A bird in a bush.
As the Bambino sucks excess water off the puck at the end of a shot it appears to be similar to the Barista Express less the grinder. May even use the same internal bits. It's probably volumetric as well as the BE is.
So what does this do. It tries to keep the volume of coffee that's produced constant. It doesn't use time but tries to adjust that to suite. Sage have to do this on the cheap so use a plastic flow meter. The typical expensive cafe machines use a chunk of metal. These things are not that accurate but if the quantity of grinds and etc are consistent they will produce consistent results.
Sage's problem is that the flow meter can't take the brew pressure that may be used so excess pressure is diverted into the over pressure valve and included in the flow measurement. The BE has a gauge which helps with this but many forums will say ignore it. In practice a little water dumped this way makes no difference. The instructions in the BE manual are likely to give crap results. A higher pressure is bound to be needed on any bean I have tried but it can be made to work with many beans.
So what do many do. They end the shot manually at some specific time that produces some size of shot. Not much of a problem really. Buy a cheap stick on manual timer. Some might even weigh the shot as it's poured and end it manually - even on some very expensive machines.
So all ok providing the weight of grinds and the grinder settings are pretty consistent. Timed grinders give mixed results until they have settled down from being clean. Once that happens they may be ok weight of grinds wise until they are cleaned. When playing with grind settings on a bean there is a catch. The grinder will still have grinds in from the previous settings. This can be confusing. Some needs discarding after a setting is changed. It can be rather a lot on some commercial grinders. On the Sage grinder it varies. Once settled not much. If not maybe another shots worth. If not done more beans may get waisted fiddling with the grinder setting trying to get things to work out. Another catch is setting a coarser grind. Always go coarser than needed and then finer to the setting you want. Not that unusual grinder behaviour.
Another method is to weigh the beans into the grinder. So you want say 15g, Weigh that into the grinder. Check weigh and add more beans if needed. Another method if timed grind is being used is to program a very short timed grind. Use that to top up from the main time settings.
An alternative is to buy a grinder called a Niche. Rather popular if you have the money. With those what is weighed in will come out to rather close limits. What you may not know though is the time commercial burrs need to wear in. There will be taste changes over several kg of beans. LOL Right up to circa 10kg but mostly in the first say 3 or 4. Sage grinder not so bad. Expect to take a kg or so to learn to use it and the machine. Then comes what bean suites you. It will be pretty settled down by then including wearing in. They also tend to last for a long time due to changes Sage have made over the years. Well thought out but they often get a lot of stick on forums. They are good value for £ spent.
Sage grinders usually come with a thing called a razor tool. Used to trim the grinds hieght after they are tamped. In use that may be difficult to use as they suggest, use it and throw out any excess. Getting shut of the excess might not work but do take note of the height it sets. A bit more can be added but save that for when you know what you are doing. Too low is pretty simple. A wet soggy used puck.
Tampers - it may well be worth buying a spring loaded one to keep the tamping pressure even. There are plenty of reasonably priced ones on Amazon or you can spend a fortune on what essentially doesn't offer any real advantage just a nice brand name. Don't be tempted by other than the flat ended spring loaded ones.
Do try and get an even heap of grinds in the portafilter before tamping. People tap the sides etc. Levellers are available to help tamp square I'd favour the 2 slope types from experience but they wont help at all if the heap isn't pretty even. On one grinder I used I added little stick on bits to ensure the heap was even every time. I now use a Niche. It grinds into a cup that is then used to get them in the portafilter. Not the easiest way to get an even heap but it does compress the grinds a bit. That can help if it's super high.
Always use a grinds to shot weight ratio of 2. No try variations. Shorter or even higher may work out. Sticking to 30sec shots - not a bad idea. Something has to be fixed. Maybe play with others later. Fresh roasted beans will be arabica beans. Tastes may well be odd and different to typical coffee shops. Supermarket beans generally don't work out when coffee is brewed this way. Larger packs of commercial beans may well work out. They are intended for hotel etc use. The usual packs of beans are intended for French press etc and you may have your favourites. They may taste entirely different when run through a grinder and espresso machine.
LOL Is it all worth it. Fully sorted excellent coffee and not all that much of a problem to produce really but not like yo see done in your favourite coffee shop where it all looks nice and simple.
So what does this do. It tries to keep the volume of coffee that's produced constant. It doesn't use time but tries to adjust that to suite. Sage have to do this on the cheap so use a plastic flow meter. The typical expensive cafe machines use a chunk of metal. These things are not that accurate but if the quantity of grinds and etc are consistent they will produce consistent results.
Sage's problem is that the flow meter can't take the brew pressure that may be used so excess pressure is diverted into the over pressure valve and included in the flow measurement. The BE has a gauge which helps with this but many forums will say ignore it. In practice a little water dumped this way makes no difference. The instructions in the BE manual are likely to give crap results. A higher pressure is bound to be needed on any bean I have tried but it can be made to work with many beans.
So what do many do. They end the shot manually at some specific time that produces some size of shot. Not much of a problem really. Buy a cheap stick on manual timer. Some might even weigh the shot as it's poured and end it manually - even on some very expensive machines.
So all ok providing the weight of grinds and the grinder settings are pretty consistent. Timed grinders give mixed results until they have settled down from being clean. Once that happens they may be ok weight of grinds wise until they are cleaned. When playing with grind settings on a bean there is a catch. The grinder will still have grinds in from the previous settings. This can be confusing. Some needs discarding after a setting is changed. It can be rather a lot on some commercial grinders. On the Sage grinder it varies. Once settled not much. If not maybe another shots worth. If not done more beans may get waisted fiddling with the grinder setting trying to get things to work out. Another catch is setting a coarser grind. Always go coarser than needed and then finer to the setting you want. Not that unusual grinder behaviour.
Another method is to weigh the beans into the grinder. So you want say 15g, Weigh that into the grinder. Check weigh and add more beans if needed. Another method if timed grind is being used is to program a very short timed grind. Use that to top up from the main time settings.
An alternative is to buy a grinder called a Niche. Rather popular if you have the money. With those what is weighed in will come out to rather close limits. What you may not know though is the time commercial burrs need to wear in. There will be taste changes over several kg of beans. LOL Right up to circa 10kg but mostly in the first say 3 or 4. Sage grinder not so bad. Expect to take a kg or so to learn to use it and the machine. Then comes what bean suites you. It will be pretty settled down by then including wearing in. They also tend to last for a long time due to changes Sage have made over the years. Well thought out but they often get a lot of stick on forums. They are good value for £ spent.
Sage grinders usually come with a thing called a razor tool. Used to trim the grinds hieght after they are tamped. In use that may be difficult to use as they suggest, use it and throw out any excess. Getting shut of the excess might not work but do take note of the height it sets. A bit more can be added but save that for when you know what you are doing. Too low is pretty simple. A wet soggy used puck.
Tampers - it may well be worth buying a spring loaded one to keep the tamping pressure even. There are plenty of reasonably priced ones on Amazon or you can spend a fortune on what essentially doesn't offer any real advantage just a nice brand name. Don't be tempted by other than the flat ended spring loaded ones.
Do try and get an even heap of grinds in the portafilter before tamping. People tap the sides etc. Levellers are available to help tamp square I'd favour the 2 slope types from experience but they wont help at all if the heap isn't pretty even. On one grinder I used I added little stick on bits to ensure the heap was even every time. I now use a Niche. It grinds into a cup that is then used to get them in the portafilter. Not the easiest way to get an even heap but it does compress the grinds a bit. That can help if it's super high.
Always use a grinds to shot weight ratio of 2. No try variations. Shorter or even higher may work out. Sticking to 30sec shots - not a bad idea. Something has to be fixed. Maybe play with others later. Fresh roasted beans will be arabica beans. Tastes may well be odd and different to typical coffee shops. Supermarket beans generally don't work out when coffee is brewed this way. Larger packs of commercial beans may well work out. They are intended for hotel etc use. The usual packs of beans are intended for French press etc and you may have your favourites. They may taste entirely different when run through a grinder and espresso machine.
LOL Is it all worth it. Fully sorted excellent coffee and not all that much of a problem to produce really but not like yo see done in your favourite coffee shop where it all looks nice and simple.
I don’t think I’ll ever bother with a bean to cup machine. Looks like too much fannying around to get a cup of coffee. I can imagine the arguments on coffee forums - must be worse than the Brexit ones on here! 
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I don’t think I’ll ever bother with a bean to cup machine. Looks like too much fannying around to get a cup of coffee. I can imagine the arguments on coffee forums - must be worse than the Brexit ones on here!
It's mostly lifestyle projection by the cultists who obsess over the minutiae of espresso.
I'm convinced they don't actually like it lol.
LOL no they are far more emphatic that theirs is the only way of brewing coffee. It alll gets more complex in some areas than it needs to be. More they spend the better it gets too.
Reallity. More or less as I outlined. The main problem when some one buys a machine for the first time is getting to grips with it. The web generally wont help. You'll find plenty of musts and often little on getting around the problems.
When I used a Barista Express and had found a bean I liked I put lots of kg's through it purely with a button press with consistent results and no checks other than a look at the used puck which might cause me to alter the built in grinder a bit. I use an oily bean which isn't very grinder friendly. If I wanted to try another bean the best option was a separate grinder so bought the Sage one as well. I'm an engineer so inclined to find out just how the machine worked and take advantage of it. Trying to explain that to an expert - waste of time.
A lot of the attraction of these machines is steamed milk. Takes a while to sort out doing that well but maybe Sage's auto will do well enough. Seems it does but best keep an eye on cleaning up and descaling. A feature of all of this type of Sage machines.
I moved on to a refurb'd Sage dual boiler. Not sure if it was worth it hence a refurb. That came with scale problems and worked for a couple of years then the electronics failed. Repair - no bought a new one as I will descale it often enough. If not the stuff just slowly builds up. Is the machine worth buying. In coffee terms it's pretty spectacular for the price - is that needed - maybe not. However far more steam power and it can pour shots via time or flow. A Niche grinder later on. Influencers are around and they wont mention the taste change that clearly as I have but at least I am highly unlikely to need to try another grinder. I have a few times sometimes a bit of a disaster one way or another. The Niche just needs a change of settings for different beans. The oily bean I use needs the grinder to settle down to it a bit for a consistent grind setting. I know how this changes with shots so not much of a problem.
So for a pretty short time spent to prepare the grinds I get consistent shots. The grinds cup may mess that up at times but I just drink the results. I'm more interested in taste than theoretical idea about what shot weight changes do. I've also found that it's worth playing around with the variables with a bean that I know well.
Biggest laugh about the DB is that I hardly ever use the steam. I drink americano and also prefer to get the hot water out of the machine. Some say that is a no no but Sage take some care with the hot water temperature and use stainless boilers. Many don't. Some may find the BE water a bit cool but only because they are used to using a kettle. Eventually they are likely to find that coffee tastes better after it's cooled a little. It usually does.
One other factor on the BE. It benefits from a bit of a preheat. Run a bit of steam and then pull the shot as soon as it allows. Probably the same on the others. No need to do anything on the DB.
D
Deleted member 294929
I don’t think I’ll ever bother with a bean to cup machine. Looks like too much fannying around to get a cup of coffee. I can imagine the arguments on coffee forums - must be worse than the Brexit ones on here!
What! Is there a coffee forum?
Coffee's g00d this morning.
A dash of hazelnut n' cinnamon gives it a twist o' taste.
Wanna know how you can make yours better, not bitter?
"Yeah. Science!"
A dash of hazelnut n' cinnamon gives it a twist o' taste.
Wanna know how you can make yours better, not bitter?
"Yeah. Science!"
There certainly is
theres even a forum section dedicated to Sage machines
Bean to coffee machines work dont they?I don’t think I’ll ever bother with a bean to cup machine. Looks like too much fannying around to get a cup of coffee. I can imagine the arguments on coffee forums - must be worse than the Brexit ones on here!
I’m tempted by the Express pro as it has a built in shot timer.
And I guess a shot timer + scales are vital to dialling in
I do have a Mazzer mini grinder and Fracino Little Gem - old semi auto model. They are too bulky and too much effort to make coffee somI don’t use them much. The Little Gem takes 10 mins to warm up, maybe more to get the group head to temp.
I guess that the built in Sage grinder isn’t as good as the Mazzer - which has stepless adjustment and is heavy engineering ( probably weighs as much as a Sage Express), but we only have a smallish kitchen and I like the idea of being compact.
Out of interest once dialled in, do you find you could just switch on and use the BE without more fiddling (pon the same bag of beans)
I don’t think I’ll ever bother with a bean to cup machine. Looks like too much fannying around to get a cup of coffee. I can imagine the arguments on coffee forums - must be worse than the Brexit ones on here!
To be fair the Sage machines aren’t bean to cup machines, strictly speaking they are an espresso machine with built in grinder.
B to C machines should be just as easy to use as your coffee pod machine.
I suppose the Costa express machines in garages are B to C machines - bit big for my kitchen
There’s 'work' and there’s 'work'. My car works. I don’t think I’d bother with one of those old ones that also work but you need to start with a starting handle, need servicing every 500 miles and you have to fettle the ignition and fuel mixture to get it just right to get up a steep hill. Too much fannying around.
There’s 'work' and there’s 'work'. My car works. I don’t think I’d bother with one of those old ones that also work but you need to start with a starting handle, need servicing every 500 miles and you have to fettle the ignition and fuel mixture to get it just right to get up a steep hill. Too much fannying around.
D
Deleted member 294929
Could you simply have PMd me that?
Now Roy will get on protesting the rights of Coffee pickers.
D
Deleted member 294929
I think a good few of the components are just that bit better than the impress.
I might get that next year to sit on the other side of the kitchen