OK
Enough science talk.
I'm not here for the science. My review is not going to be all measurements and the like. There are a lot of people out there doing that. There are a lot of people far better at it than I am.
I'm a barista - not an engineer.
So let's talk barista now.

I ran two two hour test periods today.
The first was just shots. The second was cappuccinos.

Shots -- Once you start to understand this machine, it's actually not very hard to get consistent good shots. I'm finding that the first shot of a session (after I dial in the grind) is always off on temp, and then I'm pulling one shot out of about ten that tastes a little off temp. The other nine of ten seem to be really spot on. Best of all, they seem to be consistent not only in flavour, but also extraction time and volume.




I was working with the Hairbender again today. So far I've burned through three pounds of Stumptown Hairbender, one pound of Stumptown El Salvador CoE Las Nubitas, one pound of Olympia Coffee Roasting Morning Sun and one pound of Olympia Coffee Roasting Big Truck. Now... a lot of this big total has to do with my 'stress test' methodology of pulling tons of shots. That being said, there is also no doubt that my commercial style results in a lot of waste (purging grounds in the throat whenever swapping coffees, purging grounds in the throat after each session, filling the hopper full each time, overdosing and swiping, a temp dial-in process that involves throwing shots away, etc.). It's only fair to note that I'm not paying for any of this coffee... so my methods and techniques are probably less that relevant for the average user.

In any event... the shots were really nice. The Hairbender is five days out of the roaster and is starting to get a bit blurred as a result. I like it best at three and a half days out. None the less, these were really nice, sweet and fruity but balanced shots with some nice soft chocolate in the finish.

The cappuccinos were a more interesting experience. As time went by with these I noticed my milk getting better and better. The texture was getting closer to what I like. The flavour was getting sweeter. By the last one, the milk was pretty damn close to what you'd get off of something like a Mistral. Now... that being said... it takes a lot more work to get this milk on the Mia than the Mistral (and, to be fair, the Mistral is far harder to steam on than a Linea for example).





As you can see, by the last one there were no real bubbles, the texture is silky but more importantly it is consistent.


The Mia is actually really well designed when it comes to working the machine. The controls are intuitive, the layout is sensible and ergonically correct. The drip tray is deep, the reservoir is large. There is nothing that seems flimsy or fussy. So, as a result, the really poor design of the steam wand becomes a noticable flaw.



There are four things wrong with steaming on this machine. Two are directly related to the wand.
First - the articulation is far too limited. I'm finding I have to do some serious contortions with the pitcher and my wrist to get the angles right. It needs to have far more range.
Second - the bend in the steam wand is ridiculous and problematic. I don't get this bend thing. What's the point? It ends up creating a situation where I cannot get the wand deep enough in the pitcher without hitting the rubber protector on the wand. This combines with the lack of articulation to create some serious limitations and challenges. If the wand were straight or longer (or straight and longer) it would be far better.
Third - reaction on the knob is really slow. After you close the knob off, you'll see steam bleeding for a couple more seconds. If you make the mistake of pulling the pitcher down off the wand early, you will blow soap bubbles.
Fourth - the one hole tip. Changing to the two hole tip was required for me to get anything like good milk.

Now... as you can see from the latte art above - milk is not and has never been my big strength. I'm an espresso and coffee guy far more than I am a milk guy.

Still - at this point I honestly have to say that I'm really impressed with the Mia. If I owned one, I'd switch the steam wand tip and I'd probably try to figure out a way to plumb it in (including the drip tray drain) but regardless I'd be damn happy with this machine. As with your average HX commercial machine, the limiting factor will almost always be the barista with this machine. And that is high praise.

Hi malachi,
I have read through your review. Very good. One question though, what brew pressure is the Mia running at?
Thanks,
Arthur

It's been right about 1.1

malachi wrote:It's been right about 1.1

Sorry for my lack of clarity. I see that there is only one gauge, which I would think is boiler pressure, which I assume you are referring to. I am interested if the brew pressure was measured or set using a device like a manometer / portafilter. Is brew pressure adjustable on this machine with an adjustable OPV?
Arthur

Sorry.
Brew pressure measured out at 9BAR pretty much on the dot (gauge fitted portafilter).

And so this weekend it was time to reality-check my conclusions vis a vis the Mia. I wanted to have some folks taste the shots from the machine and also pull shots with it.

So Bronwen Serna (Hines, 2004 USBC Champ), Kyle Larson (Stumptown, 2004 NWRBC Champ) and Tonx (Victrola, roaster) came over and brought coffees with them to augment the supplies from Intelligentsia and Ecco Caffe.



It was very cool. We pulled shots of around a dozen different coffees (blends and single origins) from five different roasters over two days. We tasted, we experimented, we talked and argued and tasted some more.

Conclusions:

1 - A skilled barista can make very good espresso with the Mia.
2 - The Mia has more 'quirks' than a top commercial machine and thus requires more skill.
3 - We all agreed that we would plumb the machine if it were ours.
4 - Some coffees respond better than others with this machine. This has obvious implications.
5 - While we were able to get impressive mouthfeel out of shots and great flavour, we were never able to get the degree of definition and clarity that you can get from a Mistral or Synesso.
6 - Milk is the big weakness of the machine.



After a while, the discussion wandered from the coffees to barista techniques to theories behind both the varying performance of certain coffees and the implications of this to the machine and its performance and the 'blurriness' of the flavours to, eventually, the question of whether or not it made sense to have a machne like this at home.

None of us are the target audience for this machine. That being said, all of us agreed that there were some questions we had about buying a home espresso machine, period -- but really no questions about buying this one in particular. Given that none of us are into milk drinks larger than a 5.5oz capp, the steaming thing isn't a huge drag. The lack of clarity in flavours was a concern - but none of us are convinced that this would be solved by the use of another home machine.

Stand-out coffees included the Brazil Organic Natural Profundo from Intelligentsia, the Rwanda Gaterra from Victrola and the Mexico from Hines.

Thanks to Chris for his valuable time testing and posting here and to Dan for this very unique review setup. Much like having Michael Schumacher test-drive the new, say, Volkswagen Passat (prolly named differently your side). And that's assuming Michael had never driven any plain street car before, which I'm sure he has.

This certainly made for an interesting read. OTOH it does limit the usefulness for people who've never driven a Grand Prix Ferrari, aka modded 3-group Linea, and never will. As Chris said, "these quirks may be unique to the Mia" or to home machines in general. That remains the question indeed.

Therefore I would really appreciate Dan to do a quick comparison with his Junior re "quirks" plus take off the cover and report on the components. This should be all the more interesting, as the Junior and Mia's predecessor, La Uno, are said to be internally near identical.

Tanti saluti
sheygetz

Dan may well be doing his own review of the Mia. I like the idea of having two perspectives on a single machine - especially where one of us tends to focus on the technical and the other the sensory. You'll have to ask him if that's going to happen however.

I like the comparison with the car review, though I have to say that comparing me to Schumacher is a bit overkill. It's more like I'm one of the guys driving in one of the Champ series cars (or perhaps even more accurately, one of the test drivers for one of the manufacturers). I mean, I've been paid to make espresso, but I'm hardly even a competitor for "best barista" consideration. But thanks for the ego boost (grin).

But imagine if there were such a review - some test driver for Honda reviewing the Passat - and the test driver where to conclude that the Passat "blew his mind" and that almost all of his negative expectations turned out to be false while all his positive expectations were true. It seems to me that this would be what one might call a "rave review" no?