- When I reviewed the Flair Espresso Maker,
a few of you left comments
asking about reviewing the ROK Espresso Maker.
Now, before it even published the Flair review,
coincidentally, Patrick, who is the man behind
the ROK Espresso Maker,
he got in touch, based in London, office here,
and asked if I wanted to come by,
maybe look at a unit, maybe review one.
So I did, I went by the offices, we had a chat
and I agreed to take away a review unit
on the condition that I would get to say the truth,
how I honestly felt about it.
And that's what we're doing.
So, I haven't paid for this,
this is just on loan.
But it is super interesting.
Now, the ROK has been around for a while,
like 20 plus years,
and this is the first really big update.
Now, Patrick did say something that I thought
was just fantastic,
which is the updates to this maker
can be retro-fitted as a kit
onto the first-gen ROK Espresso Makers.
So, from the beginning, I have to admit
he had me on side.
That kind of approach as a manufacturer
I really have a lot of respect for.
So I thought that was super cool.
And this is called the GC,
which is short, I think, for "glass composite",
which refers to the new materials you see in the top
of the maker here
and that's the part you look to change.
They've also changed the piston piece.
They've made the actual piston narrower,
meaning you drive much higher pressures through that piston.
Now, along with that,
he did also let me have a look and a play
with the new hand grinder that they have coming out,
which is really quite interesting.
This is a hand grinder built for espresso
and there's some things about it
that I think are actually very clever
when it comes to grinding for espresso.
And let us start here.
So, what you get here, you get a little,
little cup for weighing beans and then for grinding into
with a little spout for dispensing into your portafilter.
And then underneath here,
at the bottom here you can see
this is where you adjust the grind.
So you would twist this little clicks for grind settings
and again, it is built to go alongside this
as it's built to go really pretty fine.
Now, if you've tried to grind for espresso
on a hand grinder,
you'll know that grinding like that is incredibly hard work
and the solution
is actually just to have a much longer
lever arm to allow more lever force
and be able to do that.
So, this is actually really quite nice designed
to have the lever on the side,
a table mounted unit and to really have
like a lot of travel here.
So actually grinding for espresso is physically
not that demanding at all.
There's a very simple gear here
to allow a vertical drive shaft
to drive a metal conical burr set in here.
And I know a lot of people in espresso
really have come to prefer flat burr profiles,
but conical burrs just allow you a much larger
cutting area in a smaller footprint,
which is why they're so popular
in things like hand grinders,
just it really gives you a lot more cutting surface
in that small space.
So the flow of using this thing
is you're gonna grind here,
you're gonna weigh your beans,
you're gonna grind them,
we'll do that in a second,
and then into the little portafilter in here,
pour your water in the top,
lift the arms up,
push them down,
and then you're making coffee.
So as a workflow, not too fiddly.
Well let's go on and make a shot.
And now we grind.
So even though I'm sat at
what isn't a great angle for doing this,
that actually physically wasn't particularly difficult to do
and I wasn't working super quick
but it felt, well pretty easy.
And actually in the unit if you look inside,
there's a little sort of a metal finger
to help kind of feed
and push beans down into the burr set,
acting almost like an auger,
just to sort of keep it nice and even and uniform.
The grounds out of this thing are
surprisingly fluffy and uniform looking.
I was actually really pretty impressed
by the grounds coming out of this thing.
You can use it for filter coffee if you want to
it'll obviously grind much faster
and you just need to move the burr adjuster
I think about one and a half full rotations coarser
to get like a filter coffee ground,
but I haven't tested it at that,
that was just what Patrick told me
he'd had some success with.
However, at espresso,
I'm pretty impressed.
Now on to the ROK espresso maker.
Now you can get a standard portafilter,
the little plastic portafilter spouts
that come with this that fit on the handle
they just clip on very easily, which is good.
I think they know most people
would probably just want to brew a double
so they're not gonna use them
and they do feel just a little bit delicate,
I can break them quite easily,
but they clip on and off very easily
and that's kind of a nice little extra, I guess.
They do do naked portafilters
as well if you want that in your life,
which is kind of fun.
So the challenge of any espresso machine
that doesn't have a heating element in it
where you're gonna add hot water to it,
is making sure
that the machine doesn't steal that heat
before the water hits the coffee.
And that's true of just about any one of these kind of units
and this is true here.
So you really really really wanna make sure
that you've pre-heated your portafilter,
as well as the unit itself.
It's probably easiest to do those two things together.
Don't put water in this
and lift the arms up without a portafilter being in place,
otherwise you'll just make a mess.
So what I would typically do
is get some hot water into this
and kind of pull it a blank shot
to try and get some heat into the unit
before I add my coffee and before I pull a shot.
Now if you're used to using espresso machines a lot,
there's one little thing that may throw you.
Most espresso machines lock in from left to center.
This doesn't. This locks in from right
to center.
So that will catch you out the first time
if you're not used to it this way.
So right now let's just do a little preheat,
some boiling water in.
So now we're rinsed, preheated,
you could get this hotter probably
if you soaked in a little hot water
that wouldn't be a bad thing,
to get it maximum maximum temperature.
I guess one complaint I have
is that this cup can be a little messy
in the dispensing of grounds into the portafilter.
They are very fluffy, which is good,
but it just means it's quite easy for it to be messy.
With some grinders like EK43 and cafes,
you'll see them using some sort of dosing tool,
and I think actually something like that for this
could be quite useful.
So they did send me a tamper with this.
It is very heavy
actually for the size, which is impressive.
It is just for me a little bit small
if I'm honest,
I could do with just a little bit more width
so you have to do like a couple of additional
some sidewall tamps just to catch everything.
All right, we're locked in.
Now, you really wanna get your water
straight off the boil, right.
Don't let it sit around, you're gonna lose temperature.
So as hot as you possibly can get it
gave me the best results.
Now, you can obviously filter different levels
depending on how much you want.
This much water definitely was more than I would need.
So if you raise this up now,
you begin pre-infusion,
and I had best results
with at least 15 seconds of pre-infusion.
Just to help up the extraction a little bit.
And then we press.
Now at this point,
I don't necessarily want more liquid in the cup,
but there is still some liquid
in the brewer itself,
and I learned the hard way
that what you don't wanna do
is just take the portafilter out now
'cause it will be messy, right.
So, if your espresso is the size that you want it,
and typically I was brewing 16 grams of coffee
to about 40 grams of liquid espresso,
so a reasonably long shot,
but that way I kind of hit the extractions that I wanted to.
Once you've enjoyed your coffee,
either bring the cup back
and just give it a final squeeze through
just to make sure you pushed all liquid out,
and it just makes knocking out the puck afterwards
much much much cleaner and easier.
And so once you've pushed out all the water,
what you're left with is really a very dry cake,
very easy to clean up, knockout,
and so that's definitely worth making
as we're done completely.
So how's the coffee, you ask?
Well, the coffees I've had from here
have been pretty good.
Getting an extraction up is definitely a key to this
and that means heat management first and foremost.
You can grind really pretty fine for this thing.
Getting everything as hot as you possibly can with this
is definitely my number one priority.
And it'll also mean typically the second
or third shot out of it
will probably be better than the very first,
but often you only wanna make one,
first thing in the morning,
so spend the time getting it as hot as you can.
Now, I would recommend brewing on scales if you can.
That's how I brew most espresso in most places,
and I feel like getting an accurate idea
of how much liquid you've produced is definitely useful.
The shape and design of this
make that pretty easy to fit scales underneath here,
and that was definitely not a problem for me in using it.
So let's wrap this up into what I like,
and maybe what I like less.
The pros and the cons.
Let's start with the grinder.
I think the design is great for an espresso hand grinder.
It's definitely grinding fine enough,
the grind is really quite even,
the long lever arm on here is a good thing
and it's good to use.
It's pretty easy to use.
I have no real complaints about it.
It is, in the world of hand grinders,
expensive, but not absurdly expensive,
so I think it's about 159, 169 pounds.
It's actually a little bit more than the espresso maker.
But it is well built.
It is sturdy and they've thought it through,
from a usability perspective, for grinding very fine.
So that I think is good.
I don't love the little cup for dosing out of,
but there's probably another solution to that, anyway.
As for the espresso maker,
things I like: It's compact,
it works well, you're definitely hitting high pressures.
By having a narrower brew chamber than normal,
it means that the force exerted per square inch
means that actually
pushing with only 16 or 17 kilos of force
will give you nine bars of pressure
inside the brew chamber.
So that's a kind of nice smart thing.
It does make good tasting coffee
on the condition that
you manage the heat of this unit.
You definitely need to get it as hot as you can
before using it
especially if you like
slightly lighter roasts in your espresso,
with darker roast that may be just less of an issue.
You can use this to make much larger espressos
that I have done.
Though I don't particularly enjoy those,
that's kind of just my thing.
I really preferred shots that were about
one full piston of water,
which was usually about
just about 40 grams out
depending on how long you left it to pre-infuse for.
And again, pre-infusion is definitely useful
and having total manual control of that is a good thing.
I'd like some more guidance on the inside of this,
to know where my fill level is,
so that if I have a preferred water amount
I can sort of dial in that
rather than trying to fill it completely
or fill it so it's about a centimeter from the top.
A little extra here would be nice,
though I do like this new material they're using here.
I think it's a great improvement on their existing maker.
I think it's 149 pounds,
I think it's well built from start to finish.
It can be a little messy,
but actually, you can just pick this thing up
and run it under the tap if you want to.
So, the single unit construction is nice.
I think it's well designed,
it's thoughtful,
it can make nice espresso.
Again, like most of these type of units,
it's a little bit of extra work
and it's up to you
if that's something you're willing to incorporate
into your morning routine, as lots of people are,
or actually if you'd like the convenience of an element,
of a pump, of the extras that come with
a good home espresso machine.
Or, actually,
if you just want something easy, convenient,
oddly kind of zen to use;
it's quite satisfying to push this thing down.
There's no doubt that's kind of pleasurable.
But that's it.
That's the ROK, that's how I feel about that.
I think it's broadly available
about now, I think it's just about released now.
If you have questions, if you have comments,
if you got one of the old ones,
if you got one of the new ones,
let me know.
Are you're using it to make espresso at home still?
How are your shots?
What's your best technique?
What works for you?
I'd be really interested to hear it.
As always, thank you so much for watching
and I hope you have a great day.