This year on Black Friday, Breville brought serious firepower by lowering the price of Amazon’s best-selling espresso machine. The Barista Express doesn’t go on sale very often, so this $499 deal, which is $200 less than the usual $699 price, is a real event that is causing a lot of trouble in the coffee machine category.
This price is lower than spending $5 a day at a coffee shop for three months. Plus, the coffee you make at home usually tastes better because you can control everything. This record low price is still available through the weekend after Black Friday, as long as supplies last.
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Integrated Grinder
You don’t need a separate grinder that takes up counter space and adds another step to your morning because this one has a built-in conical burr grinder. You can go from whole beans to pulling espresso shots in less than a minute, which is important when you’re half-awake and need that first cup fast. The dose control grinding system grinds coffee beans and sends them straight to the portafilter and keeps the coffee’s flavor at its best because coffee starts to lose its aromatic compounds right after it is ground.
The design of the grinding cradle lets you put the portafilter right under the grinder output so you can catch every bit of ground coffee without having to move it between containers. Because of this integration, there are fewer parts to clean and less coffee that gets stuck to different surfaces. The precise conical burr mechanism makes sure that the particle sizes are always the same and this directly affects the quality of the extraction, since uneven grounds can lead to a shot that is both too bitter and too sour.
Controlling the temperature is what makes the difference between bad espresso and great shots at home: The digital PID system keeps the water temperature in a very small range, so it comes out at just the right temperature for the best extraction. If you heat the coffee too much, it will burn and taste bitter, which will overpower everything else. If it’s too cold, you don’t extract enough, which leaves you with weak, sour espresso that tastes like disappointment.
One thing that sets basic espresso machines apart from more advanced ones is the low pressure pre-infusion: At the start of extraction, the system slowly raises the pressure instead of hitting the coffee puck with full force right away. This slow start lets the grounds bloom and soak up water evenly, which means that all the flavors are drawn out evenly instead of through weak spots in the puck.
The steam wand has enough power to make microfoam milk, not just hot and bubbly milk. Real microfoam is smooth and velvety, and it adds sweetness to your drink. If you want to practice your pouring skills, it also lets you make latte art. You can control the texturing process by hand with the wand, which lets you learn the skills that professional baristas use. You heat and aerate the milk at the same time which gives cappuccinos and lattes that shiny pour that makes them taste like they came from a fancy coffee shop.
Right now, you save $200 on a machine that would cost you the same amount of money in coffee shop visits in four months of daily use. If you buy the grinder on its own, it will cost you $150 to $300. You will also need to buy an espresso machine. This deal gives you the ability to make café-quality espresso at a price that makes sense compared to going to the coffee shop every day.
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