Makes great coffee, once you find the right coffe for it.
Positive Product Points
Great POD-espresso, Great looking
Negative Product Points
Bad service Difficult to make a good espresso from regular lavazza pre-grinded coffees
Detailed Commentary
I have been playing a LOT with the Innova Dream to make good espresso coffee, and have found it to be quite difficult. My version of Innova Drean can use both pods and ground coffee.
When I use PODs to make coffe, I have no problem. I get perfect coffe using both Lavazza and Molinari pods.
When I try to use ground coffee I have problems. Using a regular black Lavazza (the only one to easily find in shops in Denmark) I get no cream and way too little pressure (around 5-8 bar) I have tried all sorts of trick, using more coffee and tampering as hard as I can, but I have had little luck.
I contacted Hetland Nordic to share my bad experience and and hoped to be explained what I did wrong. They gave me the answer that I should 1) Disregard the pressure Gauge 2) Fill up the coffee 'tray' up to the rim.
This puzzled me as when I read the manual, it seems the Pressure Gauge is a pretty important tool to check for producing good coffee (and I notice that when I use pods, the pressure gauge is almost alsways around 12-13 bar, when it produces good coffee)
Also, I could not understand that I should fill up the coffee tray to the rim, as this requires about 23g of coffee. Usually I hear that a single espresso should be made from about 7-9 grams of coffee. Should I not be able to make a single espresso with ground coffee ?
So basically my interaction with Hetland Nordic left me nowhere, but with some suggestions that I really did not trust.... (and they offered med to by a new kit that would make more cream. I prefer that the machince I bought could do what it should)
My luck has changed since then though. I bought both ground and POD coffee from Molinari, and since then I make perfect espresso, with very litlle effort. Now it is really not difficult to make a great espresso. I use about 8grams of coffe, stamp it. the The Innova Dream brews a nice espresso coffee with thick cream with the pressure gauge around 12-13 bar. For a while I thought making an espresso was harder than space science. It is not.
I suspect the grind of the Lavazza coffee I tried was simply to coarse for the Innova Dream machine.
Since I found the Molinari brand I have been a very happy owner of the Innova Dream. Maybe I should go get myself a coffee grinder.....
