8 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
$500 for espresso sound expensive?
Date of Review: May 19, 2006
The Bottom Line: Quality machine, makes great coffee. Some may be turned off by price, when the market is full of models half the price.
If you're a regular Starbucks customer, a machine like this may save you loads of money. Being self employed and working with my sibling, I deducted my Starbucks costs for a few years. Work-related Starbucks expenses averaged about $1000 a year --and that was not including non-work related Starbucks runs.
My husband bought me this machine a year ago for Mother's Day. Until this machine came into our lives, I thought Starbucks was the standard for consistently decent cappuccinos. But my Rancilio Silvia changed all that. The cappuccinos we make with this machine are so far superior to Starbucks. After a month of having this machine, I told my husband, "You ruined the Starbucks experience for me. Even Starbucks can't make a coffee THIS good!" And a year later, it still makes great coffee.
If it had been left up to me, I never would have purchased such an expensive machine. I bought my first espresso machine when I was 22. It was a basic Krups high pressure steam machine, and it worked great until the insides got blocked up by hard water mineral deposits. After that I had another pump Krups machine I found at Goodwill. That ran okay for a few years, and then for some reason the water didn't run through it right. I wanted to go back to the basic steam machines again, and thought I'd get a deal on Ebay. That turned out to be a waste of $24, as the used machine I got smelled bad.
My husband came across this machine when visiting a college friend of his, and he was impressed by how great the espresso tasted from this machine. He was directed to coffeegeek.com, where this machine is one of the highest rated. And the rest is history.
He purchased this from Whole Latte Love, which also included with the purchase some coffee machine cleaning items and an instruction CD. It promotes the "Golden Rule" of letting the coffee run through for 20-25, which I've found is often too long for me. I've tried tweaking with the coffee grinding or tamping pressure, but most times 20-25 seconds is still too long. I just wait until I get a nice crema, and stop. Often times if it runs up to 25 seconds, I get bitter espresso. I still purchase the beans from Starbucks, but I can't recommend buying it pre-ground. I know it's the consistency they grind for their own machines, but it's often not fine enough for me.
Overall I like the design of Rancilio. It's a simple design. A button for steam, a button for coffee, and a button for running hot water. The water reservoir, and coffee catch are easy to remove and clean.
I'm a one a day cappuccino drinker, and I still buy my beans at Starbucks. A half pound of espresso bean costs around $5 and can last almost 2 weeks. I figure over a year's time, I'm saving several hundred dollars by making my own coffee, rather than buying from Starbucks. And it's a pleasure to have my own quality machine and be able to make coffee for visiting friends, or be able to make cappuccinos to have with breakfast on the weekends.
