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today we're going to review this it's
the precision brewer from sage or
breville depending where you are in the
world for me it's sage and i'm going to
tell you why this has been my go-to
brewer for the last two years at home
this review has been two years in the
making it's because about two years ago
sage got in touch and said can we send
you a machine let us know what you think
and i said sure that would be good and i
got it took it home and it was kind of
like a us version but with uk power
through it it wasn't the dedicated uk
machine that was going to come a couple
months later two years later well here
we are they've finally released the
machine and i gather they had some
issues the uk london in particular has
very hard water and they found that a
challenge in testing for this brewer in
this market so they've gone away changed
a few things added some upgrades i'll
talk about that in a second and it is
now available so it's a kind of odd one
for me most of my reviews are powered by
patreon it means i go and buy products
and i don't owe anyone anything
this is different because this was sent
to me originally or the first one before
i had a patreon and i said i would
review it and i will honour my
commitment but know that
unlike other patreon reviews this was
sent to me by the manufacturer i'm not
being paid to make the video they don't
get any influence or input into the
video but you should know i didn't pay
for this and i've had one for two years
so let's dive into some just quick
overview specs of this whole thing it's
an interesting approach to home brewers
it's 250 pounds in the uk which puts it
at the upper end of the the sort of
small batch brewer market for the home
but
not at the very top which i think is
interesting
it's a very sage product it looks like a
sage product it feels like a safe
product the brush metals they use the
kind of plastics
the whole design aesthetic is very sage
and if you like that you'll like this if
you hate that
you'll hate this but i like it i've got
a couple sage things at home and it kind
of fits for me unusually this thing can
brew up to 1.8 liters which is a lot of
coffee certainly for the home that's a
lot of cups of coffee in the morning for
a family but
it doesn't have to brew at that kind of
volume it does a kind of clever thing
inside the brew basket
you've got two brew sort of cones you've
got one cone like this which is designed
to use the kind of molita style papers i
really like the filtropa papers myself
but if you take that out you've actually
got a kind of flat bottomed brewer and
it does come with papers for it so you
can brew larger volumes in this with the
cone brewer which is my preferred brewer
you can brew up to 1.2 liters which
frankly
is a lot it's enough it's more than i
would need but the extra is kind of
interesting more than that you don't
even have to use this brew basket there
is an adapter set that lets you put in a
v6d or a kolita or something change the
shower head and change the sort of piece
here where it sits and you can use
whatever flat bottom to pour over brewer
you want whatever cone-shaped brewer you
want you've got it you want to use it
you can use it you can have an automated
version of the thing that you brew with
all the rest of the time
that's kind of cool it does also come
with a metal filter basket if you want
to do that if you want to go zero waste
and not use paper whatsoever this is an
option
i'm generally not a huge fan of these
things i like them in principle i just
personally
always prefer the taste of paper
filtered coffee underneath you've got a
carafe it is a thermal carafe which is
good they do i think a version that is
glass with the heating plate that nobody
should buy ever just get the thermal
carafe just get the thermal carafe and
then the tanks at the back pretty simple
pretty obvious so far in the tank in the
uk now they've added one extra thing
which is this it's a it's a water
softener it's a little filter uh it
lasts about three months and so you just
set it and it will soften your water
when you turn on the machine for the
first time it will ask you how hard your
water is there's a test strip and stuff
that basically tells the machine how
often to prompt you to descale it while
this is nice i would still strongly
recommend just putting good
soft clean water into your machine and
not letting this do the softening but if
you have no option then this is a good
thing so now we need to talk about why
this is called the precision brewer why
it's a sort of smarter than average
brewer and and how the features inside
might stack up to other brewers in the
market
so in the control panel
day to day there are three settings that
you can use as kind of pre-programmed
settings for brewing
they are fast gold and strong
and they're really going to change the
flow rate for the machine
a fast brew is designed to just pump
more water into the basket quicker
allowing your brew to happen in a
quicker way in the morning i've never
really wanted to use that nothing about
fast appeals to me but it's a function
and it's available and again strong
that's going to be sort of more
extracted which in many ways is often
good but for me
i use the gold setting or i use my own
programming most of the time now you can
go in and set up what's called my brew
it's kind of custom brewing setup with
that you can control the bloom volume as
well as the balloon time
you can control your overall flow rate
from very slow to much quicker and then
you can control your brew temperature
and that gives you a single degree
celsius increments to change your blue
temperature which is
extremely accurate so this is kind of
billed as being a very controllable very
programmable brewer that does deliver
consistent temperature and in my
experience
yet it really does so beyond that
there's a couple more things to talk
about in the menu one of which i'm not
super interested in which is the cold
brew functionality
it's designed to sort of run overnight
so you can have it run for i think up to
14 hours where it'll slowly pump water
cold water into your brew basket
you don't put the lid on the carafe it
steeps it for a long time and then
eventually drains it i don't really like
the taste of coffee brewed that way
that's just me so i've had no interest
whatsoever in using it i don't use it
there's one more thing though that i do
use on this
that i'm a little bit ashamed of in a
way
this machine has an auto start and
sometimes
i might grind my coffee before going to
bed and put it in the brew basket and
have the machine come on at like six in
the morning if i have to get up early
and i kind of love getting up to
fresh-made coffee it's it's a wonderful
thing
i'm aware that grinding fresh is best
but i'm also aware that if it's an eight
hour window yeah i'm losing something
but i'm not the world's most perceptive
coffee taster at six in the morning i
just want it to taste really good so i'm
happy to lose a little bit of aromatic
complexity in exchange for someone
having me a fresh pot of coffee ready at
6am that's the deal so i use that more
than i suspect i should tell people i do
i like it it's a nice little function
it's not unique to this but it's a nice
function to have there
so so far i've had nothing really bad to
say about this brewer and in fairness i
have really enjoyed using it for the
last two years it's been a
steady staple reliable part of my
morning brewing routine
that doesn't mean that i have no
complaints or quibbles or things that i
should highlight along the way
so firstly
the water tank in the uk version
they've done a kind of annoying thing to
me they've converted it from imperial to
metric thank you very much but they have
left the lines in the same place which
were i think 20 30
40 ounces
and then i think 60 ounces for the
larger size so on here you've got like a
like a 900 mil mark
i'm just not brewing 900 mils of coffee
very much
i would like a liter mark i would like a
half liter mark i i just feel that's a
reasonable thing to ask for i've come to
accept this i mean i'm already brewing
us ratios at home but i had hoped with
the release of a uk brewer they'd have
just that have just gone in at the kind
of half one liter thing you know now
when it comes to the two brewers in here
i think the cone-shaped brewer brews
significantly better than the
flat-bottomed brewer
my theory is it's the shower head that's
really optimized for that kind of cone
shape in terms of coverage in terms of
agitation disruption as it's brewing
it brews really nicely i just struggled
to match the quality on the 1.8 litre
bruise on the flat bottomed bruise even
with a thicker bed depth it just i've
just struggled to really really really
get the same quality in the cup it's a
funny thing but i also wish this was a
removable water container i think there
are a couple of brewers out there like
the the top end wilfred brewer where you
can just take the water tank out it just
makes it easier to fill i just i think
it's a nicer experience it's not
particularly difficult to do i don't
think this has to be mounted on here
with the carafe i do like the design but
it suffers the same frustrations that
every carafe suffers which is you can't
pour out absolutely everything there's
always just like a little bit left over
i don't understand it's in every carafe
and it just makes me angry when you're
brewing with the the cone-shaped filter
some coffee will get out
into the kind of open basket area
if you just rinse out the cone and don't
remove this you will not rinse out all
the coffee that's under here so it's
easy to have a little bit of
accumulation here
you know and you pull this out now
you're gonna be like uh
and it needs a clean so um
i was a bit lazy to start with until i
opened this up one day and was slightly
disgusted with myself but just be aware
you need to pull this out every time to
clean it properly
and so there it is there is the sage
precision brewer it's a brewer that i
have enjoyed using for two years at 250
pounds it's not cheap but i think it's
actually a pretty great investment in
your morning brews
i think if you need something to do
larger volumes something like one and a
half to two liters often then i would
buy a small commercial brewer they're
not much more expensive but the the
shower head and basket combo is usually
a little bit more effective at brewing
that way
that said i can't think of many cheaper
commercial brewers that have the level
of control
and programmability that this thing has
so i could see these in small offices
you know it's a batch brew in cafes that
don't sell much batch brew i have no
idea on commercial warranties but at
home
it's good it's big no question and you
know that's a
big old thing i'm okay with that i've
got the space it's never really bothered
me but
so in comparison to other brewers in the
past i've had both a tecniform and also
the the sort of high-end wilfer brewer
as well i like both of those brewers i
enjoyed the coffee that they made but
neither of them had the kind of feature
set and the reliability and the control
that this thing has it's it's a
different brewer in many regards to
those brewers i'm genuinely impressed uh
and i find it an easy recommendation and
so i'd really be interested to hear from
you do you have one of these i mean
these have been out for two three years
not a lot of the world
do you still have it do you still use it
every day have you had issues that i
haven't mentioned yet
what did i miss what didn't i talk about
i'd really be interested to hear your
thoughts and maybe there's another
brewer at the price point that i'm just
not seeing that i should check out leave
me a comment down below
i'm going to say thank you so much for
watching
i hope you have a great day
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you