Sage coffee machine problem
- Thread starter Ponty
- Start date
onlyconnect
pfm Member
Have to say though that for an occasional coffee they're fine, much better than crap tea you get in some customer's houses, plus they're convenient for some folks.
gintonic
50 shades of grey pussy cats
Paul L
coffee lounge for me
I was using Britta filters and probably my Izzo Alex (3 or 4 espresso machines ago) when the well known Dave C told me I would have trouble and challenged me to measure what was happening. I had never heard of a TDS meter at the time. So having bought one I learned my water hardness was about 250 and a new and primed Britta filter reduced this to about 140, for about a week, after which the TDS quickly climbed back to 250 and he was right when the Alex had a problem and it was the OPV valve contaminated from the scaling. The filtering in something like a Britta is so small
So, I bought an under counter 3-way RO then after moving to this house a new 5-way system but when the convenience of the Osmio came along I bought one and have never looked back. So much easier for anyone in the house to understand and refill and filter changes became a whole lot easier and less messy.
So, I bought an under counter 3-way RO then after moving to this house a new 5-way system but when the convenience of the Osmio came along I bought one and have never looked back. So much easier for anyone in the house to understand and refill and filter changes became a whole lot easier and less messy.
gintonic
50 shades of grey pussy cats
occasional as in the odd hotel room, otherwise not great. A notch up from instant. Hotels that supply an in room french press are better still. The one I know of that supplies poreover is even better
Ponty
pfm Member
Can’t do pods! Did another descale this afternoon (using an Oust sachet). It’s improving, although don’t think it’s quite as hot as it should be.
Paul L
coffee lounge for me
Agreed, but when you start out (and in my case nearly 20 years ago) you unwittingly think ah, I’ll filter my water without knowing what different types of filtering you should look at.
JezmondTutu
pfm Member
Sorry but I absolutely cannot agree with that. I’ve had a Barrista Express for 4.5 years and it’s been 100% reliable, next door has had his for 6 years and the same. They make excellent coffee.
Two good friends also now have them including one that owns a very good Italian Deli in Brighton and has a commercial machine in his shop that cost £1,000’s. He really rates his Barrista Express. He had a warranty repair but apparently Sage were brilliant.
Ponty
pfm Member
Oh to live back in a soft water area! I’ve installed a water softener which has made a massive difference and will help the boiler, washing machine, dishwasher, taps, showers etc but obviously you can’t drink it. If I can’t revive this one it’ll be a new machine and monthly descales with oust. The hard water problem makes it less sensible to spend more on a machine. If I spend £300 and it lasts 3 years, I’m OK with £100 a year. If I dropped a couple of grand, I’d be less OK with it! I’ll see what this morning’s brew is like. Have to have a couple of cups of tea first!
clivem2
pfm Member
When you live with soft water you just don’t get into the habits needed to protect items from minerals. How about using Volvic? It’s supposed to have a very good mineral balance for coffee taste. If you bulk buy you can find it for £10 or less for 12 litres. How does the arithmetic work out with this approach?
Ponty
pfm Member
Not a bad idea at all. I’d have thought even the supermarket bottled water should be OK. We find the Brita is fine for drinking water, when we lived in Henley which was even harder water than here, we bought bottled water for drinking (Brita tasted bad there). Just using for a coffee machine isn’t going to use that much.
They are expensive to run, but cheap to buy. Given that the average expresso machine owner here has spent into the thousands to get to where they want to be, I'd suggest that the cost per cup over the lifespan of the machine may turn out the be similar. Certainly if you are not a heavy user.
I have a variety of coffee machines, and they pod machines give decent results on a par with most B2C machines I've tried and sorry to say most people's efforts with a "proper" espresso machine this side of Milan. The usual hifi forum "little better than instant" remarks are IMO driven by snobbery and can be disregarded.
I buy the pods when they're on offer, last lot came from Lidl and they had them at what works out 25p a pod. It's as good a coffee as I'll ever need, especially at 5am when I want to be out of bed as late as I can get away with, I'm probably drinking coffee before someone has finished grinding the beans.
Doubt it
Agree with everything else though, my daughter has a pod machine and the coffee’s fine from the machine and the pods in fact my wife’s work has a pod machine too and she tells me the cappuccino is excellent from it.
There’s no getting away from it pods & pod machines are very convenient.
gintonic
50 shades of grey pussy cats
sorry but i cannot agree with that - my brother had a succession of Sage machines which broke one inside warranty which sage begrudgingly replaced, then the replacement broke outside warranty. Then for some reason he bought another which also failed, and Sage customer service were very unhelpful. We have a Sage kettle which has a design flaw (or poor manufacturing) that means it is very easy to scald oneself on boiling water - oh and guess want, their customer service was pants.
We will always find use cases where good and bad sh!t happens. One of my best friends is a 2 Michelin starred chef and uses a pod machine in one of his restaurants. We have had many a discussion about a curated coffee menu for his restaurant, but he cannot be bothered as the beans do not stay fresh enough for the low turnover.
The bottom line is that most espresso machines will produce a good espresso if they can hold good temperature and produce a decent pressure profile, the water is good, and the beans are excellent. and of course your grinder is consistent. HX machines are passable for frothing milk, but can struggle to maintain the temperature if you are a regular frother.