Beauty and most importantly a Café class coffee without the typically large price tag you would expect to pay.
Positive Product Points
Quality to Cost ratio is simply unbeatable hands down. Thick luxurious chrome finish and a design unlike any other espresso machine.
Negative Product Points
A little time required to pre-heat the the machine for the first shot. Steam knob is quite stiff. I was saddened to see it's in fact made in China... But I don't like to directly call this a negative. Perhaps this is why it never had the follow up review comparing it with other european makes?
Detailed Commentary
WOW, Bodum surpassed all expectations and delighted me with more features than I had initially wanted. I have to say the truth now, I'm a coffee lover, not an expert Barrister. I've been to every coffee shop in my humble city of Tauranga and had enjoyed a coffee or 2 everyday at my personal favorites. So in buying a coffee machine I knew what I wanted from it, enough rich crème extracted to enrich that perfect micro foam and give it a full rich body.
Quality of Product rating is based on the fact the chassis doesn't have any plastic parts. It's all "thick" chromed alloy, brass or stainless steel giving it a very solid feel.
There's a huge drip tray made of rigid stainless steel with a chromed cast alloy bowl. I've found it to be completely functional while frothing when applying the technique shown in the youtube video below.
Shot quantity can be extracted both automatically & manually though both are done electronically with a button rather than your conventual knob. Temperature control is automatic.
For the first shot as mentioned above it NEEDS preheating/priming to produce a reasonable quality shot. This means turning it on, running hot water over the portafilter and running 2 shots of water through without coffee. Having done this quickly dry it off & run your shot through. Additionally priming with a couple of clean shots of water through cleans out the double skinned basket better than after use. Each shot to follow is brilliant & still slightly better than first despite the priming.
Frothing the milk is done using a manual knob, again temperature is automatically handled by the machine. The system works beautifully WITHOUT the frothing aid. The first look review said it was slow but it is as fast as any commercial machine I have seen being used. Starting out I used the following youtube video to put me on the right track.
