- Today, we're gonna take a look at this.
This is the Flair 58.
Now, Flair have made money on espresso machines for a while.
The 58 is their kind of top of the line unit.
And there's three things about it
that I wanna talk about
that I think make it interesting and noteworthy,
and are certainly worthy of discussion
or thinking about if you're gonna buy
a lever machine like this.
This is the Flair Pro.
It's a very useful travel espresso maker.
If you ever need to sit in a park in London
and drink espresso from the 1950s.
That aside, I did like a lot about it.
It's easy to put together.
They had a kind of modular nature to it
and it made nice espresso.
There was a little bit of work to do
with thermal management,
but it made great espresso and it was fun to use.
The 58 is the evolution from this.
Primarily, that the name comes from the fact
that it now uses a 58 millimeter portafilter.
That is the common portafilter size
in most commercial espresso machines.
Not all, but it's probably the most common size of basket.
That means that if you have something like a VST basket,
you can use it in here,
if you've got a tamper from another espresso machine,
that'll work here.
Now, when you're generating pressure
with a manual lever machine,
the size of the area that you're
pressing onto does matter.
If you go from a 45 mm basket to a 58 mm basket,
well, then your lever size has to change too,
because you've got a greater surface area
in which you need to generate the same pressure across.
So the unit gets quite a bit bigger
going from the Pro to the 58,
the lever gets longer,
there's a big handle on the end here.
You might feel like you're working
a little harder, and you are,
but the lever's doing a lot of that work for you.
So it's not impossible to press
with nine bars of force compared to this.
It does just feel like a little bit more work
to hit those pressures.
Like this, it's got a little pressure gauge,
so you can see your live pressure as you're brewing.
Again, that's the pressure of what's happening
kind of inside the brewing environment.
So you may not want to hit nine necessarily
because this gauge is showing you both pressure in
as well as kind of what's leaking out
of the bottom of the basket.
So, what would be nine bars on a pump machine
will look more like,
usually about eight bars on the gauge like this.
But you can experiment, you can play.
You've got the information that you need.
This whole thing feels pleasantly sort of sized and weighty.
The build quality for Flair stuff has always felt good
in terms of the componentry and the metals
and those kinds of things.
So I like the fact that they've gone to 58.
It makes it a more convenient size for the collector.
If this is one of many machines for you,
I know that's not normal,
but it's also not uncommon.
Then this kind of fits in kind of nicely.
If you've already got a machine that, you know,
makes espresso and steams milk,
but you wanna play around with levers,
this may be tempting because
everything you have in terms of tampers,
all that stuff already works, already fits.
Life is kind of easy.
Now, this has been around for a few months.
In fact, it's been around for so long
that Flair are already starting to ship an updated version.
I'll touch on that briefly,
but this is the original model, I guess, of the 58.
The new one has a few workflow improvements.
It doesn't, I think make better espresso
from what I'm seeing.
It's just a little easier to work with.
No bad thing as far as I'm concerned.
The primary change is at the base of this unit here
of the preheat unit here.
This one has a fixed screen at the bottom of it.
The new ones do not, and they are reliant on this.
Now this is the second thing that I think is interesting
about the Flair 58.
This is a puck screen.
And I think we're gonna see more and more of these
outside of the Flair being used in espresso making at home.
I don't think that they'll end up in cafes,
but I think at home,
you'll start to see these more and more.
This is a little disc that sits on top of your tamped,
sort of prepped coffee inside the basket.
And it sits in theory between, on this machine,
the shower screen and the coffee itself.
Why would you want something like this?
Well, firstly, it will help distribute water
more evenly across the puck.
And evenness is always the name of the game
in better espresso brewing.
Secondly, and this is where it gets kind of interesting.
It creates a space above the puck for water to fill in
and sort of do that pre-infusion moment
where water fills above the puck,
but it will prevent the puck expanding
all that much during that phase.
That seems to help with evenness
kind of keeping the puck contained,
but allowing a space for pre-infusion water to build
seems like a good thing.
Just about any machine out there
may well see a benefit from using something like this.
Now, when we come to pull a shot,
I'll talk about the pros and cons of using this
in a sort of practical sense,
but this ships as standard
that this is now the replacement
for a fixed dispersion screen on the newer units,
I think is really interesting.
And the third thing that's interesting about the Flair 58
is kind of this thing here.
Now, this is the control box for the heating element
around this part of the brew chamber here.
Now I plugged this into a little volt meter,
had a look at it.
It draws about 85 Watts.
So it's not a particularly powerful element
inside this thing.
And the thermostat attached to it
has kind of three heat settings,
low, medium, and high.
This means this unit is designed to be plugged into
main power supply while you are using it.
You could in theory, disconnect it
and use it without this preheating element attached to it.
But, if you're buying this, you would buy it
so it does the preheating piece.
Now, the reason you would do this
is because if you've used a Flair
or really any manual espresso machine,
that would be something like The Rock or The Robot,
thermal management is a bit of an issue.
If you wanna hit those higher brewing temperatures
for espresso, then you've gotta work really quickly,
and that can just be a little bit difficult to do.
The idea with this is that this will
preheat actively the unit here,
the brew chamber here,
so that your water is going into an already hot environment.
Now they give you some temperature guidance.
They say low is about 85,
medium is about 90,
and the upper temperature high is about 95 degrees Celsius.
That should not be confused for the brew temperature
that you will get from those settings.
Touch more on that in a second.
The implementation of this is kind of weird and awkward.
So you've got the part here.
This connects to this control box here,
and this control box connects to a power supply
that then plugs into the wall.
So there's a bit of cabling to deal with
that I don't particularly love.
And the fact that it's three pieces.
I also don't particularly love.
It's a little ugly.
This box feels a little cheap, if I'm honest.
Now Flair do ship the 58X
and that is without this active heating thing here.
And the difference in price is about $90.
This one with the preheating is $575.
The X that does not have the preheat is $485.
So $90 worth of element control and power supply.
This preheating stuff is both the biggest advantage,
the biggest strength of this unit,
and to me, the biggest weakness.
The biggest point of frustration.
But let's get into pulling some shots.
Now I have this set at high
because I want maximum temperature here.
And so this brew chamber is pretty hot
and you'll feel it's hot to the touch.
And generally in usage,
you wouldn't really wanna touch this anyway.
But let me clear some space,
let me move this back out of the way.
There's a little bit more to you,
so you can see what's going on.
Now, I'm still chasing the upper end of brew temperature.
So my workflow is kind of around that.
I'm gonna do all of the puck work first,
get this thing locked in, loaded, happy,
ready to go and kettle boiling.
And then as soon as I put my boiling water in the top,
I'm gonna try and move on
and pull a shot pretty much straight away.
Now I did a bunch of temperature testing on this
with a Scace device,
which was a little bit difficult and hacky
to kind of get into the unit,
but I manged to get it done.
And that gives me a pretty good indication
of what brew temperatures are during a typical kind of pull.
And yes, the different temperatures of the preheat unit
do impact brew temperatures in a way
that is kind of unsurprising.
My lower temperature shots were in the mid eighties.
My medium temperature was around 90,
but the hottest I ever got
was just above 93 degrees Celsius.
And that was having pulled a bunch of shots back to back,
where this was very much preheated.
Using water, literally straight off the boil,
at boiling point in and straight to brewing.
And I still really peaked at 93.
So while the chamber may get to 95,
it's not accurate to say that that's going to be
your brew temperature or certainly
hasn't been the case in my testing.
Anyway, there's a few more details,
but it'll help from pulling a shot
to talk you through those.
So I've prepped, dosed, tamped, my basket of coffee.
I didn't use the included tamper.
This is what comes with it.
I don't love this, ergonomically.
I've got very large hands,
which probably is a bit of a problem,
but I've got nice 58 mm tamper.
So that was easy enough to deal with.
And then on top of this goes our little puck screen.
And this we're then gonna load in,
slightly awkward this way around,
and then get that boiling water in straight away.
To put water in the brew chamber,
just lift the little arm up, this unlocks.
And that's straight off the boil,
in we go.
Now you might hear towards the end,
a little bit of sort of hissing,
which is interesting to me.
That indicates that the hottest part
is right at the top of the unit.
Now I'm gonna lock this in.
Put my little arm in place,
and I'm going to begin a little pre-infusion.
Put a little pressure up,
first few drops,
raise the pressure up.
It's pretty hard to do this way around.
I'm not gonna lie to you.
(coffee dripping)
I made me for about 36 out.
When I get there and lift the lever all the way to the top,
take my coffee out,
enjoy that in a second.
And then they recommend pressing through
the rest of the liquid.
Leave you back at the top.
Does this produce good espresso?
'Cause it does.
All the principles of good espresso making are there.
And you know, it's ultimately about
good grind, good water,
and getting the grind right
and pressing the water through appropriately.
What appropriate is, varies.
It can be a flat profile.
It can be a declining profile.
There's no one answer to that,
but it's a very capable espresso machine.
Is that the best advice I've ever made?
No, I would recommend having it the right way around
so you can actually see the gauge as you make espresso.
I think it's a very capable machine.
I think the Flair Pro was capable
and this I think is leveling up.
It's a good jump in price,
but I think there is an increase
in quality, in versatility.
I think it makes nice espresso.
I think it is mostly very nice to use.
Now, you'll see here in the base,
I have an Acaia Lunar
and it feels as if the base of this thing,
the drip tray for this was built specifically
for the Acaia Lunar,
which feels kind of wild
because that is a very, very expensive set
of weighing scales.
The drippy bits here, not the end of the world.
If you go through their kind of purge process afterwards,
it's pretty easy to deal with.
And then when you're dealing
with your sort of basket afterwards, it's pretty dry.
Getting this out,
I don't know if there's a perfect way of doing it yet.
I've often just put my sort of cleaning towel down,
gently tapped it.
Oh, that mostly works, sometimes it does not.
Sometimes I lose the puck too.
This is definitely useful and interesting.
And probably, you know,
you'll start to see more and more videos
about this on YouTube from various
other coffee creators too.
One thing I will say is that
visually clean on these things is not truly clean.
You wanna give this a little soak
in maybe some espresso machine cleaner and hot water
at the end of the day it's usage,
especially, if you've pulled multiple shots,
because there is sort of hard access dirt in these,
and you wanna get rid of that
or it will begin to make your espresso taste bad.
So that's the Flair 58.
And if you have one or you're thinking about getting one
that I would recommend checking out
Lance Hedrix's video on it,
he has some good workflow tips.
Stuff like using the Smart espresso profile or app
as part of using this thing day to day,
especially with the smart scale,
to understand flow a little bit more
and know what to do in terms of chasing pressures
as you're pulling a shot.
I'll leave that link down below.
The question ultimately, is, is it good value for money
and would I recommend you buy it?
What was the most important questions?
At $575, I think it is well built.
It's well made.
It produces very good espresso.
Can I think of an espresso machine
that is as flexible as good looking
that makes espresso of this quality
that is at the same price point,
not easily actually.
So it is worth considering
if you're never gonna steam milk,
if you just wanna pull espresso,
if you are interested in a pure manual lever experience,
it's definitely worth considering it.
I think if you compare it
to its upper tier manual competitors, things like The Robot,
then I think it is strongly competitive.
And I think having to do less thermal management
is definitely a good thing and a nice part of the process.
But really I think my frustrations
are around the execution of what I think
is ultimately, a very good idea.
I think adding power supplies to these,
I think adding some thermal support
to these is a good thing.
I don't really like the way that it's done on the 58.
The point at which Flair kind of lost me with their system
is when they sent me an email
regarding the disconnection sequence for this thing.
There is a specific order in which you must disconnect
the cables behind this thing.
So you have to disconnect, first,
the one closest to the mains
and then this one closer to the brew head here.
I presume there's some sort of capacity issue
or something else going on inside this box
that I don't understand it's beyond my pay grade,
but that as a user experience is not good
that I have to remember an unplugging sequence
is not a good experience.
The fact that the diagram that they sent me to do it
labeled the first thing that they wanted
me to disconnect as the number two.
And the second thing is number one blew my mind.
That's just really unhelpful for your user base.
I think, you know, I don't quite understand
what you were doing there.
But that to me is a problem.
I don't wanna have to think about that
when I'm taking this thing to pieces.
It's not a fun part of this process.
And honestly, if I'm to be harsh,
this feels like a good idea
executed in the easiest way possible for Flair,
not necessarily the best way possible for you, the user.
I don't think this box is a great control box.
I don't think low, medium and high
is that indicative though,
I get the idea that they're not trying
to give you a single number
because it doesn't produce a single number.
This bulky control here,
the fact that there's two breaks in the cable,
I just don't like it.
My ideal implementation would be a cable
that plugs just once into the back of the unit here.
I have some controls on this unit here somewhere
and I go low, medium high.
And it's just all in one.
I plug one thing in,
I've got one thing to mess around with and it's done.
I don't need this to be, you know,
a PID style to the degree Celsius.
I get what they're going for.
And I'm okay with what they're going for
in terms of accuracy and repeatability.
But I just don't like the execution.
And I would hope in the future,
they find ways to improve the execution of this.
Now this may not bother you, right?
This may not bother you at all.
This might be me having reviewers syndrome
where you think about things a lot
and you get more upset than perhaps
most people would do,
because you're thinking about things
in a very analytical way.
I get that.
And I would love to hear from those of you
who own this down in the comments below,
whether you have found this good or bad, frustrating,
or really not a problem at all.
But for me, I like what it does to brew temperature.
I like the assistance here.
I just don't like the execution.
And to make that point more time,
this is not setting a brew temperature.
The temperature of the water
that you put in from your kettle to the unit
really dictates your brew temperature.
If this is as hot as possible,
then you will get close to that
93, 94 degrees Celsius thing.
If it's two or three degrees cooler,
you'll be brewing 90 degrees Celsius quite easily.
If that's cooler still, you'll be brewing in the eighties.
So it's really about you still doing
some temperature management work,
you building a good workflow around this,
if you're chasing those upper temperatures.
If you're chasing 90 or even sort of
the mid to high eighties.
Yeah, it's a little easier.
It really is.
You know, you can put in hot water and it cools down.
One final note actually, and this is being
perhaps a little too fussy,
but when I filled that chamber,
right at the end is when you it hiss.
As if it was hitting very hot metal at that point,
as if the top of the chamber was hotter
than the bottom of the chamber.
If you look closely at the temperature data
from all the captures that I have,
you'll see that there is a very slight
upwards temperature profile during those shots.
The very last bit of the shot.
It seems to be a little bit hotter
than the very start of the shot.
Not a lot, but it's definitely there,
and it happened across multiple pulls.
And it could be that the heating
is primarily, done at the top.
Hot water rises, and so there is literally cooler water
at the bottom of that brew chamber than there is at the top.
And as you press, the cooler water hits the coffee first,
and the hottest water hits the coffee last,
most people would say that
isn't gonna make a massive difference.
It's a small increase.
Some would say that they like
a decline in brew temperature.
That's common with a number of different machines,
particularly lever machines.
So it's interesting to me that this bucks that trend,
and I think it's something that you should know about
if you're considering buying one
and are a little bit obsessive about brew temperature.
Now I don't get to keep this unit.
This goes to one of my Patreon supporters
who give me a budget every month
to go and buy equipment, review it,
use it and tell you my honest opinion.
And at the end it makes me very happy
to give it away to one of them.
Now, I wanna hear from you down in the comments below,
do you have one of these?
Have you enjoyed using it?
Are you like me, nearly completely charmed,
but somehow not quite.
I really like the espresso from this.
I really like most of the user experience,
but it's so frustratingly nearly there
that I just can't get past the little things
that annoy me about this unit.
So that's it.
That's the Flair 58.
I hope Flair continue to iterate on this.
They seem to be iterating and that's good.
So maybe in the future, we'll see something
that makes me truly, truly delighted.
But for now, I say thank you so much for watching
and hope you have a great day.