Hi welcome to Steve's kitchen if you've been with the channel a while you know
that we are great coffee lovers and made that espresso layer cake. We've also had
vietnamese coffee I think also we made some espresso truffles. I'll probably leave
a little playlist of espresso or coffee recipes on the channel. Today we're doing
an unboxing, you also know that I'm a lover of Breville for no other reason
than I think their appliances are really great and they're Australian, so I'm
flying the flag and today we're going to be unboxing something a little bit special.
It is the Barista Express this is a beautiful machine at least I hope it's a
beautiful machine. We're going to unbox it now, see what's in the box, have a
little play with it and then I'll give you some demonstrations and hopefully
we'll be able to see whether this thing is any good or not. Now we've got that
usual really good quality boxing. I always liken this to Apple, the quality, I
love this plum color. So it's the barista Express with conical burr
grinders and dose control grind dose, extract all in one. It's got its own bean
hopper.Llet's not talk about the Box anymore
let's get this open, if we open up the four flaps on the top, straightaway
there's a booklet, not too interested in that, I might read it later. Here we've
got one of the things about this barista express is it has, I can open it up
here, it has pressurized, these ones here these are pressurized baskets and these
are more professional non-pressurized baskets. So you've got the the double
dose and the single dose in pressurized and you've got the
non-pressurized baskets in double dose and a single dose. So I'm really looking
forward to experimenting with these more professional non-pressurized baskets.
We've got the portafilter here, this is quite substantial actually, this is a
fairly heavy, it's really quite a nice little porta filter. Now there is a
tamper, you can almost see yourself in that and it's it's fairly substantial
but not too heavy because I think its magnetic, it sits up in the machine so
it's a little bit lighter, not a full heavyweight one like some of the ones
I've used in the past. There is a cleaning kit we'll have a look at that
later on, now what is this, okay the razor so I'm going to open that up I think
this is like a blade of some sort, yes to sort of level off your dose, so when you
put the coffee in you can see it's got a tapered edge, both sides, so it's just for
leveling out the dose in your tamper. I'll just show you how that works once
you put your coffee in there that will sit in there and you give it a little
twirl around or maybe you'll just level off the top like that
nice. Now I'm going to get this on the floor and take it out, I don't know why lately
with these packaging they split the polystyrene down the center. I used to
like it where you could just lift the polystyrene out but now they do it this
way where you've got to sort of tip it out, so look the way they say to get
these out of the boxes is to lift it on its side and I think you then have to
sort of pull it out but I tend to find that I prefer to put the Box upside down
and just lift the box off, as I say I did prefer the old style where the
polystyrene just lifted out, all the Breville appliances seem to be doing it
this way, is it better, no not really because things tend to fall out when you
do it this way round. So first thing here we've got the bean hopper, you'll see
that these are great hoppers. I've actually used these before they've got
like a, I'll show you this in a moment. What this does here is the machine
itself, I hope I'm not making too much squeaking noise, so I've got another
little box here oh it's a milk jug, it's a milk frothing jug.
Actually already have my own milk frothing jug but we'll have a little
look at this one, it's quite nice, it's pretty, pretty substantial stainless
steel, nice Breville marking on the bottom. Now of course we've got the Aussie
plug on there I'm just going to push that through and pull out.
I love the way Breville have these little finger pulls on their plugs
they're really great. We have gone for the stainless steel model, they actually
do this in a cherry red and I think it's it a brown, Michele black but we decided
to go with the plainer more professional-looking stainless steel.
There she is doesn't that look gorgeous, we've got a pressurized gauge on
the front, a power on button, the ground amount, filter size is single and double
program, single shot and double shot and I'm going to have to, here we've got the
very nice-looking steaming wand on the side here, that's very simple, very
elegant. I'm looking forward to having a little play with that and here we'll
have the the dose grinder as well. That lovely new smell of an appliance is
gorgeous, what I'm going to do now is just have a little play with this so I
get to understand, so I don't waste too much time and I'll explain to you how it
works and what I think of it, my first impressions, so see you in a moment.
Now fast-forward just over a week and we've been playing with this machine and
getting to know it. I don't think we can really give this a good review unless we
know exactly how it works and in brief I'm really rather pleased with the barista
express. It's a great coffee machine I'm going to just glance over and these
might be a little bit nit picky, some of the negative things on here and give you
full disclosure as to what you might expect from the machine. Now one of the
things that bugs me a little bit is the hopper, it's fantastic but it's quite small.
It takes about 250 grams of beans I think it could have been a little bit
bigger, as you think I said earlier on you can clip it and take it off but it's
quite a small hopper, if you see that in contrast with the hopper that comes with
the Breville grinder which actually fits in there as well, which takes almost a
kilo or two pounds of beans. I just think perhaps they could have
used a slightly bigger hopper it does mean that if you're a big coffee drinker
you're going to be filling up the hopper more often than perhaps you want to. Next
this little razor tool that comes with it, pretty useless really I guess I'd
liken it to the training wheels on a bicycle, once you actually get used to
using this, this is just going to gather dust, we probably used it for two or
three times. I'm not quite sure what it's practical use is we might find a way of
repurposing this to something else. The idea is you use this to level off
the grinds and really in practical use you just don't use it and my last little
gripe and it isn't really a gripe really, this great little container back here
has two pressureized and two non-pressurized baskets. I
find we're only really using the non-pressurized
I really haven't used the pressurized at all, so they're a little bit superfluous
it's not really a complaint though and now the things that I love about the
Barista Express and the demonstration of how it works,
tamper was a little bit light when I first got it and I didn't think it was
going to be ideal but I love the way it sits just up in the machine like that
it's always there, you know exactly where it is and it's actually pretty solid. Now
when you first put your beans in and we've gone for a fairly light roast bean
it's just the way I like it, sometimes you'll get a much darker bean
and you will have to adjust the grind wheel, the grind wheel on here is set to
8 for us it dials all the way up to 16 for coarse and all the way down, I won't
push it because it's actually turning against the beans all the way down to 0
for a much finer grain. We found 8 worked well with this particular bean. Now one
of the things I love about this hopper despite it being a little bit small is
if you put beans in there that you don't like, you can give it a little turn and
you can lift it out and you can remove those beans and then replace them with
some new ones, there's a few beans left in the burr grinder here that you can
actually just get out by hand. We find ourselves using almost
exclusively the double shot non-pressurized basket, I will say that
once it's in there it is quite difficult to get back out again but you're
probably not going to change these over that often, there's a fairly decent-sized
drip tray which will get all the drips of water and any coffee grinds. Now as
well as the grind adjustment there's the grinder amount dial at the front here
and you can turn this dial less or more depending on how much you want to adjust
the grind and those two factors, the coarseness of the grind and the amount
at which the basket gets filled are pretty important when it comes to
getting the right pressure to get the perfect espresso and I guess in a way
that's where the blade did come in useful in the first few times, we could
roughly gauge if we had the right amount of coffee grinds in the Porta filter. So
I tinkered with the settings up and down on more or less and we did this over a
day or so and I'll show you in a moment if your grinds are too fine or to compacted
you'll end up with the pressure gauge getting right up here in the white
area and that means you're not getting a proper extraction. Better turn it on by
the way, it won't work till you've turned the power on,. When you do turn it on you
can start grinding straight away but it's going to go through a little
process of just coming up to pressure we need to take the porter filter and give
it a little push
I should point out that I've actually selected the double shot here because
I'm using the larger portafilter basket. Now it will be pretty full, it'll start
to try to fall off the side, don't worry about that, I like to just lay it down
and just use your finger to flatten and push the grains into the center and then
you'll take the tamper out and just pop it on there and give it a nice firm pack
down. Now you do want to put a fair bit of pressure, give it a little twist, now
make sure you don't have extra grinds on these little wings that stick out here
because they will mess up the machine. Now the barista Express only has a
single boiler which means you can't be making coffee whilst you're frothing
milk, we don't really find that too much of a
problem and I'll show you why. I'll take my porter filter and I'll just lock it
into place all the lights are on so it means if I
hit that double shot now it will start expressing the coffee, I'll just pop a
glass under there ready. We're not going to express that just yet. Now the jug
that came with the Barista it's lovely and solid it's a really nicely made milk
frothing jug, I'm going to put full fat milk into there don't use any of that
namby-pamby rubbish, fill it up to just where the indentation of the spout
starts, make sure you're steaming wand is over the drip tray and we're just going
to turn the dial on the side here to steam and it really doesn't take long
this little button at the front here flashes and then it comes to a stop as
soon as that comes on, turn it back to standby, pull out the wand, pop it into
the milk and then just turn that dial back to steam and you want the wand just
to be breaking the surface of the milk to texture it and get a nice thick foam.
Now this takes a little while to get used to if you keep your hand on the
side you can feel as the milk starts to get hot, now the foam is a little loose
on the top there apologize I am doing this with a camera. Let the milk warm
through now and I'm going to turn the dial off, always remember just to wipe
off the wand with a damp cloth, don't burn your hands. Now almost immediately
the lights come back on, means it's back up to pressure and I just hit my double
shot, now you see there the coffee's coming out like a smooth honey and that
is perfect and the needle on the dial doesn't want to get outside the black
area of the dial, so we've got a decent crema
on top. I'll just tap my milk, now I'm not going to make lots of this for this
filming so if it doesn't go well please forgive me, I'm going to lift my milk and
start to pour it in now, Micheles there with the camera, the foam starts to come
to the top and it's not great. Now trust me that was the worst coffee I've poured
since we've had this thing over a week but it still looks pretty good and I'm
not going to bother doing another shot just for camera, you get the idea, hot
milk foam on top ,can get a little bit of latte art but that looks pretty damn
decent but more importantly the espresso is rich and delicious this is the way I
like my coffee, I like it with milk if you want espresso shots or shorts or
macchiatos whatever you like, knock your socks out. The machine itself the
Barista Express is a fantastic machine I'm really pleased with it and I highly
recommend, make a great Christmas present. Here goes I'm going to make another one
of these in a minute for Michele, yeah it is rich that particular coffee it's
very strong, it's absolutely delicious and I'm going to save that and have it a
little bit later on and let me think if there's anything else that I want to
cover on the machine that's important for you. Now always remember to remove
the porta filter and get that little coffee puck out, actually I'll show you
over here that they knock out fairly easy and they're very simple to clean
through, I should show you the tank on the back by the way it's a good two
litre tank.It's got a filter in there they do ask you to replace that every
few months and we just tend to top that up in the morning when we make our
coffees. So there you have it the Barista Express from Breville, it's my new coffee
machine. I'm very pleased with it I'll be happy to answer questions down below if
you want to know anything about the machine or how it's getting on with us.
Maybe in a year's time I can let you know, at the moment we're enjoying it.
If you decide to get something different I'd love to hear what you decide to get,
if you're a big coffee fan like we are and you have this machine already
comment down below, be good and I will see you on a recipe video very shortly
on steve's kitchen and no doubt will be using espressos in some of the up
coming videos, take care and see you next time