Crew Review: Rancilio Egro ONE Commercial Superauto

Got a spare $13k lying around that you’re just not sure what to do with? Of course you do! And the obvious expenditure is on a commercial-class superautomatic like the Rancilio Egro ONE.

OK, maybe it’s not up your alley for a home machine, but this fully programmable superautomatic would be right at home in a convenience store — you can program specific drinks and set it up to take payment — or a high capacity restaurant, cafe or drive-through espresso stand that requires extreme efficiency.

Watch Gail go through all the features and make us a few different drinks on this super fancy little number.

Ask the Experts: Is Something Wrong with my Odea’s Sensors?

Saeco’s Odea Go and Giro superautomatic espresso machines are a little bit on the tenderhearted side: They have sensitive sensors that are sometimes difficult to interpret.

We commonly receive calls from customers who are being prompted to empty the waste drawer (dregs box and water tray located with the brew group on the right side of the machine) more often than they deem necessary. There are two sensor lights that can indicate this needs to happen:

This light specifically indicates that the dregs drawer needs to be emptied	This light indicates any number of issues are present and is not specific — you may need to add beans, add water or empty the dregs drawer

The dregs box that catches used pucks doesn’t use a sensor that measures the volume, rather, it’s based on cup count — around every 10 shots it will indicate that the dregs box needs to be emptied. The waste water area under the brew group, however, is pressure sensitive and will indicate it needs to be emptied once a specific weight has been reached.

If you see the warning light and empty only the dregs box and not the waste water drawer as well, it will reset the dregs box shot count but then indicate (likely shortly thereafter) that the drawer needs to be emptied again because the waste water has reached capacity. And vice versa. Another cause for the frequency may be that the dregs box was removed, emptied and placed back into the machine too quickly or when the machine was off, so that the shot count was not reset.

You can easily keep these overactive lights at bay by thoroughly cleaning the dregs drawer — both the box and the waste water area — each time it indicates it needs to be emptied. Also, making sure you do this when the machine is on is very important. Finally, expect that it’s going to happen about every 10 shots or so — and if you’re drinking 4 – 6 shots a day, you won’t be able to let those little pucks hang out in the dregs drawer longer than a couple of days.

If you’ve misplaced your user manual and want to refresh your memory on how your Odea functions, here are PDF versions of the Giro and Go.

Where to Lubricate the Saeco Superautomatic Brew Groups

It’s a good idea to regularly pull out your Saeco superautomatic‘s brew group and spray it down with hot water — we recommend doing this once per week and using water only, no soap. Why? Because the soap is going to break down the lubrication on the brew group and you’ll be re-applying it weekly as opposed to twice a year. Ultimately, you’ll be using more than you need to and we’re just thrifty that way.

Gail shows us where to apply the lubricant on the brew group when it is time for a touch up. A general rule of thumb is that if you can see/feel the lubrication on the group, you’re probably as lubricated as you need to be. When applying, don’t put a large quantity into each area; just apply some to a q-tip and then put a light layer. We often see big globs applied that then mix with coffee grounds to make a rather dangerous cement. In this case, you can have too much of a good thing.

Crew Review: Saeco Syntia Superautomatic

Saeco’s newest release in the US is the Syntia, a petite, scaled down version of their also recently released Xelsis. Like the Xelsis, it has a stainless steel casing (love!) a sleek, futuristic design (double love!) and some programmable options (ok, this love-fest is getting ridiculous!). It also has a bi-pass doser for pre-ground coffee, the standard removable brew group and it even utilizes the magic of magnets.

Sadly, it doesn’t have the patented Saeco Brewing System (SBS) that varies the pressure to give more or less crema on your shot, but there’s always a catch, right? If you have limited counterspace or cupboard clearance, this is definitely the superautomatic for you. Watch Gail take us through its features and demonstrate its functionality.

Dialing in the Shot on a Saeco Superauto

One of the primary considerations one must take into account when selecting an espresso machine is what’s more important to them: Convenience over flavor. Outside of budget, this is arguably the most important thing to think about when you’re determining what type of machine is right for you.

While superautomatics offer a lot of convenience — internal grinder, easy clean-up, automation and programming — the models available on the US market utilize plastic in their brew group design, which doesn’t regulate temperature quite as consistently as their metallic brew group counterparts. This results in a little bit of an underextraction that is fairly standard on superautomatics — generally giving a sour, weak flavor. However, you can tweak and program the shot to a certain extent to achieve a shot that is close to that you’d get off a semi-automatic (for which you grind, tamp and dial in your shot yourself), with a few limitations.

We asked Gail to walk us through the basic parameters of how to achieve the best shot possible on a Saeco superautomatic, using the Xelsis as a demo, and she also shared with us some of the commonalities between these machines and superautomatics produced by other manufacturers.

DeLonghi Gran Dama Dosages

Some of the earlier versions of the DeLonghi superautomatics didn’t seem to brew as rich of an espresso shot as their counterparts made by other manufacturers. With the release of the newer Gran Dama and Perfecta (the 6600/6700 and 5500 models), we noticed that the shot not only was hotter, it was richer too. Our techs examined the grounds from a disassembled machine and let us know that these machines were now grinding finer than the previous versions; additionally, the dosage functionality has changed.

Watch Gail talk about the dosages, grinding, programming functionality and how to brew a double shot roughly equivalent to what you can get off a semi-automatic.

Steam Test: Non-Fat vs. 2% vs. Whole Milks

Silky milky! We tested out non-dairy milks to see how well they produced microfoam and now it’s time to turn to dairy milks — specifically, which steams better: Non-fat, 2% or whole milk? And do they perform similarly across the board, regardless of the machine used?

Gail steamed up each of the milks on the Rocket Giotto Evoluzione, Saeco Xelsis and Saeco Via Venezia to see which works the best, if there are commonalities or if each machine works better with different types of milk. Watch and learn the results!

Field Trip: Uesugi USA – Recycling Center

Where do espresso machines and coffee makers go to die? Not in the landfill, if we can help it! At Seattle Coffee Gear, we launched a recycling program last year in an effort to keep as many fully assembled machines from landing in the trash. Many of these are pretty complex — they have circuit boards, electrical wiring and miscellaneous metals that are best kept out of our ground water supply.

Our partner in this venture is Uesugi USA, a Japanese company that (as luck would have it) have a US presence here in the Seattle-area. We pulled Henry into the mix and headed out to their facility to talk about what they do and see how they take these machines apart, break them down to their components and funnel them back into the commodity supply chain as cleanly as possible.

Naked Espresso!

OK — we’re not naked, but the machine is! We have had folks ask us often how a superautomatic achieves its espresso extraction glory, so we removed the casing from a Saeco Incanto Classic, bypassed all the sensors and ran a couple shots through so you could see it in action.

Please don’t try this at home

The Lowdown on Espresso Machine Thermostats

A style of thermostat often used in espresso machines is an analog bi-metal thermostat that measures the temperature on the outside of the boiler. This utilizes two different types of metal that react to different temperatures to regulate whether or not the boiler needs to kick on and heat up or kick off and cool down.

We asked Gail to take one apart and show us how it works, so she did! If you’ve ever wondered what accounts for the variable boiler temperatures, here is your answer.