as good as anything I've pulled from any commercial machine. Now, that being said, the right circumstances are a set of constraints that need to be fully understood, managed and respected if you want to achieve this lofty goal.
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Contents |
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Introduction |
Over the course of this test, different pro baristas pulled shots of more than a dozen different coffees from over ten different roasters. Stumptown Hairbender was the most common espresso used due to my familiarity with it. The baristas who pulled shots on this machine included one novice barista as well as a number of top production and competition pros. In addition, nearly a dozen people assisted in the test by tasting shots, providing input and comments and sharing their opinions on the machine and on the results. These people ran from average coffee enthusiasts to top baristas like Bronwen Serna to expert coffee cuppers like Duane Sorenson. The report that follows is heavily influenced by their opinions.
All the baristas who had a chance to work with this machine were impressed by it. People were able to hop on it and pull great shots pretty much immediately, as long as they were given a quick introduction to timing the flush (i.e., temperature surfing). Everyone commented favorably on the machine's ease of use, but more importantly on the quality of the espresso it produced.
Apart from providing tips on temperature surfing, some people needed a reminder of the importance of taking the lever all the way down
when terminating the shot. With the Bricoletta, pulling a shot involves lifting the lever up until it is horizontal. If you only take the
lever halfway down to stop the flow, there will be no pressure release. More than a few baristas failed to do so and experienced
a messy "portafilter sneeze" as a result. Other than these two reminders, everything else was intuitive to the experienced baristas.
For the average Bricoletta user, plan to invest time and energy into understanding this machine. Don't assume that you'll set it up and immediately start pulling consistently good shots; you will be disappointed. Given a grasp of the basic barista skills, plan to pull shots, taste, experiment, evaluate and deduce for at least a week before you can start making consistently good espresso.
Much of this time is going to be spent trying to nail temperature surfing on this machine. But more importantly, be very solid on your barista fundamentals. If you don't have a handle on your grind/dose/distribute/tamp basics, trying to evaluate brew temperature from the taste of your results will be frustrating and confusing.
On the other hand, if you're new to all of this, expect to spend more time getting the hang of pulling shots. First learn the barista basics mentioned earlier and then focus on the use of this machine. Despite these caveats, the Briccoletta is a good choice for an espresso machine to learn on. It's solid and consistent and, as noted previously, intuitive.
If you're experienced with an E61 based HX machine, your learning curve obviously is going to be much shorter. Even so, you should expect to have to unlearn or relearn certain things. Not only is each machine different, but unless you've worked on a rotary-pump E61 machine, there are going to be some subtle differences that are new to you.
Once I was comfortable with the Bricoletta, I started noticing that not only were the shots from this machine better than what I've tasted from any other home machine, they were better than a whole bunch of commercial machines as well. In addition, the Bricoletta seemed to have better "range" than other home machines. By this I mean that it was able to cope with a lot of different espressos handily, ranging from blends that require extremely high brew temperature to finicky single origin espressos to darker roasted blends. The only negative trait was that the espresso exhibited the same "fuzziness" in the cup that I've seen from other home machines as well as most commercial machines—the lack of definition of flavours within the espresso. This sense of "clarity" is something that I prize in espresso, but only ever really tasted in shots from the top temperature-stabilized commercial dual boiler machines.
In the past I have posed various theories to explain this clarity issue. But, given that the sense of clarity is so elusive and isn't consistently available even from machines like the Mistral or a Synesso, I don't feel like it's in any way negative that I was not able to produce it. In addition, there are espressos that I've found to be profoundly unbalanced when pulled from a Mistral. Such a blend pulled from the Bricoletta became dramatically more rounded and the "blurring" covered some of the jagged peaks and strange holes in the profile. So the blurring is not, a priori, a negative attribute.
When it was delivered, the brew pressure on the Bricoletta was set higher than I prefer, although it was still in a "normal" range. After a couple weeks I decided to adjust it to a lower pressure. Adjusting the pressure on a Bricoletta is reasonably easy. Yes, it involves taking the case off the machine, so you should either ask 1st-line to adjust it for you before shipment, or ask for their instructions on adjusting brew pressure.
After adjusting the pump pressure down to a more standard 9.25 bar, I was dellighted the shots suddenly had that desired clarity in the cup. After extensive experimentation, I concluded the most logical explanation is that this clarity results from a combination of intra-shot brew temperature stability and intra-shot pressure stability (assuming, of course, solid barista skills including brew temperature surfing). Experiments were run with a number of different coffees and results arrived at that closely mimicked the flavour profiles expected from a temperature-stabilized commercial machine. This is an amazing fact and an incredible development.
As with any machine and especially for home machines, the results vary from coffee to coffee. The more "tolerant" espressos like the Intelligentsia Black Cat continued to shine with the Briccoletta and single origin espressos are still arguably the true sweet spot for this machine (as they seem to be with all home HX machines). That being said, some of the more notorious "difficult" espressos proved to be managable with the Bricoletta as welll.
Shockingly enough, both Bronwen and I had fabulous shots of the Espresso Vivace Vita (a truly legendary finicky blend that requires both high brew temperature and total intra-shot stability). It showed classic caramel sweetness and a heavy, creamy mouthfeel while remaining balanced and without any of the sour lemon, wet cardboard or ash notes that I've found when trying to use this blend on some machines. This was a stunning result for me. I've long speculated that it was impossible to get really good results from such a blend on an HX machine. I'm glad to say that the Bricoletta has proven me wrong.
Reminder: If you're not interested in experimenting with the machine and don't own or want to buy a portafilter-fitted pressure gauge or if you are concerned for you own well-being, safety or the warranty on the machine, you should ask 1st-line to adjust the machine's brew pressure to your desired target before shipment. I recommend asking for it to be set to a conservative 9 bar in this case.
I tried various types of espresso sessions ranging from pulling a single shot as if a drink were being made before work to "torture tests" where pounds (literally) of coffee would be burned through in short periods of time. The Bricoletta handled both tests like a champ. As with any other machine, you must set the grind and dial in the machine for each coffee. In one session, I burned through almost four whole pounds of coffee and the shots were consistent from start to finish. This is one area where I was loving the plumbed-in nature of this machine. It makes a barista's life so much better.
I also pulled shots of various styles, ranging from "old school" three ounce doubles down to super short 1½ ounce triple ristrettos. I pulled shots using the La Marzocco portafilter and the naked portafilter using both a ridged LM double basket and a triple basket (depending on the coffee) as well as the stock Briccoletta double basket and portafilter. While the Bricoletta handled all of these styles with ease and aplomb, this did uncover one of the few negatives of this machine.
In experimenting
with all the various portafilter options, I discovered some issues with the stock Bricoletta portafilter. I
started by pulling successive shots using the stock portafilter and stock double basket. As noted earlier, I had
stripped the chrome from the interior of the portafilter beforehand. I found the shots to taste a bit
unbalanced and almost overextracted. I experimented with dose size but could not get rid of what tasted to me like an over-emphasized upper
midrange. Shots from the stock basket and
the La Marzocco portafilter were improved over the stock basket and
the stock portafilter, though slightly down in volume, depth and sweetness over
the full La Marzocco setup.
The stock basket is fine, but there may be something not right about the stock portafilter. Now, to be fair, I cannot guarantee that most people would care or even notice the difference. And without testing a few other Bricoletta portafilters, it's not clear if this is a design issue or just something about this particular portafilter. Needless to say, I would consider upgrading to a La Marzocco portafilter and basket if you have any issues with the midrange flavours of the Bricoletta's shots.
In general, the shots from the Bricoletta were very good. In addition, the Bricoletta is a flexible machine, once you get a handle on temperature (and temperature profile) management. The pump pressure can be fairly easily altered to get various different extraction profiles and (by temperature surfing) this can be coupled with different brew temperatures to provide a relatively controlled environment for experimentation. If you're shooting for great clarity of flavour, the Bricoletta can deliver it. If you want smoothness and sweetness, assuming the coffee you're working with possesses these attributes, no problem. Honestly, with the Bricoletta, the machine is very unlikely to be the limiting factor.
The scores below compare the Bricoletta to the machines I know the best—a stock La Marzocco Linea three group semi-auto, a Schomer modified (temperature stabilized) La Marzocco Linea two group semi-auto, and a three group Mistral (see comparative equipment for more details). These scores are based purely on the opinions of the tasters involved (myself included) and not on any suspected or assumed experience of a mythic "average user." I'll score each machine on a 0-10 scale using the following attributes:
| Bricoletta | Stock LM Linea | Modified Linea | Mistral | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Ease of Use |
6 |
8 |
9 |
8 |
|
Aromatics |
7 |
7 |
7 |
8 |
|
Mouthfeel |
7 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
|
Reproduction |
8 |
7 |
8 |
8 |
|
Clarity |
8 |
6 |
8 |
9 |
|
Flavor |
8 |
8 |
8 |
9 |
44 |
44 |
48 |
51 |
What can I say? The Bricoletta is great. Now, of course all these scores are for use in a home environment. If the machines were evaluated for use in a coffee bar we'd like see different attributes for evaluation and very different results. Nonetheless, when you look at that score you have to understand that the Bricoletta is toe-to-toe with a $10k commercial machine, a the machine which most in the US consider the benchmark for high-end commercial machines. What's most interesting is that were it not for the ease of use issues, it would actually outscore the Linea. At a practical level, this means that a skilled barista is likely to get better shots (with more work) from the Bricoletta than from a stock Linea! And that is a truly amazing statement.
As I've mentioned before (and as a caveat), I'm
not really a 'milk guy' in terms of either drink preference or skill. That being said, I've got a lot of experience with
milk and am probably better with it than all but the top milk whisperers out
there. 
The stock tip on the Bricoletta is a "bullet style" two hole tip. While I found that this tip was workable (after I patched a small fitment problem with some Teflon tape), I didn't really like its steam dispersion pattern. My opinion was shared by all the other baristas who tried the stock tip. It was hard to get a good "roll" going and that it was far too easy to get a hot spot in the pitcher.
After a few days, I swapped a Gold Pro two-hole tip from 1st-line Equipment in place of the stock tip. While the fit is not ideal and requires some Teflon tape to make it all work, this change was a good one. With this tip it was far easier to produce excellent milk. The stock tip is fine, and with it I could make decent milk, especially milk for lattes. Good, thick cappuccino milk was a bit tougher. The aftermarket tip is far better for cappuccino milk as it makes stretching far more controllable.
A four-hole commericial tip was also evaluated. Plainly the Bricoletta doesn't have adequate power that this tip demands. With the two-hole tips, however, the Bricoletta has excellent power. I found it no problem at all to steam up to 10 ounces of cold milk. This should be sufficient for anything up to and including 16 ounce drinks.
The orientation and rotation of the wand are good, though it would be great if it had a tiny bit more range—especially to the outside. With small amounts of milk, I must hold the pitcher at a severe angle even with the steam wand at its maximum articulation.
A couple things to note about steaming with this machine: First, the steam wand gets quite hot indeed and is located right where it's possible (and even likely) that you'll bump it while pulling shots. Get into the habit of pushing the steam wand back along the side of the casing once you're done using it. Secondly, with anything but the smallest amount of milk, the Bricoletta takes longer to steam than it will take to pull a shot. As a result, it's best to develop a habit of steaming first and then being very smooth, fluid and quick when pulling your shot second. Finally, shutting off steam is not immediate and you'll need to anticipate the end temperature as a result (it can be very messy if you pull the steam wand out of the pitcher while it's still emitting steam).
All things considered, it's hard to really complain about with the steaming performance of the Bricoletta. Sure, it's not a powerhouse steamer. But it's a 110v machine, so this is no shock. Yes, the stock tip is only OK. But it works and a replacement tip is cheap. Anything else is just nitpicking and the reality is that all these complaints are managable through understanding and practice.
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