Sage - The Oracle Touch, Brushed Stainless Steel

Product Information

What do they make? Espresso and all the espresso-based coffee shop favourites, including cappuccino, latte, flat white & americano. It has a PID, meaning brew temperature control, something all Sage coffee machines have, and this is fairly rare with filter coffee machines, it's only what I refer to the new breed of filter machines that have this, and what this brings to filter coffee is consistency. The drip tray spans the width of the machine and slots home with a firm thunk and can handle a surprisingly large amount of water before the warning sign floats upwards and requests you empty it. Behind the tray, a small storage area allows you to store the supplied filter baskets and any small tools you might use regularly. Sage includes unpressurised single-wall baskets in both single and double-shot sizes.

The Oracle touch does have more grind settings, 45 vs 30, which gives you a bit more ability to finely tune the grind size, in reality though I've found the touch impress does a really good job of dialing in, and the fact that it tells you what to change the grind size too is a big plus for the Touch Impress.This is the main thing Nespresso did with the Vertuo, as the range of pods includes much bigger doses, including mug pods, and even carafe-sized pods. OK, some may argue that what they really did when creating the Vertuo range is to give themselves another range that they have pod exclusivity with as it'll probably be a long time before anyone is brave enough to start releasing compatible pods. This, along with its dual boilers and heated group head, enables it to craft a balanced espresso no matter how small the difference in degrees can cause an otherwise delicious cup of coffee to take on an undesirable ashy flavour. The Bambino and Bambino Plus come with the same portafilter, it's not the same higher quality more pro looking portafilter that you get with all the other Sage machines, it's a cheaper portafilter with more plastic, and with stubby spouts, and I'm just not a big fan. One Touch Presets: Ristretto, espresso, lungo, Americano, flat white, cappuccino, latte & latte macchiato The machine assists you on getting the perfect dose volume (the height of the ground coffee) in the basket the first time you use it (or whenever you change beans or substantially change the grind size), and it then learns how long to grind for each time so you can forget about it.

It has a fast brew setting for when you just need coffee fast, a strong brew setting for when all you're bothered about is brewing a strong coffee (to wash down your paracetamol the morning after the night before, for example) a pourover setting (you can change the filter holder for your favourite pourover device, i.e. V60 or Kalita) and a cold brew setting. This isn’t a brag, but with so much junk online these days, you need to be sure you’re consuming the right information. At the time of writing, all machines in the Sage range except the Barista Express, have the European Etzinger burrs, so the Oracle has better-shot potential due to the superior temperature stability and precision, but mainly via bypassing the integrated grinder and pairing with a premium espresso specialist grinder. These things are relatively small, and overall if the Barista Express cost the same as the Barista Pro, I'd probably say the Barista Pro is the better choice. I don't have a Q-grader's palate, as I've not trained to that level, but I believe my palate is more sensitive than the average coffee drinker, and I doubt I'd be able to notice the difference in a blind taste test, but I will be testing that theory in the future.Re the heat up time, we're talking a difference of around 27 seconds, but there's not much in it when you weigh up the fact that the brew path, group & portafilter will be stone cold, so they'll need heating up anyway, which takes about the same amount of time on the Sage Thermocoil machines as it does with the machines that have the faster thermojet.