Breville Barista Express Espresso Machine BES870XL, Brushed Stainless Steel

Owned since Oct. 2017, no issues yet. Avg. of maybe 2 double espressos per day, steamed milk less often, so relatively low use. We have a whole-house water softener (and 5-stage RO filter for drinking water), so scale buildup is not an issue at all. I do run the cleaning tablet when the "clean me" light comes on. I did descale it once so far, but might not have been necessary (eg. our electric kettle doesn't build up any scale). We only use the non-pressurized filter baskets (tried the others, didin't see the point, harder to clean).My best advice for an easy and consistent "Italian café style" espresso is to get a can of Illy medium roast beans. Especially if you're new to making espresso (actually in this case you may want to start with a can of ground Illy -- still tastes great and takes one major step out of the equation, and you then know the desired coarseness for grinding your own). This gets me a great espresso every single time. With local roasts (we have several roasters in the area I'd prefer to support instead of Illy) I found it is much more finicky... can change from cup to cup, and definitely from batch to batch. While I've gotten some great espressos from locally-roasted sources, with interesting flavors, I've gotten way more poor shots. With the Breville and Illy I can make a better (IMHO) espresso than any of the local shops can manage... honestly. Mind you we live in a small college town. I guess most ppl drink frothed milk with a little coffee and don't really notice the espresso part.Don't try to grind a double all at once... a lot of it will overflow (wasteful and messy). I grind one shot, take the filter out, spread out the grinds and give it a couple taps on the counter to settle them, then grind the 2nd shot on top of that. Makes almost no waste or mess this way. I've found that the "half a double" grind amount is typically one click less than an actual single-shot grind (so eg. twice at 1 o'clock for double, once at 2 o'clock for a single).Also forget the metal "leveler" thing they include... it's silly. Spread the grinds out in the filter with a finger edge. If the double filter is full to the brim before packing, you're good to go. The single filter should be a little under full before packing. After packing either filter, the metal rim on the press should be even with the top of the filter (as shown in the manual). Hardest part is making sure you're not tilting the press while pushing down, as it is easy to get a "cockeyed" pack. Again, watching the metal rim of the press vs. the filter rim is a good way to check that.Low pressure can be a direct result of old beans -- really. Came home after a 2-week trip once and tried to make espresso with beans from an Illy can that had already been opened (and had made good coffee before trip). Couldn't get the pressure high enough, regardless of grind size or amount, or tamping. Even tried a cleaning. Opened fresh can of Illy, et voilá, good pressure again.I didn't find any other accessories necessary (except eventually some cleaning tablets). You will want something on the counter to put the filter on while packing (and banging it to settle grinds) -- a folded kitchen towel works well. The space under the filter allows for a wide variety of drinking vessels (whoever suggested using paper cups... really? Wasteful and ruins the taste IMHO).The grinder maybe isn't the best -- the grind is good. and can be set very fine, but would be better to grind based on weight instead of time. It's important that the beans are fed into the grinder consistently. Make sure they're spread out evenly in the hopper, and as someone else mentioned, tapping on the hopper while grinding may help (esp. if there aren't many beans in there). You can hear the grinder sound change when it is grinding beans vs. air. Regular cleanings help as well.This is not a great machine for serving a party of people. Unless they like cold coffee, or you serve them all individually as the coffees are ready... the first ppl you serve will be done by the time you serve yourself. It's fine for a couple of servings, but beyond that it starts to get awkward. Especially if they want steamed milk.... you'd want the double-boiler model for that at minimum.Overall very happy with this machine. I had never made my own espresso before owning it, but I certainly knew what I liked. This machine delivered, after a modest learning curve (and the Illy beans helped a lot).

Its been a month since I have bought this machine. I have not worked every coffee making device out there but I have operated and tasted many. I had just lost my Deloghni magnifca super automatic machine after seven years of use. It was a pretty good machine for being a super automatic. But I have craved to get a real espresso machine and do a proper cappuccino. I have used french presses, Vietnamese phins, drip, siphon, and single serve kuerigs. Being in the Pacific NW you would except awesome cafe's everywhere, and you would be wrong. To get a good barrista that knows what they are doing, is slim to none. So with the exit of my super auto, I shopped for a good one. I kept coming back to the breville. Only knocks it was really getting was that breville was Australian and new to the game. I took the plunge and bought it, and I do not regret it.So the good:It comes with its own grinder. It not the best, but then again its no slouch. It can be taken apart and cleaned. My super never did that. What this means is that as you build up grounds on the Burr, you can pull it apart easily and clean it. It has a hopper that you can remove and place unused beans back in its container, that is just awesome, you can make decafe then switch to a new bean. A reviewer gave a good tip that when you first run it, start at the coarse then work it to fine when you start to grind, good advice. I word of caution from me, every different roast of bean will be a new setting for the machine. If you use a oily bean, then you might have to clean the burr a lot in order to get that fine grind. Also be prepared to go through a lot of coffee to figure out the right setting to get that perfect cup.Temperature control. You can decrease or increase the temperature by 4 degree's, in 2 degree increments. Doesn't sound like much, but it can change the taste of your espresso.Easy to program grind amount, and shot times.It has a gauge to measure the pressure as it goes through the port a filter. It is a nice touch to be able to tell how things are working, several high price machine you have to feel it out and guess, this you can tell right away if something went wrong and you can adjust.The steam wand is easy to use, the switch on the side is okay, my super did have a better control knob that you could control the amount of steam that came out, but this one is slow enough that its not that bad to operate.Clean up is a snap, I really enjoy the fact that I can easily and quickly clean it up.It has a water filter, where I live we have a high concentration of hard water, so having a second filter to go through is nice.Parts. Breville has all the parts you can buy to fix your machine if they go out or need replaced. I am talking about new port a filters, rings, hoppers, water reservoirs, ect.It is pretty, looks really good, makes you want to drink coffee.The things that are not so nice:You will go through a lot of coffee. This is most true when you first get the machine and try to figure out how to run it. There is a couple of way things can go down. 1) you drink every cup you make, I suggest you do this alone. Anyone around you will worry you are on something because you will be running at a 1000 mph on that much caffeine, no matter what your tolerance is. You will be wondering why everyone around you is moving so slow. 2) invite people over and watch there reaction to find out well you are doing on making that espresso.Mess from the grounds. It has a tray, but for some reason my grounds always seem to go further then the tray. I placed a small dish under the grinder it that keeps it contained and its easily cleaned. You can also fill the port a filter, tamp, then fill a little more until you reach the proper level. I place a paper towel down and do the tamp on that, it catches the grounds that fall when tamping.Don't expect a piping hot cup of joe. You can get it hot enough, by following their suggestions. I poor hot water in my cup before and do a single shot on a empty port a filter, that seems to do a good enough job.My latte art is of clouds, mushrooms, cotton balls. I believe that is my malfunction though.Overall, for the price (especially now) and the quality of espresso I am getting, its the top choice. Is it the best machine out there, no. But if you can afford those then I am not sure why you are reading things on amazon. Try different beans, they will taste different from what you are used to, each type will need different techniques to get the right pull. The Seattle best coffee bean, I only need to lightly tamp, the Vietnamese Civet I have to really press hard to get to the right tamp. I will trying several others as I go along, but I think that's the best part of this machine. And to the few people ( there is other things I would call you) about the California restrictions, in the manual it does say that the parts on the machine that does come in contact with coffee or water is BPA Free and there is no parts that will make you grow a third limb, unless you already have one. If you read the blasted bill you might figure out what it actually is saying, Anything with a grinder or power cord falls in this warning. I don't know about you, but I am not grinding bits of plastic in my coffee, and I am not sucking on the power cord, but if that's what you want to do, go for it.For me, this has been a awesome buy, thank you for reading.