- A little bit of an unusual one today, if I'm honest.
This is not the sort of thing I'd typically review
here on the channel, but I couldn't sorta pass it up
it was to ridiculous.
Now this is a coffee machine from Aldi, a supermarket group
you may be familiar with, a place that's really cheap
but people tend to be like "Oh but the wines really good."
I don't shop at Aldi, not out of any real snobbery
or anything, I just don't have one near me, so,
you know I'm not dissing you Aldi, I'm just, I'm just,
I'm just not, you know, a customer,
but people are and people like it and I shouldn't joke about
the whole wine obsession people have with it.
It's getting off topic.
Aldi do cheap stuff, that people say is surprisingly good,
and so when Aldi dropped this, well I had to have a look,
it's a £299 coffee machine, it's a kind of super automatic
in a way, it's got a built in grinder,
but it is portafilter based, comparable I guess to machines
like the Sage Barista Express, which is twice the price,
and De'Longhi's very Sage like La Specialista,
that's again the same sort of price,
though that one has a pressurized portafilter,
so I kind of put that off to the side.
This has a regular portafilter, with proper holes
and everything, in fact it's got quite a fancy portafilter.
Not only is it really quite a nice little handle
on this thing here, but they've even got like a little
rubberized flat bit on the bottom, for your tamping,
how thoughtful, how considerate, how surprising for £299,
though it doesn't come with a dose recommendation,
just the little max line on the side, we'll get into brewing
coffee with this in a second.
I've just turned it on, I've got it hot,
I have yet to make a coffee with it.
Now it's got a little steam wand, the steam settings on the
side here imply that it's one thermoblock heating everything
cause you've gotta put the machine into preheat mode,
which I presume heats that main thermoblock up super hot
and then you can get steam out of it, you'd then probably
have to cool it down afterwards to get the coffee out
of it again, that's not unusual in a cheaper machine,
but a grinder in a cheaper machine is definitely
a surprising thing.
It is pretty bad design, it looks like it's okay,
but you know, stuff like the badly stuck on badge here
that's just not quite level, or the fact that the
drip tray appears to be designed to be whatever space
is left, and therefore not really enough space to put
like three cups on top, it's just a little car crash
up here so far, but hey it's early, let's not judge
to much, let's put some coffee in it.
Now this isn't just like a hey look, here's a weird cheap
thing that's surprisingly cheap, but the question is,
is it good value for money?
You know just cause it's cheap it might be terrible
value for money is it just can't make anything resembling
vaguely good espresso, but if it can make good espresso,
that will be astonishing wouldn't it?
Though it feels unlikely at this point, I mean unwrapping
this thing, it was not your nice like peel off the nice
plastic from the stainless steel, it was more like just like
wrapped a couple times in cling film, in a slightly sloppy
forgetful way, that doesn't, you know, inspire confidence
when you're opening a coffee machine up.
Doesn't do a particularly good job of protecting it either
it would seem from the scratches on the side.
We're getting off the point.
So, let's make some coffee with this, I think.
Whoops.
We've got a good amount of coffee in here.
I'm not quite at my max fill line,
and I'm at 17 and a half grams of coffee, and this has just
been a bit of a mess so far, but we're gonna be okay.
I believe in us.
Now this is a programmed dose, as I understand it,
so I'm just gonna, push my two cup button, and we'll
hope for the best.
See what happens, with this.
Pre-infusion.
Looking like a pretty fast shot, don't think anyone's
surprised that this is a faster shot.
Yeah that's a, that's a pretty generous portion.
I don't think we're gonna let the volumetrics control it
next time I think we may put the scale underneath,
because out 17 grams yielded,
74 grams of liquid,
bit more than we wanted in a sorta one to two,
one to two and a half ratio here so,
so we're not drinking that one.
So we'll go two steps finer, and then
we'll give it a go again, I'll dose maybe 18 grams,
and I'll aim for like 36 to 40 out,
I think you know less than 36 would be deeply unwise,
and we'll see how long that takes.
Kinda gotta try and tease the, oh!
Okay we're at 16.3, we need some more coffee, I just don't
know if we can get past these little pincers,
without,
damaging things.
I hate you so much right now.
we're not gonna be friends, we're just not gonna be friends.
When you lock the portafilter in,
let me just try and explain this,
this, this portafilter gets incredibly close to the grinding
mechanism, that you couldn't put your hand in there,
that's just stupid.
Okay, we're gonna be okay though, all gonna be okay,
that's gonna be fine, everything's gonna be okay.
Let's brew.
Pre-infusion.
We're not getting much yet, it's 23 seconds into the shot,
Oh there it is, like,
like nectar,
or just like a really slow espresso
that's gonna taste awful.
A little hissing, something's not happy.
Well then, what just happened there,
well I suspect a number of terrible things happened at once
to yield what we just saw.
Now firstly the gauge here got up to what it said was like
16 bars, which is a lot of pressure, to much pressure,
at those kind of pressures you compress the cake so much
that you compound the problem, like you make harder to
get through which in this case makes this machine pump
water harder, it's a very stupid cycle to get into,
you don't want a machine running at really high pressure
where you just get your ideal pressure by varying the
resistance, that's just not a good way to work,
because of the issues with puck compression,
and then what you saw at the end, with that steamy release
was I guess the water spent to long in contact with the
thermoblock because it was flowing to slowly,
these things are not particularly accurate, they're designed
to heat water at a kinda fixed flow rate, we were obviously
much slower than that flow rate, so it got heated more
than it should have been.
So all in all everything went wrong, with that shot,
I will go back a little bit coarser, cause I went to far
and I go back one coarser, and I'll just make sure my dose,
is like, 17.5 as much as I can with this god awful grinder,
and then we'll see if we can pour like a decent shot,
cause I think, I think together we can achieve anything.
Anyone who's able to withdraw the portafilter without
spilling coffee, is a Jedi Master of sorts.
Why are we still at 16 bars, I mean why, why do you hate me?
Alright we're gonna go, we're gonna go apparently
much coarser, we're gonna go much coarser because
nothing makes sense and I hate everything about this grinder
this is not a good experience so far.
okay, what will happen now?
What will happen,
now?
Oh, pumps gone a little high.
This espresso looks terrible.
That's still a 34, 35 second shot, to hit our ratio.
Can't tell you how much I don't want to drink this.
I mean the coffee in was nice.
This is a stupid coffee machine, I hate this coffee machine,
it's a stupid coffee machine.
Look,
at this point, the grind is definitely to coarse,
you need to grind finer, but because this things pump
pressure is determined by resistance, you can't get good
espresso out of it, can't be done, because once you produce
adequate resistance, this thing will spike massive pressures
at the pump, compress the cake and choke your shot,
you won't be able to get a normal flow rate from your
very fine, properly ground, espresso ground, coffee.
It's the stupidest coffee machine we've seen on this channel
by a long way, I hate it, I really hate it.
I feel like, you know, picking up the portafilter,
gave me this moment of like, maybe this won't
completely suck, but it completely sucks, all of the good
ideas belong entirely in the portafilter with it's nice
rubber bit for tamping.
The tamper the that comes with it, is of course plasticky
nonsense, but it's a £299 coffee machine, I'm not so weird
as to presume that it would be actually good or useful.
The water tank seems nice, it's got a nice lid,
that's you know, good,
but it can't make good coffee
and having a cup tray, where if you put cups on top,
make it really noisy,
is also stupid, it's just sloppily designed.
Buy something better, if you want something like this,
get the Sage, don't buy this, this is £299 for a reason,
and it's an absolute waste of money, it's terrible value,
it is for what you get, far to expensive.
You would be happier with like a mocha pot and,
and like a whisk and some, some I don't know.
The steaming on this, comes with a little clacky,
twisty dial thing, which is weird, there's a little light
flashing, so indeed the thermoblock is, is heating up.
There's our, steamy release, it's to hot to make coffee,
so it's cooling the system, it's kinda nice that it does
it automatically, probably looks pretty dramatic.
It seems to have adequate pressure for steam, it's a
single holed tip which I don't love, but I'm sure it could
steam adequate milk, unspectacular probably, but,
I mean, you know, to pour into what garbage tasting,
disgusting espresso that this thing will produce.
Ambiano, why do they even call, I mean why not stick Aldi
on the front, why don't they just give in,
be honest about it.
Shock horror, cheap supermarket does cheap coffee machine,
that is cheap and not good.
This is offensive to me as a coffee machine, this is why
we have climate change issues, like how much resource,
how much energy, how much material, went into building this,
monstrosity, to ship it around the world, there's just,
this is just waste, I hate it,
I am, just so upset that this existed,
I feel stupid that I thought that a £299 coffee machine
might fun to look at, I'm just mad now,
I'm not, gonna give this away on Patreon I think,
I mean I'll offer it up, but I would suggest that no one
really asks for it, unless you, wanna hack it, if you wanna
take this to pieces, rewire it, make it work, add another
pressure valve into the pump line so it can't produce
stupid pressures, maybe, maybe you could get some good
results outta this, maybe it's a project for somebody,
I don't know, but it's, it's just bad.
For some good news, apart from this being a potential
Patreon giveaway, every video right now
has a coffee giveaway, if you need coffee, if you can't
afford coffee, if you're in a difficult situation right now,
and coffees part of your life, hit the link up,
in the description down below, I'll give away 10 bags
to 10 people anywhere in the world that I can ship coffee to
and I'll do my best to share a little bit of love,
right now.
But actually if you're watching this and you've got
one of these, how's it been for you?
If you had a good experience, if you pulled good tasting
espresso on it, is that possible?
Have you achieved a miracle?
Have you got the little gauge to go into the normal place,
or is it just gushing through, just terrible,
terrible espresso, of terribleness?
let me know, down in the comments below.
For now, I'll say thank you so much for watching,
and I hope you have a great day.