Sage - The Oracle, Bean to Cup Coffee Machine with Manual and Automatic Milk Frother, Brushed Stainless Steel

Where to start? The Oracle is a beautiful looking machine. It's really well designed and flatters my coffee making. In fact, it makes some of the best coffee this side of a professional barista. But I'll admit that, for the purists amongst you, there's plenty to make your hackles rise. It doesn't need a huge amount of skill to get great tasting coffee, and that may drive away those of you who like to perfect the art. Me? I just enjoy coffee. Prior to the Oracle I had a small manual machine which allowed me to pull an espresso and steam the milk at the same time. I'd also bought a massive, used grinder and spent many a happy hour trying to dial in the perfect grind, tamp and pull. I think it's fair to say that I failed pretty miserably. After a year I started to turn out milk that was close to what I'd expect from a latte, but it probably took another year before I got it right more than I got it wrong. I'm not sure my espressos were ever much good. So you'll understand I was a perfect candidate for the Oracle. This isn't a fully automatic machine - you'll pay another few hundred for the Sage/Breville version of that - but it does take control of the things I'd been having trouble with - the grind, tamp and frothing - while still allowing me to set up the results the way I prefer them. At first the Oracle is a little intimidating, so I found it best to accept the default settings and work from there. If you're contemplating spending this much you probably won't need me to tell you that using decent coffee beans is really important. If the pack has a sell-by date on it, forget it. Only use beans if you know their roasting date, and make sure it's less than 30 days ago. The grinder is controlled by a knob on the left side. Lower numbers give a finer grind, and I've consistently found that a setting between 18 and 22 works best for the beans I get. Two filter baskets are provided, for single or double shots, though I pretty much exclusively use the double. There are some excellent videos on YouTube from Sage which show how to set up for the perfect espresso. The coffee should start appearing around the 8 - 12 second mark and produce about 25 ml in each shot glass at the end of the 30 second pour. Out of the box the machine is set to brew at 93 degrees Celsius, but like many of the settings this can be changed. On the milk side of things there's another knob which adjusts the density between cappuccino and latte. I use skimmed milk, although Sage say you'll get best results from full fat, but I'm pleased with the lattes I make. The same knob controls the temperature of the milk. A smiley face on the display indicates when the temperature is in the sweet spot, which maxes out at 65 degrees. Above that the milk begins to use its natural sweetness, they say. But 65 degrees is far too cold for me. I have it set at the maximum of 75 degrees and my palate can't taste anything wrong. You can flip the steaming lever up to steam manually, or flip it down to let the Sage do the work. The steaming head introduces air into the milk according to the setting you've chosen and the result is very good. The colder the milk is before you start, the better the result, I've found. Cleaning the machine is best done after each coffee making session. I also use cleaning tablets to flush out the system every two or three weeks, though the machine will tell you when you should do it if you forget. It'll also tell you more irregularly to descale. It takes a while, though the Sage does the heavy lifting, and it's really important to do it and protect your investment. I can only scratch the surface in this review in covering the amount of refining you can make to your coffee. I should say that you can also make Americano if you prefer that drink, and you can set the volume of liquid according to the size of the mug you use. This machine is expensive. There's no doubt about that. But if you're serious about your coffee, and maybe struggle to get good results from a manual machine, give the Oracle serious consideration. I couldn't imagine being without it now.

I got this machine since, although I'm an espresso enthusiast, with our first baby arriving I wanted something easy that delivered good coffee and that my partner could use without assistance. I was coming from a Delonghi Dedica paired with a Sage Smart Grinder Plus. The oracle is an extremely convenient machine with a ludicrous price tag. It is almost a superautomatic machine but delivers real espresso (all superautos use pressurised baskets). Also the Oracle is probably easier to clean. You need almost no espresso knowledge to use it, well you do need to learn to dial in and dose your output, but if you do that then people in your family can get decent espresso with no knowledge. Outside of my review title, there are some serious issues with this machine. - First is the price, you can get an outstanding espresso setup for about the same money (I moved to a Lelit Elizabeth + Niche Zero and this is a million times better FYI). - Second, the grinder only works if the hopper is at least half full. The Sage Smart Grinder Pro has the exact same problem which prevents you from single dosing if you so wanted, but more importantly it makes the hopper kind of useless because you constantly need it full. My guess is that the design of these grinders requires the weight of the beans on top in order to keep a good bean feed rate into the burrs, without which any consistency in the grind goes. Needless to say, this will give you unpredictable espresso, normally 1/10 shots will be good and the rest crap, making you dial in back and forth in grind non-stop. - Third, the retention of the grinder is just crazy. Again same with the Sage Smart Grinder Pro which I've owned and used for 4 years so I know inside out. Changing beans is either painful or wasteful, your choice, because of all the leftover beans in the burrs etc. - Fourth, even with the hopper full I've found the espresso to be inconsistent occasionally. Sometimes it decided to flow super fast and I had to bring the grind down from like 30 to 20 so not a minor change. This was not due to beans aging. Something was going wrong and it's hard to say what, it could have been the automatic puck prep, the grinder, (although I regularly cleaned and maintained these) or the machine simply not respecting the temperature or pressure (although I always fully preheated the machine and PF and basket to scalding point and it's unlikely it would work improperly like this). The Sage Smart Grinder Pro required a high amount of WDT to produce decent espresso without channelling due to the excessive amount of clumps - I would definitely put my money in the puck prep being suboptimal but also this most likely varies with beans (I always used freshly roasted specialty beans) which might explain why some people don't mention it. I did not have a bottomless PF then though, so I cannot confirm this. So, actually the grinder is the biggest issue with this machine, but the point of the Oracle is the automatic puck prep (tamping) and well also the automatic milk frothing. I do admit that the milk frothing is simply excellent. Even if you use a small amount of milk it is mind blowing that you can do latte art with the auto frothing. I never used it in manual mode since there was literally no point. In conclusion and for the price, I would not recommend this machine for what it tries to achieve based on its own internal competition. I do not think the grinder is up to the task which entirely limits the performance of this machine. If this machine costed considerably less then it would be acceptable for it to perform this way. But the primary reason for the 1 star is that the machine failed after the first descale. It would not go over 70° or so meaning it was entirely unusable (literally the machine was stuck in preheating mode). Please do your research online and you will find this is an extremely common issue with the Sage machines. It is frightening because of the extremely high cost, and needless to say you're out of espresso until you find a replacement. Luckily I had purchased from Amazon directly and they took it back as faulty and I got my money back, but it was a total hassle because I had to find my own courier to send it to the Scotland warehouse - the problem is most couriers won't deliver something of this size or a kitchen appliance or coffee machine specifically. And fortunately I had kept the original shipping boxes! So, frankly, do not bother. With a real espresso machine and grinder (not kitchen appliances like Sage) you can get excellent espresso with only a small learning curve, and they will last you for years and years as they can be serviced and repaired. The one real step the oracle solves for you is the puck prep which it fails at due to its poor grinder, again with a grinder that gives you fluffy grinds (not the Sage) it's as easy as distribute and tamp which anyone can do. Just get a Lelit or another real machine and a good grinder (minimum Eureka Mignon) and you're good to go for years to come.

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