Breville Barista Touch Espresso (Open Box)

Ok, I am going to try to split this into two sections- the short review and an extended review. The short review: It is AMAZING and well worth the expense. Buy good beans and you are good to go. The longer review: First of all, this machine is expensive so I would look for any sort of sale. For us, it was worth it. The expense: At time of purchase this was going for roughly $799, but in terms of value it was worth it for us. Looking at our Starbucks bill, we spent well over that in just a few months because we would go there each morning and sometimes on the way home from work. We haven’t visited Starbucks at all since we bought this machine so it has more than paid for itself, and that is including the purchase of good beans. Starbucks was always a hit and miss depending on who was making our coffee each morning, but the Barista Touch has been a hit because once you create your settings it is always the same AND you can make micro adjustments until you get it just right (see “Features” below). The quality: It is very well made and the touch screen makes this a breeze to use- sooooooo easy. It has a drip tray that is very easy to empty and clean. The froth wand is easy to use and makes perfect frothed milk without any hassle at all. The tamper, it was good but not great so we opted for a spring loaded tamper and purchased a grind distributor which made using this even easier. If you have never tamped coffee, it can be tricky but using a spring tamper just made it so much easier however the tamper included is perfectly fine. We purchased the Sccody 53mm Calibrated Espresso Tamper which makes espresso tamping a breeze without any guesswork needed. The Barista Touch does come with a "blade" distributor, but I opted to buy a better one which has made for perfect coffee. We bought the Gurudar 53mm Coffee Distributor which is also a palm tamper but we just use it for the distribution of the grind instead of using the included Breville blade- again the included blade is good butr we wanted something a bit easier to use. Both the Sccody and the Gurudar are perfect additions and take all the guess work out of learning to make espresso, but there are many other options and even using what is included with the Touch you will be good to go with a small learning curve. The features: First, the touch screen- the Barista Touch comes with a screen that makes it so easy to create your coffee of choice. It has preprogrammed options (which are adjustable) and it allows you to custom build your coffee of choice and assign it an icon. In fact, everything is icon based and it even has a tutorial built in. For instance, if you want to make a latte, press the latte icon and a screen pops up with the easy to follow steps. You can make many different types of coffee including Americanos, Cappuccinos, and even simple espresso shots. You can even custom design your coffee, then assign it an icon, then every time you want that coffee you just hit the icon and follow the steps. Blamo- great coffee every time. Second great feature-the grinder. It has a built-in grinder which makes all the difference. The grinder is adjustable so you can change the grind size to fit your needs and to customize your coffee (fine or coarse grind). Next good feature- the water tank. It holds a good amount of water and is located at the back of the machine. You just have to watch the level but it will give you a “water tank is empty” message on the screen when you need to refill it. The downside: The only real thing we found to be a problem is the grinder and changing beans. We decided to try a different brand of coffee to see if we liked it but the hopper was full. Removing the beans from the hopper was a bit tricky and I know there is probably some short cut, but we managed and honestly it wasn’t that big of a deal. Comparisons: Our first espresso machine, the De’Longhi 15 bar espresso maker, was a good beginning machine but just isn’t as good as the Barista Touch. The De’Longhi didn’t have a grinder so we used pre ground coffee which was ok, just not super good and certainly not good enough to keep us from returning to our Starbucks habit. Our kid ended up taking it to college, so we upgraded to the touch. One thing that has made a world of difference, besides the included grinder, is the automatic milk frother on the Barista Touch. Super easy to use and is as simple as placing the milk pitcher, which is included, under the wand but it has to sit on a temp sensor to work accurately. We haven’t had a single problem with it to date. You can also use the frother in manual mode if you want, which is a great added feature but the automatic mode is good enough to make latte Art…that is if you know how to actually make latte art unlike me. As for adjustability, you can adjust how much coffee is ground, how fine you want the grinds, and how long the machine grinds the coffee. You can adjust the temp of the milk froth, you can go from automatic to manual mode to froth the milk so there are several options to adjust and fine tune to your exact specification. Overall, we love the Barista Touch- it makes amazing coffee. Of course, the beans have a great deal to do with it but still this machine rocks. UPDATE: Ok, I did find one tiny aspect of this most excellent machine that Breville could fix, aside from the price, and that is the frothing wand. Once you finish frothing the milk you have to clean the wand. It does a self clean, but when it self cleans the wand does not line up directly with the hole in the drain pan. ours is off a slight bit. The drain pan hole should be just a bit larger and that would fix everything. We found that after cleaning the wand we put the damp paper towel or rag near the base of the wand on the drain pan to avoid splashes. not a big deal but thought you should know. UPDATE: I have been using a trick when frothing the milk- when it finishes frothing the milk and wants to do the automatic wand purge to clean the frothing wand, I put the wand back in the empty milk pitcher and the water/steam purge empties into the pitcher instead of the drip tray. Makes cleaning so much easier and I don’t have to empty the drip tray as often. By the way- it is Dec 2024 and we have used it every day since we purchased it without a single issue, so this is a very good machine!