You may be aware of the Oracle and the Oracle touch, which are known for their ability to produce much closer to “true” cafe’ quality espresso and coffee shop favourites without the requirement for barista skills?
They do this with automation, the Express Impress, on the other hand, achieves more or less the same aim but through assistance, rather than automation, at a much lower cost.
Features and Benefits
• 2.0 L Water Tank
• 30 Second Ready Time
• Low Pressure Preinfusion
• PID Temperature Control
• 9 Bar Espresso Extraction
• Standard + Pressurized Baskets
• 10kg Calibrated Tamp
• Intelligent Dosing
• Dedicated Hot Water Spout
• Dimensions 32 cm wide & 31 cm deep, 40 cm tall
The Sage Barista Express has been one of the world’s best-selling espresso machines for several years, and while it’s a great machine - it’s a traditional espresso machine, and traditional espresso machines require the development of barista skills.
The presence of an integrated grinder often leads people to expect a bean to cup machine type experience, but this isn’t the case at all. The only difference between the Barista Express and a stand-alone espresso machine set up is that the Barista Express has a built in grinder vs a separate grinder.
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Sage became aware that there were many users who were somewhere in between bean to cup machine users and home baristas, meaning they wanted true barista espresso at home, and they either wanted or didn’t mind the authentic barista experience.
Their first offering to this newly identified market was the Sage Oracle, followed by the Oracle touch, and while they met the needs of this market, they do so at a price point that puts them out of the reach of a fairly big percentage of the market.
The Barista Express Impress is a new offering for this market of users who’re somewhere in between the bean to cup coffee machine user and traditional espresso machine user, but at a significantly lower price point than the Oracle range.
Home espresso making isn’t as simple as some people make it look, not if you’re wanting “true” espresso, that is. If you’re happy with bean to cup espresso, then that’s very simple, but if you want to take your coffee at home to the next level, then you’ll need a traditional, portafilter espresso machine.
There are various obstacles to great espresso, in the form of a number of different variables, including the coffee beans you’re using, the grind size, dose, ratio, tamp, and many more. The Oracle and Oracle Touch take care of dosing and tamping for you. This might not sound like much, but if you’re new to home espresso, it’s actually quite a lot.
You still need to tweak the grind, you still need to pay attention to ratio and other variables, but with these two things sorted, the process does become quite a lot more straightforward, as these two variables have such a knock on effect on everything else.With the Barista Express Impress, there is some user interaction required for the dosing and tamping, but the machine does all of the thinking and most of the work.
The machine has sensors in the grinding cradle that detects the volumetric dose, so it prompts you to grind, and then to grind a bit more if it detects it’s underdosed, or it instructs you to trim the puck using the razor tool if it’s overdosed.
When the basket is precisely dosed, you get the green light next to the smiley face, and the dose is sorted - not just for that shot, but for all other shots until you change beans or grind size, as the machine learns!
It learns how long in total it needs to grind for with your current beans and at the current grind size in order to deliver the correct dose.
The way the machine doses the basket centrally is also really clever, as it’s dosed in a way that ensures the best, most even distribution possible when it’s tamped using the tamp lever.
The tamp lever is also very clever, as it’s designed to deliver a calibrated 10Kg of pressure every time, and it tamps perfectly straight every time.
What’s important with tamping is the consistency of the pressure, and a level tamp in order to ensure a level surface. This ensures as even as possible distribution of the water through the puck of coffee.
Manually tamping isn’t as straightforward as it may look, and one of the most common issues is an uneven tamp. I do this myself, regularly - it's one of my pet peeves to see myself on my YouTube videos where I’m sure I was tamping completely level, but from the camera it’s clear to see I was slightly off.
The Express Impress solves both of these tamping inconsistencies and in my opinion, it’s the only machine with a tamp lever that does this.
It is worth pointing out that it’s very possible to use this machine fully manually, there’s a manual dosing option, and you can do your own puck prep if you like, including WDT or other distribution methods, and you can tamp manually.
You’d do this simply by removing the splitter from the portafilter, or using an aftermarket bottomless portafilter, and the Sage dosing funnel. This means you can start out using the machine on auto, but if you decide you want to take a more manual approach, you can.
For my full playlist on the Barista Express Impress see:
The Barista Express Impress Playlist