Sage the Barista Pro Espresso Machine, Bean to Cup Coffee Machine with Milk Frother, SES878BTR - Black Truffle

Product Information

Barista-quality performance with a new intuitive interface that provides all the information you need to create cafe quality coffee at home. The built-in grinder delivers the right amount of ground coffee on demand, for full flavour. With a 3 second heat-up time and precise espresso extraction, you go from bean to cup, faster than ever before. With a single touch, the integrated conical burr grinder with dose control delivers the right amount of coffee on demand, for maximum flavour. Adjustable grind size and dose. With a single touch the dose control delivers the correct amount of coffee from the integrated conical burr grinder. Both grind size and dose are adjustable if required.

The Sage Barista Pro, where precision meets speed. Brew perfect espresso at home with this incredible coffee machine. The Barista Express is a mid-range model, it builds on the entry-level espresso machine - the Bambino - by adding a built-in burr grinder to dispense freshly ground coffee right into the portafilter. But unlike the more automated bean-to-cup style machines from other brands, this one allows you to flex your barista skills. You’ll need to tamp the coffee yourself, use the razor tool to get it to the perfect level, and steam your own milk, all of which might take a bit of practice to perfect, particularly if you’re a novice. It isn’t just the grind time that’s adjustable, however. The Barista Pro also allows you to choose how long to infuse the coffee before extraction (this forces water into the ground coffee for a set amount of time to help eke out the most flavour), and you can customise exactly how much hot water you want to push through the coffee for the single-shot and double-shot buttons. With a grinder built in, you get everything perfectly set up for this machine, delivering the best-quality coffee from bean to cup.The Barista Pro provides a set of tools to help take the guesswork out of the coffee-making equation. The grind and extraction timers are an essential aid for consistency and getting the most flavour from your coffee and, while you do still need a small set of (accurate) scales if you want to make sure your ground coffee is translating to the right amount of espresso in the cup, that’s not a huge extra expense.

A word to the wise, though. Unlike some of Sage’s other machines, such as the Bambino Plus or the pricier Barista Touch and Oracle Touch models, there is no automatic milk texturing facility here. If you want to produce hot milk with a soft, silky microfoam, then you’re only option is to take some time to learn – read Sage’s guidelines, watch some YouTube videos, and keep trying. Once you get the hang of it, however, the Barista Pro is a great companion; the three-second heat-up time is very welcome when you’re trying to make a cappuccino or flat white before dashing out the front door. Getting the most out of this coffee machine means tweaking its settings so that you get the coffee you want, which is great for experienced coffee drinkers. You shouldn’t buy it if… Unlike some machines, the Barista Pro isn’t smart, and doesn’t come with any form of app support. As the name suggests, it’s also fully manual. Newbie users won’t find on-screen instructions for lattes or auto settings for specific drinks. We liked having the pressure gauge during the initial setup process, the correct pressure range is very clearly marked and it’s a helpful indicator that you can watch as your espresso pours, to see whether it’s being extracted at the correct pressure. The manual then advises what adjustments you’ll need to make to correct an under or over extracted espresso, which is usually either the grind size or the amount of pressure you use when tamping.

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By comparison, cheaper machines just push out water by time. The benefit is that it means you should always get the same amount of espresso in your cup with each pour, something you can’t guarantee with budget machines. Once we’d made those first eight cups and perfected the settings, it was easy to produce consistently great espresso every time. The machine takes around 40 seconds to warm up when first switched on, then for us it took 17 seconds to grind and dispense the coffee, but this’ll vary depending on your settings. As you’d expect, grinding is the loudest part of the process and hit 80dB on our noise meter. As an added bonus, I found the system worked great with non-dairy milk including soy, almond and oat. This is great news for vegan users and something I can’t say about all the frothing systems I’ve tested.

None of this is a departure from the norm but, under the surface, Sage has rung the changes. The Barista Pro swaps the classic boiler design of its other mid-range and top-flight stablemates for Sage’s “ThermoJet” technology. This has one key appeal: speed. It means the machine gets to the correct temperature in less than three seconds, and doesn’t need to be vented to cool down after heating up to deliver steam. The result? It’s ready in the slow blink of an eye. Descaling and cleaning cycles are necessary from time to time and can be activated via the on-screen instructions All that said, there’s something hugely cathartic about the process of making coffee with a manual espresso machine of this quality. The whirr of the grinder, the quiet tap of the portafilter on the scales, the buzz of the pump and the quiet drip of coffee pouring into the cup. What makes it doubly satisfying, however, is that the Barista Pro demands relatively minimal time and effort yet still delivers consistently good results.Buying reconditioned Sage Coffee machines is also a much friendlier environmental option. Refurbished Sage Coffee machines are often second hand or used Sage Coffee machinesthat have been restored and updated to meet the manufacturer's standards, which means you'll be helping to keep old Sage Coffee machines out of our landfills, reduce electronic waste, and minimise your carbon footprint. Under the hood, Sage has made a few key changes to differentiate the Pro from its cheaper manual bean-to-cup models. The two biggest are the addition of the firm’s custom Thermojet heating and volumetric pouring.