There's a YouTuber that goes by hoon's coffee and he uses a barista express too so check him out. He has a lot of videos on the machine, and separate grinders like the Mazzer mini and the niche.

iPa64 wrote:Thank you
You know, I am very interested by the flair pro 2 too, ...

Hi, maybe I'm a little biased, but I'm pulling fantastic shots with my Pro 2, in the level of the good commercial machines
The machine is easy to work with, and if you want to play with pressure profiles, preinfusion and different pressure extractions, this machine is the best, you have in Facebook a dedicated group for the Flair, Brew with Flair, where you have really good people, that many of them have other machines like the Breville and others, and you can see comments, videos and ask questions if you want.

I think this is actually a really fantastic machine aside from the grinder.

When I visit family they have a barista express and I bring along my Kin m47 traveler. It's a great pair, in my opinion, and has produced some really tasty shots.

The combination of having manual control over pre-infusino duration, manual control over shot duration, and a brew pressure gauge makes for a fantastic, extremely forgiving setup as long as you have a good grinder.

Having had and enjoyed a sette 270, i think that would be an awesome grinder to pair with this machine as well. Basically any decent upgrade over the garbage built in grinder is going to take you to really excellent espresso.

@foam2 yes, I saw a lot hoon's videos, an very interesting youtube channel


@hercdeisel, that the idea, I am waiting the 1zpresso jx pro to test my bes870 with this grinder.
I have already made some invest on this machine, I don't want to give up, a distributor tool, that was the first great improvement to get repeatability and now I waiting a bottomless portafilter, it's on the way.
But the flair has something, how can I say that ... very sexy, very elegant!

Hi @ Urupackers, I should get my 1zpresso jx-pro today
About the flair, what kind of kettle do you use ?

iPa64 wrote:Thank you
You know, I am very interested by the flair pro 2 too, ...

My Flair PRO2 pulls shots at least 5x better than my Barista Express. It's just ability to preinfuse and have that pressure control. By far the best shots I've ever had, including in my local cafes have come from my PRO.

@TangyWasabi Thank you to have shared your experience!

What kind of kettle do you use with your flair?

is the water temperature a critical variable that you have to control with the flair?

I use a Stagg EKG, and yes temperature is crucial to pulling a good shot with the flair. You want to get it as hot as you can and brew as fast as you can to keep heat up.

It's here
Nice tool, very good quality
After the first tests, the grinding result is impressive.
I never had that with the internal grinder.
It can grind very very fine. Without any clumps.
And the steps are thinner.

Definitively if you want to improve shots with your Breville Barista Express...
Buy another grinder !
I bought this manual grinder because it's cheap and I make only few coffee a day.
I surprisingly fell in love with this thing it's so fun to use it, for an impressive ground coffee quality, almost zero retention ( less than 0.1gr, maybe a bit more with oily beans ), it's so tactil, no motor noise, only the sound and the smell of the grinding beans.