Sage Barista Touch is a high-end household coffee maker. It simplifies key aspects of creating a perfect cup. The machine controls the dose quantity, the temperature of the water, pressurisation, and vapor pressure. Sage is fascinated with creating the ideal cup of joe at home with minimum effort on her side. After all, nothing beats a steaming cup when you’re waking up for work at the crack of dawn.
Sage has repeatedly demonstrated that it is one of the greatest small appliance companies on the market. While Sage is no longer associated with the cooking genius Heston Blumenthal, its equipment retains a very high-end brand and produces excellent results. This massive fully automatic coffee machine is a fantastic illustration, if pricey, of the type of craftsmanship they put into their devices.
The Sage Barista Touch handles the heavy lifting. There is little input or skill necessary. It costs £1,999 in the United Kingdom and $2,500 in the United States, where it is known as the Breville Barista Touch. We put this machine through its paces to see how it stacks up against the top coffee makers on the market. In this post, we’ll review the Sage Barista Touch and see how it performs in terms of functionality, usability, appearance and maintenance. Let’s dive in!
Who Is This Machine For?
If you can afford it, the Barista Touch is the coffee equivalent of a fancy vehicle in the driveway. It’s stylish. It’s easy to use and enjoyable every time. It will necessitate some tweaking and maintenance, but most significantly, it produces excellent coffee.
If you just want great-tasting coffee, there are lots of different equipment that produce barista-quality cups while costing less and taking up less space.
Sage Barista Touch – Pros And Cons
Pros:
A superb appearance with the downsizing of a well-known machine.
There are numerous choices for customization and learning.
A high-quality drink with excellent essential components.
Touch-screen display with an automatic milk frother.
Comes pre-fitted with an innovative memory function for your convenience.
Cons:
Some users may find it too difficult to use.
This is not the fast fix espresso answer that some are looking for.
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Design
Sage machines are known for their construction design and engineering, and the Barista Touch does little to change that notion. This coffee machine is made of high-quality steel material and looks fantastic. Don’t be fooled by the photos; the Barista Express measures 320 x 240 x 410mm. The Barista Express is small enough to fit on a kitchen worktop and takes up minimal room.
A 2-liter container at the back of the machine holds enough water to produce a good number of drinks. Install the included filtration system to help keep inside the unit clean, and replace it when the machine notifies you. The period between filter replacements will be determined by the hardness of the water in your location. Sage generously includes a water-testing patch so you can properly set the machine’s water hardness according to your water supply.
When you remove the drip tray, you’ll find a handy rubber tool storing tray at the back of the machine, where you can keep the provided cleansing disc and scrubbing brush. Sage designed the Barista Express with a 54mm filter bin set. Solo and double filtration baskets in solitary and double-wall construction are included in the package. Solo filtration baskets are used for freshly ground coffee, whereas double-wall filtration trays are used for a pre-ground brew and are meant to aid enhanced pressure.
Features
The device has a solitary power switch on its front, but everything else is managed through the big touchscreen interface that occupies the face. The concept is that you choose the concoction you want, then complete the on-screen directions to put the proper parts together. Choose espresso, for instance, and you’ll see on-screen how long the grinders are scheduled to run for (one or two shots) and the current grinding level. You can overrule the grind time and change the grind with the lever on the side until you reach the perfect combination.
Pumping the appropriate amount of coffee into a filtration apparatus might be challenging, but Sage has a tool for that. It has the appearance of a metal bank card. After compacting, place the razor-like card in a filtration apparatus and spin to remove any residual coffee. Loading the porter filters, on the other hand, is simple: simply slip the group lever into the bracket and push it forward to activate the grinder.
Following that, a recipe specifies how long liquid will be put through the coffee beans. Remember, you can tailor this to your preferences. There’s a designated heated water nozzle for topping off drinks, and the mass of water is completely adjustable. Also, if you’re preparing a milky drink, you may control the temperature of the milk as well as the level of foam.
If you wish to create your own beverage style, you can submit your own formulas to the Barista Touch, either new or by changing an established recipe. The Barista Touch is undeniably simple and straightforward to use, and the snappy touchscreen is a joy to use.
Maintenance
When it’s time to thoroughly clean the unit, the Sage Barista Touch will notify you; the timeframe is determined by the water hardness level. In the options menu, there’s a specific descale program that walks you through it all. When instructed, wipe the machine and wash using a cleaning tablet on a regular basis. Simply drop the tablet into the cleansing plate, which slides into the group head, and then start the cycle. Sage also includes a pin device for unclogging portafilter openings.
It’s important to keep the built-in grinders fresh, especially after using very greasy beans. This is better achieved by operating the grinder on empty after every batch of beans ground to remove any residue. It’s a good idea to use grinder cleansing granules every 3 or 4 batches of beans to preserve the inside and keep your machine in good shape.
Ease Of Use
The Barista Touch’s touch LCD display serves as the system’s nerve centre, offering 6 main automated brewing settings – espresso, long black, latte, flat white, cappuccino, and steamed milk – as well as eight configurable options that family and friends can personally designate. Preparing a cup of coffee couldn’t be simpler. Simply glide your hand along the sliding list to select your chosen coffee type.
Next, insert the emptied portafilter into the left-hand grinding inlet and either tap ‘grind’ on the display or pull the lever to the side. The device will next ground the beans before depositing the crushed coffee into the filter holder and compacting it down to the right consistency for steaming. It’s important to note that the sound it generates while going through this process is incredibly annoying and loud.
The portafilter is then removed from the grinder process and twisted into the real coffee separating funnel (or group head, to use the proper phrase) to its side. Because the portafilter is intended to dispense 2 cups at once, every single espresso drink must be placed precisely below or some of the liquid gold will be wasted. Fortunately, the two channels of liquid slope inward slightly, ensuring that even the smallest of espresso cups get a complete supply without overflow.
Lastly, choose ‘single’ or ‘double,’ click the ‘brew’ start button, and the device will produce a flawless espresso with the necessary foam. The extraction time for a single shot is fixed to 25 seconds by default, although it can be modified in customized settings. Additionally, you can halt the extraction by pressing the same brewing button or pressing it again for a prolonged extraction.
Taste
The Barista Touch utilises 22 grammes of coffee beans to provide a double dose as default. You’ll need to get those beans on a regular basis. After you’ve modified the settings, the final outcome is super smooth crème, wonderfully strong coffee, and more foam than you could ever imagine, all at the touch of a button.
After several tries, you’ll look and feel like a professional barista whipping up passable coffee drinks, flat whites, and espressos. You don’t really even have to know the difference!
The Verdict
Despite the fact that it takes around 7 minutes to heat up and produces a lot of noise when crushing the coffee, the Sage Barista Touch is a good espresso and latte maker for those who want the realism of a mechanical machine but don’t want to tidy up later.
Yes, it’s pretty costly, and yes, it’s massive, but it’s simple to use and consistently provides a beautiful extraction. Sage’s Barista Touch eliminates the hassle of preparing barista-quality espressos. Admittedly, there is some cost and effort involved – you will have to transfer the portafilter from the crusher to the group head and then drain it – but otherwise, from the crushing and compacting to the last extraction and milk foaming, is totally automatic. This device creates outstanding coffee with 6 standard coffee styles at your fingertips and up to eight adjustable options.
Last update on 2024-11-21 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
