Espresso at home: matching the machine to your routine

Three families, three routines

• Manual and lever machines give you the most control and the steepest learning curve. You are the pump, which is either the appeal or the deal-breaker.
• Pump machines with a portafilter cover most home setups. Within this family the boiler arrangement changes daily life more than any other feature. A single boiler is compact but needs to change temperature between brewing and steaming. A heat exchanger or dual boiler lets you do both in one go.
• Super-automatic machines grind, dose and brew at a button press. They trade some control for consistency, and they need regular cleaning of the brew group.

The grinder does more work than the machine

A burr grinder with a consistent grind size makes far more difference to the cup than the brand on the front of the machine. Blade grinders produce mixed particle sizes, which show up as uneven extraction no matter how good the machine is.

Warm-up, cleaning and daily effort

Boiler machines need several minutes to reach temperature; thermoblock and thermojet designs are ready in seconds. Every machine with a steam wand needs purging, and any machine that sees water needs descaling on a schedule set by your water hardness.

What tends to go wrong in the first year

Scale build-up in hard-water areas, worn group gaskets, a clogged shower screen, and beans that were fresh on day one and stale by week three. None of these are machine faults, and all of them change the cup.

How we compare them

Our comparison covers boiler type, portafilter size, warm-up and footprint on the same rows. See the espresso machine comparison.