Breville BES900XL Dual Boiler - Page 2
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shapeshifter
- Posts: 8
- Joined: 13 years ago
Hi guys, I'm one of the lucky people that have been able to have a play of the new Breville Dual Boiler.
I'm only a home user but you might be interested in the short review that my partner and I did when we attended the launch in Australia.
We were lucky enough to be invited to the launch of Breville's new espresso machine, the Breville Dual Boiler, what follows is a summary of what we found.
The idea behind the machine was to make high end coffee technology available to the home user.
What a way to bring the cafe into the home, for the everyday person to be able to produce a coffee as great or better than the one they buy from their local cafe and for that coffee to be consistent.
My first impression and the lasting impression is one of an intuitive, natural ease of use. It is a feeling of coming home.
As with anything new there is a learning period but it is simple enough for the beginner, I feel that it is something that they won't have to be hesitant about, they can just get in there and have a go, but also has the ability to become more interactive as the user progresses through their coffee journey, having full control over temperature and settings.
The machine has a swivel base that does away with the difficultly of removing and cleaning the water tank, simply turn the dial in the base and you have full access as you turn the machine around. To fill the tank there is no need to move cups to gain access, the tank fills from a section at the front of the warming tray. Speaking of warming tray, it is very warm, bordering on hot to the sensitive hand, that is impressive not a burn hazard!
I love that the hot water outlet is 'hidden' slightly behind and in between the steam wand and the portafilter and has an easy to use dial on the left hand side of the machine, it holds a nice stream that won't go everywhere. Steam from the steam wand is instant with nary a trace of water at the start.
The inclusion of something as simple as a tamper is great, sure it's not the market leader in being ergonomically made to fit your hand but they have gone to the extent of making it so you know how far down the tamper should go into the basket when tamping, another way of taking out the variables for people that are only new to manual coffee machines. I discovered that I don't know my own strength and over extracted a few shots while we played with grind settings and tamping weight. (Noting the excellent convenience of being able to monitor the brew feed pressure to see how you are going with tamp force) I backed off the tamp and pulled a few shots that were drinkable, even a small latte that was delicious.
Have to poke a bit of fun at the comments about material selections. Regarding the use of Teflon in the machine, (aside from the issue that if you're getting it hot enough for the Teflon to degrade then you're going to have some... uh... burnt coffee!) see the attached pictures - the Teflon components are not even in the water flow path. Most conclusively not a concern, in my mind. The use of plated alloy in the grouphead is the best SAFE choice. Brass has been mentioned as an alternative, but to those who might consider such an option, I implore you to do some research on the content of brass; lead... arsenic... !!! The suggestions regarding degradation of the stainless components via production of chlorides from the chlorine contained in water, facilitated by the pressure in the system, is quite dubious. At 9,000 bar, perhaps, but at 9 bar this is not a sensible concern.
Overall the choices of materials for the machine are, from an engineering standpoint, as optimal as one could rationally expect - particularly in regard to corrosion and trace contamination of the water and steam. The water path appears to be almost entirely stainless steel; noting the few Coffee Snob comments criticising this choice, I challenge anyone to offer a superior, practical alternative (unobtainium does not constitute practical!).
As home roasters it really does suit us as we can tweak the settings to suit each individual bean we roast to be able to get the most out of the bean.
In the short time we experimented with the machine we have already found things that we would do differently in the set up compared to how the machine was set up on the night but that is purely an individual preference about taste, we love that the machine allows us to do this, after all it is about us and not about what others might or might not like.
On a final note, noise being a critical factor for us, the machine is very quiet. We will be purchasing one!
I'm only a home user but you might be interested in the short review that my partner and I did when we attended the launch in Australia.
We were lucky enough to be invited to the launch of Breville's new espresso machine, the Breville Dual Boiler, what follows is a summary of what we found.
The idea behind the machine was to make high end coffee technology available to the home user.
What a way to bring the cafe into the home, for the everyday person to be able to produce a coffee as great or better than the one they buy from their local cafe and for that coffee to be consistent.
My first impression and the lasting impression is one of an intuitive, natural ease of use. It is a feeling of coming home.
As with anything new there is a learning period but it is simple enough for the beginner, I feel that it is something that they won't have to be hesitant about, they can just get in there and have a go, but also has the ability to become more interactive as the user progresses through their coffee journey, having full control over temperature and settings.
The machine has a swivel base that does away with the difficultly of removing and cleaning the water tank, simply turn the dial in the base and you have full access as you turn the machine around. To fill the tank there is no need to move cups to gain access, the tank fills from a section at the front of the warming tray. Speaking of warming tray, it is very warm, bordering on hot to the sensitive hand, that is impressive not a burn hazard!
I love that the hot water outlet is 'hidden' slightly behind and in between the steam wand and the portafilter and has an easy to use dial on the left hand side of the machine, it holds a nice stream that won't go everywhere. Steam from the steam wand is instant with nary a trace of water at the start.
The inclusion of something as simple as a tamper is great, sure it's not the market leader in being ergonomically made to fit your hand but they have gone to the extent of making it so you know how far down the tamper should go into the basket when tamping, another way of taking out the variables for people that are only new to manual coffee machines. I discovered that I don't know my own strength and over extracted a few shots while we played with grind settings and tamping weight. (Noting the excellent convenience of being able to monitor the brew feed pressure to see how you are going with tamp force) I backed off the tamp and pulled a few shots that were drinkable, even a small latte that was delicious.
Have to poke a bit of fun at the comments about material selections. Regarding the use of Teflon in the machine, (aside from the issue that if you're getting it hot enough for the Teflon to degrade then you're going to have some... uh... burnt coffee!) see the attached pictures - the Teflon components are not even in the water flow path. Most conclusively not a concern, in my mind. The use of plated alloy in the grouphead is the best SAFE choice. Brass has been mentioned as an alternative, but to those who might consider such an option, I implore you to do some research on the content of brass; lead... arsenic... !!! The suggestions regarding degradation of the stainless components via production of chlorides from the chlorine contained in water, facilitated by the pressure in the system, is quite dubious. At 9,000 bar, perhaps, but at 9 bar this is not a sensible concern.
Overall the choices of materials for the machine are, from an engineering standpoint, as optimal as one could rationally expect - particularly in regard to corrosion and trace contamination of the water and steam. The water path appears to be almost entirely stainless steel; noting the few Coffee Snob comments criticising this choice, I challenge anyone to offer a superior, practical alternative (unobtainium does not constitute practical!).
As home roasters it really does suit us as we can tweak the settings to suit each individual bean we roast to be able to get the most out of the bean.
In the short time we experimented with the machine we have already found things that we would do differently in the set up compared to how the machine was set up on the night but that is purely an individual preference about taste, we love that the machine allows us to do this, after all it is about us and not about what others might or might not like.
On a final note, noise being a critical factor for us, the machine is very quiet. We will be purchasing one!
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aecletec
- Posts: 1997
- Joined: 13 years ago
I implore you to do further research on the 'content' of brass.
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geoffbeier
- Posts: 151
- Joined: 15 years ago
2 quick questions you may have had an opportunity to answer:shapeshifter wrote:Hi guys, I'm one of the lucky people that have been able to have a play of the new Breville Dual Boiler.
1. Is this machine meant to be left powered on 24/7?
2. Can you turn off the power to the steam boiler independent of the brew boiler?
Also, the attached pictures you mention are not showing up here. Can you attach them or provide a link?
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shapeshifter
- Posts: 8
- Joined: 13 years ago
sorry about that, see below, basically all the photos look very similar to Marks on CG
1 - I don't think that question was ever asked or answered, Chris from Talk Coffee who is probably around here somewhere, might be able to answer that question since he had one in his possession for a few days.
quote from CG: The machine has a power save mode built in. If not used for an hour, it goes dormant - keeping the steam boiler relatively hot (you can hear it gurgle boil every once in a while) but the brew boiler goes down to about 140F in standby. If you don't use the machine for 4 hours, it powers off (you can disable the complete power off mode if you choose). It takes about 2 minutes for the brew boiler to get back up to temperature during power save. Almost any control will wake it up - the brew switches, hot water dial or steam lever. However, it takes the portafilter a lot longer to fully heat up: about 4 minutes or more.
2 - I don't believe it can be but as I said I'm 'only' a home user so could have missed that detail along the way
1 - I don't think that question was ever asked or answered, Chris from Talk Coffee who is probably around here somewhere, might be able to answer that question since he had one in his possession for a few days.
quote from CG: The machine has a power save mode built in. If not used for an hour, it goes dormant - keeping the steam boiler relatively hot (you can hear it gurgle boil every once in a while) but the brew boiler goes down to about 140F in standby. If you don't use the machine for 4 hours, it powers off (you can disable the complete power off mode if you choose). It takes about 2 minutes for the brew boiler to get back up to temperature during power save. Almost any control will wake it up - the brew switches, hot water dial or steam lever. However, it takes the portafilter a lot longer to fully heat up: about 4 minutes or more.
2 - I don't believe it can be but as I said I'm 'only' a home user so could have missed that detail along the way
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Carneiro
- Posts: 1153
- Joined: 15 years ago
Thanks a lot Nic.
I'm curious about the option of turn the steam boiler off. And more curious about the quietness of the machine, considering the 2 videos from Breville I've seen. Of course that could be older prototype machines.
Márcio.
I'm curious about the option of turn the steam boiler off. And more curious about the quietness of the machine, considering the 2 videos from Breville I've seen. Of course that could be older prototype machines.
Márcio.
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shapeshifter
- Posts: 8
- Joined: 13 years ago
I had the same concern with the noise as I'm not a noise person especially in the morning, and yes those videos definitely had me worried as I was quite excited about the prospect of the Dual Boiler being the espresso machine we are after.
The videos must have had the camera microphone up really really loud as seriously the machine is very quiet, it did surprise me how quiet, being that it's a vibe pump.
The videos must have had the camera microphone up really really loud as seriously the machine is very quiet, it did surprise me how quiet, being that it's a vibe pump.
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HB
- Admin
- Posts: 22018
- Joined: 19 years ago
Thanks for sharing your review, but next time I recommend linking to the original source instead of cross-posting the same message on multiple forums (here, here, and here). I'm sure it's not your intent, but when a new member posts the same message in multiple forums raving about a new product, my first thought is that they're a shill. That's why CoffeeGeek instituted the no endorsements policy for new members. By posting a link to your original review on your "home" forum (CoffeeSnobs where you have 300+ posts), you avoid such suspicions.shapeshifter wrote:I'm only a home user but you might be interested in the short review that my partner and I did when we attended the launch in Australia.
Dan Kehn
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shapeshifter
- Posts: 8
- Joined: 13 years ago
Sorry about that, the first posting of it was actually on Breville Food Thinkers facebook page, after all that is who invited us and who we did the review for, I'll remember for next time
I'm definitely not a shill, I have been accused of it though on an off topic part of a dog forum I'm on
I have to admit it's very funny, I might write well but I would not in any way give something a good wrap if I wasn't impressed by it and I'm definitely not being paid to do it.
I'm definitely not a shill, I have been accused of it though on an off topic part of a dog forum I'm on
I have to admit it's very funny, I might write well but I would not in any way give something a good wrap if I wasn't impressed by it and I'm definitely not being paid to do it.-
jkoll42
- Posts: 105
- Joined: 14 years ago
I think it is a nice looking machine, but is anyone really willing to shell out that kind of money knowing the general reliability of Breville? If after a couple of years people are still having success it would be a viable option in my mind, but I personally wouldn't want to be one of the first.
