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

Product Information

Sage is an award-winning kitchen appliance company that’s best known for its bean to cup, espresso and drip coffee machines, alongside other devices like juicers, air fryers and pizza ovens. Sage coffee machines are some of the best coffee makers on the market, offering deep and tasty espresso, lattes and cappuccinos suited to every taste and budget. Longer-term you’ll need to sporadically run descaling and general cleaning cycles, both of which can be activated in the machine’s settings menu and simply require you to follow a series of on-screen commands. You should buy it if… According to Sage, the Thermojet tech lets the Pro heat up and be ready to pour a shot of espresso only three seconds after it’s been turned on. Volumetric is a more precise approach to pouring, where the machine measures exactly how much water it’s pushing through the ground coffee. 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. The Sage Barista Pro, where precision meets speed. Brew perfect espresso at home with this incredible coffee machine.

You won’t find fancy features such as app support or strength settings here, but the machine’s easy setup process and rapid heating system make it a great choice for coffee fans looking to take their morning caffeine injection to the next level. Bar pressure is applied during the extraction process via the 15 Bar Italian pump. The steam wand textures the milk to a velvety mouthfeel. Creating silky micro-foam capable of composing silky latte art.

If you’re trying to save money or curb your takeaway coffee habit, investing in a quality coffee machine is a great way to keep your monthly costs down and stop unnecessary spending. Sage is a premium and reliable coffee machine brand that has topped our lists on the best coffee makers, best bean to cup coffee machines and best espresso coffee machines. 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 coffee machines you can find are from the following ranges: Bambino, Oracle, Barista, Duo and Precision Brewers. Most devices will come with a built-in coffee grinder but if it doesn’t, you’ll need to buy one to grind your beans or you can buy pre-ground beans to use in it. 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. With a grinder built in, you get everything perfectly set up for this machine, delivering the best-quality coffee from bean to cup.

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. Spend a little time getting everything just so, and the Pro rewards with a fantastic cup of coffee. As ever, I was looking to produce a double shot of espresso with a 2:1 ratio – that is, 18g of ground coffee to produce around 36g of espresso in the cup. While the default settings produced an extraction time of less than 20 seconds – too fast, in other words – I was able to maintain the same amount of espresso but lengthen the extraction process to around 30 seconds by notching the grind size a couple of settings finer and customising the extraction time in the menu. The customisation process is easy: select the correct menu option, tap the single– or double-shot button to start the extraction, and tap it again once your preferred amount is in the cup. The LCD display with grinding and extracting progress animations. The screen provides you all the precise information you need to make coffee exactly the way you like it, every time. Sage also includes both single-wall (unpressurised) and dual-wall (pressurised) baskets for the portafilter, and in both single and double-shot sizes. The pressurised baskets will come in very handy for beginners as they make it a little easier to get good results if you can’t be bothered to seek the perfect grind and tamp. And, if you have to resort to supermarket-bought ground coffee rather than good quality fresh beans, then they also help to eke as much crema as possible from coffee that’s past its fresh best. Digital Temperature Control (PID) delivers water at precisely the right temperature, ensuring optimal espresso extractionNone 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. 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. 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. 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.

A dial on the machine’s right-hand edge controls the hot water and steam delivery; you simply twist it towards the front of the machine for steam or the rear for hot water. Unlike cheaper machines, which dispense hot water through the steam wand, the Barista Pro has a spout hidden just alongside where the coffee is brewed, so you can dispense hot water directly into your espresso to create an instant americano. And, as mentioned earlier, there’s virtually no heat-up or cool-down time required. After a few seconds, the Barista Pro delivers the water or steam you asked for. Sage Barista Pro review: Performance A cup of coffee made using the out-of-the-box settings has a robust crema and is delivered at around 63 degrees, which is pretty much spot on for espresso. There are also manual controls for those who wish to tweak their drink’s temperature. My only issue is that the flavour on the test beans I used was a little acidic on occasion. The Sage Barista Pro doesn’t make things particularly easy, so you need to already know what you’re doing to get the most out of it. If you do, then the results are excellent.

Standard Delivery Info

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. 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.