Sage - The Oracle Touch, Brushed Stainless Steel

Product Information

If you're wondering why I'm only making coffee for myself, by the way, and not my wife, that's because she doesn't drink coffee! She does like the smell of it, though, and it's a very good job she does ;-). Kev's Sage Oracle What the FAQ If you're wondering what I'm going on about re “dialing in”, this is the term used to describe the process of tweaking things to improve the taste of espresso.

To me, it makes perfect sense that someone who would want a touch screen and on screen guidance would want that assistance and guidance from start to finish, but now there is the Barista Touch and the Barista Touch Impress, there's more choice, and I'm sure there are some people out there who do only want assistance with steaming milk and are happy to be unaided where espresso is concerned, and if that's you, then the Barista Touch may be the machine for you. One of the usual cons of bean to cup machines is that although they're pretty good straight out of the box in the hands of a complete novice, that's usually just about as good as you're going to get, as there's not much the user can do to fine-tune. With the Oracle machines, though, the user has the ability to fine-tune over time. It's fair to say that you don't quite have the same ability fine tune as you'd have if you were using the Sage Dual Boiler and a capable stand alone grinder, but still, you'll have far more fine tuning ability than you'd get with most bean to cup coffee machines. One touch AmericanoAlso some home baristas may find the touch screen a bit too mainstream for them vs. the buttons on the express impress, so it just comes down to how much you want to keep the other half happy if it's you that is the home barista, which probably means in most cases the touch impress will be the winner ;-). The Oracle touch does have more grind settings, 45 vs 30, which gives you a bit more ability to finely tune the grind size, in reality though I've found the touch impress does a really good job of dialing in, and the fact that it tells you what to change the grind size too is a big plus for the Touch Impress. The answer is, now that I know so much more about espresso machines, and now that I've had so much more experience with them, I'm even more impressed with the Sage Oracle than I was the first time around! Machines like the Barista Express and Barista Pro don't have any assistance, they're no easier to get great espresso and great milk texture from than any other traditional espresso machine, integrated grinder or not.

So unless you get one of the fully assisted Sage machines, you may in some cases actually end up with worse-tasting coffee from using a non-assisted manual espresso machine as if it were a bean to cup machine. The Sage Vs Breville Confusion Who are they for? Anyone who wants to make coffee shop favourites but with the convenience of a Nespresso machineFirstly, descaling the Oracle Touch – who should do this and how often? I’ve read conflicting opinions online for sage double boilers about whether this should be attempted at home or not. You can control the brew temperature over a much bigger range than usual, 10 degrees in 1C increments, from 86-96, and you also have control over preinfusion power, and a much bigger range of preinfusion time than with any other similarly priced dual boiler espresso machine I've come across. I class the shot quality potential of the Oracle & Oracle Touch to be about on parr with that of the Sage Dual Boiler paired with the Sage Smart Grinder Pro, which is good – but not as good as if you paired it with a more premium espresso specialist grinder costing 2-3 times the cost of the Sage Smart Grinder Pro. It doesn't have a 3 way solenoid valve, it has a brew valve instead, so what this means is that it doesn't fire all the pressure and excess moisture out of the basket into the drip tray. To be fair to Sage, they probably made the decision based on the fact that they know most people don't use the razor tool, anyway!

At the time of writing, all machines in the Sage range except the Barista Express, have the European Etzinger burrs, so the Oracle has better-shot potential due to the superior temperature stability and precision, but mainly via bypassing the integrated grinder and pairing with a premium espresso specialist grinder.The Oracle is another choice if one or more of the above applies to you, but the Express Impress is a lot cheaper, and similarly to the Oracle Touch vs the Barista Touch Impress, it's the same grinder only with less grind adjustments than the oracle. Cheers for the comment, and I agree to a certain degree, but this isn’t a Sage-specific issue, it’s a model-specific issue. Traditional home espresso machines are based on professional, commercial espresso machines you'll see in coffee shops, only they're smaller, and they usually are tank fed vs being plumbed in.

Will you get better tasting Nespresso as a result of buying one of these machines, no, they all use the Nespresso brewing unit, so you're not going to find much difference in cup quality regardless of which Nespresso machine you go for, but where the Creatista machines really come into their own is their ability to produce cafe quality microfoam, for better milkies than I'd ever expect from a Nespresso machine. I quite often hear from people who've clearly done this, who have ended up being what I refer to as “set and forget” users, which means they're attempting to use Sage integrated grinder traditional espresso machines as if they're bean to cup machines. Using a Sage coffee machine like this will cause hit and miss results with each bag of beans, especially when people select to use the single walled baskets because they hear that they're the best.The precision brewer is a brilliant filter coffee machine, and it's a new breed of filter machine vs the original old school machines that simply deliver water into a filter holder and have a hot plate to keep the coffee warm. There are five factory pre-set coffees, which you can fully adjust, and 8 spaces for your own completely custom coffees. This is one of Sage's least sketchy machine in terms of longevity and repairability out of warranty period, as there's just so little in terms of electronics or non-standard parts, but the Gaggia Classic is very difficult to compete with where longevity and durability is concerned. They last decades, as I know as mine is 20 years old.