Hello!
For a long time, I've been drinking Moka Pot and drip coffee at home.
I like them both, and intend to keep drinking them.

Recently, however, my brother bought me a Minipresso GR as a present. It looked a bit gimmicky, but I tried it out, and I really enjoyed the espresso it made. The workflow is a little more cumbersome than I would like it to be, though:
It only holds 8g of grounds, and the basket is very small making spillage of grounds almost inevitable; holding the machine steady while pumping can get a little tiring; and clean up is a little more involved than I would like.

So now I'm looking for something that gives as tasty a shot as the Minipresso, but with greater convenience.
The Robot can hold up to 20g of grounds, it has a 58mm diameter basket for easy pouring of grounds and hot water, appears stable, and easy to clean.

Am I right in thinking that the Robot is everything I need?
Is there anything I've overlooked?
Can anyone tell me how much water the Robot basket can hold?
Does anyone with the Barista version think that the cheaper, non-Barista version would have done them just as well?

Thanks in advance!

Simon

There's a user experience thread on the Robot. It's really long, but it's worth your while to skim and look for highlights. Short answer to your question though, is absolutely, provided you pair it with a good grinder, a skilled user can pull pro level shots with a robot. It's a great tool that can hang with much or expensive machines.

As to how much coffee it can hold, since the water chamber and the basket are one in the same, there is plenty of room for coffee. It's important to keep in mind though that in terms of its flow rate the Robot basket is still meant to be a "double" basket, ie 14g nominal. Plenty of people overdose (I use 17g as my default) and you certainly can dose 20g, but be aware that's a pretty significant overdose.

How much water it holds is hard to put a number on, because it depends on how much coffee you put in, how finely ground it is, how firmly compacted, etc. I can say though that it holds more than enough water to pull a lungo at any reasonable dose. My typical shot is 17g espresso 34g liquid output, and I don't measure the "extra" liquid that I let drain into another cup, but there is quite a bit left over.

I believe on the videos they say it holds about 150 ml of water after coffee & screen go in.

SandraF wrote:I believe on the videos they say it holds about 150 ml of water after coffee & screen go in.

It's approximately 150ml total volume without anything inside. That's to the rim. If you fill it with just water to about 0.5cm below the rim it will accept about 135ml of water. That's with no coffee, no screen.

If you grind and tamp 20g of medium roast coffee, place the screen on top, and then fill to within 0.5cm it will accept a little over 100ml (I measured 103g). The water starts to seep into the puck as you pour so if you pour slowly you can fit a little more.

A smaller dose doesn't change things that much. A dose that is 25% smaller (i.e. 15g) would mean the puck is only 3-4mm thinner. That translates into something less than 10ml additional room for water, or roughly 110ml total.

The puck will hold something close its weight in water. So with a 20g dose you'd be able to pull a shot of at least 80g. At least in theory.

Thanks for the clarification!

Thank you all for the replies.
150ml total volume sounds great. And, it seems the consensus is - yes!

One further question:
For those of you who have the Barista model - do you use the pressure meter?
For those of you who have the non-Barista model - do you wish you could see how much pressure you're using?

Thanks again!

Sib wrote: One further question:
For those of you who have the Barista model - do you use the pressure meter?
For those of you who have the non-Barista model - do you wish you could see how much pressure you're using?

I have the Barista model and found the gauge very useful at the beginning, when I didn't know how 6-8 bar pressure should feel like. Once I gained experience after 3-4 months of experimenting with different pressure techniques, I don't use it anymore and even wouldn't mind removing it all together for longevity reasons (need to figure out how to get the plug that goes into the piston).

@Voided Tea
Thanks for replying.

I've been making my way through the monster Robot thread here on Home Barista, and I think I'm going to plump for the non-Barista version..!

I picked up the non-Barista Kickstarter version, but I've had prior manual lever experience. I started out with the La Peppina spring lever and just had to learn how to pull good shots with it without a gauge and without a bottomless portafilter. I'm not sure how much the learning curve with the Robot changes with and without the gauge, but if you're the type of person that wants to be able to walk up and pull a shot based on the feel of the lever and the visual cues of the pour the gauge won't be useful long-term. However, if you want to look at pressure profiling with repeatable, numeric pressure segments then the gauge would help with that.

I bought the barista model and I am glad that I did, and as you see, there are plenty that are happy without it.

I would have been 'totally' lost at the beginning without it,

Maybe you have more experience than I do, and did back when I got my robot, and you will be fine. Now, after using it for a while, I could definitely guess what is close, but since it is there I do use it everyday. For me being consistent with everything is important, so I weigh my beans, output, time my shots, etc.

There is an alternative if you don't think you need the gauge all the time. You can put a bathroom scale under the robot to get a feel for the proper strength needed to get to the proper pressure.