Pros: great cup of coffee without paying Starbucks prices
Cons: Very expensive. Have to drink a lot of coffee to make up for the price
The Bottom Line: I recommend this to people who want the best cup of coffee they can possibly make at home and who enjoy a variety of other coffee drinks.
I spent a few days with my brother and his wife, and they owned the Barista. I absolutely loved the coffee they made for me every morning, and I am not much of a coffee lover. In fact, I can't stand Starbucks coffee, and I can't stand Starbucks. I hate the esoteric lingo, I think that the coffee is bitter. I have become quite ill drinking something as simple as a plastic cup of ice tea at Starbucks, and all coffee items leave my stomach somewhat upset. So I was amazed that I actually enjoyed the coffee made from this machine.
My husband is the coffee nut (or bean, as the case may be). I bought this for him for his birthday because he was always running off to Starbucks and I knew he coveted my brother's machine. He insists that the only correct coffee for this machine is Starbucks Espresso ground on a #4. If it is ground too fine, it clogs the mechanism. If it is too coarse, you don't get the flavor. Anything less than a #4 doesn't allow a good flow-through of the coffee. We also purchase the same type of Starbucks coffee ground exactly the same way only decaffeinated. It is also delicious.
We use this appliance for all of our coffee needs unless we are serving multitudes of people, say 20 or more, in which case we drag down a Farberware urn. Everyone loves the coffee.
The main drawback is the high price. We purchased ours for $200 on sale, and another for the same price for my son and daughter-in-law.
We don't use it only for espresso coffee. Our regular morning cup of coffee is made just like espresso, but we let the machine run long enough to fill a regular size coffee mug about 3/4 full. Every morning my husband brings me a cup in bed! That's how grateful he is that I bought him the Barista.
The coffee is much better than anything that they serve at Starbucks. It has no bitter, burned taste, and I don't have to be friendly to strangers the first thing in the morning.
It holds a lot of water and it is easy to see when it is time for a refill. There is no automatic turn off switch, which I see as a flaw. What this means is that the water stays hot in the tank.
The clean up is neither difficult nor is it easy. The holder for the coffee must be cleaned each time it is used, and it only makes one cup of coffee at a time. This means that if you are having a brunch for eight people, not everyone will receive their coffee at once, and someone in the kitchen must be able to use the machine to make the first cup and to provide refills. It is best used for intimate occasions of two to six people at the most.
We had a coffee grinder, but we gave it away. My husband does not think that any coffee grinder is up to the task of a perfect grinding at #4. So we have this done at Starbucks where we purchase the coffee. The coffee beans at Starbucks are expensive, far more expensive than buying great coffee beans at Costco.
The steamer mechanism works easily. Milk is steamed up into a lovely froth for topping cappuccino or other milk-enhanced drinks.
There is no glass canister to break. It is heavy and durable. We have had ours for over two years and it looks and performs as if it were new.
When I first purchased it at sale price, the item was defective. We returned it to Starbucks. They had no more of these on sale, but they sold us one from their regular stock at the sale price. Both times when we bought these on sale the color selection was limited. We found colors that we liked and that my son and his wife liked even though the full color selection was not available to us.
If you use a larger coffee mug, simply remove the stainless steel tray so that the mug will fit under the little coffee holder. It is actually meant to create a 'shot' of espresso, but since we use it for regular coffee, we like it to drip directly into our mugs. We preheat the mugs with boiling water for those who want their coffee absolutely piping hot. We do not use the shot glass that comes with the unit, preferring to brew directly into the preheated cups. This keeps the coffee hotter.
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