Sage the Bambino Plus Espresso Machine, Coffee Machine with Milk Frother, SES500BTR - Black Truffle

Product Information

Yet, for those looking for a sleek brushed stainless steel finish, the Breville Bambino has it without paying anything extra. Effectively, with the right beans and grind size, The Bambino Plus can hold its own against the best. Milk drink quality

If, like me, you drink smaller coffees like a flat white, the included milk jug may not gel with your needs quite as easily as it would for a latte or cappuccino. It's a little too wide for preparing these smaller drinks, with the minimum fill line (designed to cover the tip of the milk steam wand) sitting a little higher than our milk requirements. Breville Bambino Plus has a hands-free automatic frothing wand. The plain Bambino requires manual handling. Low pressure pre-infusion gradually increases pressure at the start and helps ensure all the flavours are drawn out evenly during the extraction for a balanced tasting cup. At its default settings, the Bambino Plus’ serves up a single 30ml espresso or a 60ml double espresso but it’s easy to tweak these amounts to your preferences. There are both one cup and two cup dual-wall filter baskets included as standard, the one-cup basket holding up to 10g of ground coffee, and the two-cup up to 19g, so it’s pretty easy to get the coffee tasting just how you want it.Flashing lights indicate when upkeep is needed (although a digital screen would have been preferable) Coffee connoisseurs will scoff at machines like the Bambino Plus. Admittedly, it’s not what we’d recommend for people who’ve already honed their skills on a cheaper fully manual machine. But, just as its high-end Touch models brought manual espresso excellence within the reach of less experienced home baristas, Sage now wants to encourage everyone to take the manual espresso plunge. The water reservoir is easy to remove, though the tamper is a little stiff with the group holder at first Both are well-built, compact, and very similar in terms of capabilitiesin terms of quality. Likewise, the main difference between them is that the Breville Bambino Plus has a bigger water tank, therefore delivering more drinks without refilling the tank.

This is great news for people who hate waiting around, but it does have some downsides. Here, you press the button and the steam wand immediately starts to spit hot water out as steam builds up inside. If you don’t want the water in your milk – and you don’t – then you need to aim the wand at the hole in the drip tray, wait for the steam to start spraying through, press the button again to stop the flow and then press it again once the steam wand is safely in your milk jug. We found that some professional baristas have tested and used these machines at home for a while through further research. In these cases, it’s common to find praise for the convenience and reliability of the Breville Bambino and the Bambino Plus. There’s nothing to complain about in terms of the finished product. The crema was nice and oily, with a fine texture without bubbles, and it lasted for a couple of minutes after pouring. I measured the espresso temperature at 55ºC, which is just a little on the cool side.

Overall, Breville isn’t too popular among espresso purists and hardcore enthusiasts. Still, the brand keeps growing in the home market, year after year. One of the keys to their success is building affordable products for home use, which are relatively easy to use. Moreover, they offer good customer service and technical support. The Bambino Plus is also a good value for money, offering more milk-frothing features. Finding another compact machine that makes such excellent and reliable milk texturing is hard. However, besides advanced frothing features, the other benefits of the Breville Bambino Plus don’t seem attractive enough to pay that extra money. If you're looking for a pain-free espresso, and are happy to pay a little extra to ensure high quality every time, you'll be right at home with the Breville Bambino Plus. The same is true even if you're a beginner who wants to learn and experiment, with the default temperature settings yielding a smooth extraction process straight out the box, ample instructions on grind sizes and which baskets fit each one, and an automatic milk frothing system.