Your favorite espresso maker

September 26, 2009 10:32 AM

My espresso maker just gave up the ghost, after 15 years of great coffee and service. What's a really dependable, good new machine to purchase?

As functional as it was cool looking, I had a fire-engine red Francis and Francis unit (shown here http://tinyurl.com/d75rd3 ) I think I paid about 700 bucks for it at the time (and see they've really gone up). Too, Ferancis was bought out by illy -- I'm open to something different).

So I'm wondering Meta peeps -- what do you recommend for a new machine/purchase?

posted by zenpop to shopping (23 comments total)

Have you considered having your $700 machine repaired?
posted by torquemaniac at 10:33 AM on September 26

The Francis!Francis! machines are really simple internally, you might as well fix the thing. In what way did it stop working?
posted by foodgeek at 10:44 AM on September 26

I have only ever used a commercial Faema machine and absolutely loved it. I noticed their Canadian website has smaller home machines as well.

The Coffee Geek forums might be helpful for this too.
posted by futureisunwritten at 10:50 AM on September 26

I bought a DeLonghi espresso maker much like this one at a garage sale in 2004 for $2.50 and have pulled shots off of it daily for the last five years. Works like a dream.
posted by The White Hat at 10:52 AM on September 26

Oh my God... this is so weird. My Krups machine just died after 17 years of faithful service and I can't find a decent small appliance repair place. So I figured I have to get a new one and THAT'S WHY I WAS COMING ON HERE!!! It's like espresso machines around the world are committing hari kari! WTF!?

I don't want to spend a whole lot, but I don't want a crap machine 'cuz I'm a coffee snob. So I'll be watching this thread carefully for suggestions too...
posted by miss lynnster at 11:00 AM on September 26

I've had really great luck with the Hamilton Beech pump espresso maker. You can find it on Amazon or at Target for about 50 dollars.

I bought it as a "try out making espresso at home and then invest in a better machine later", but honestly I love the one I've got and don't think I'll be getting rid of it until it dies.
posted by vilolagrl at 11:16 AM on September 26

That machine is a beauty. A quick Google search brought up this contact information for their repair department in the US (is that where you are?) 15 years is a good run but maybe you want to consider having it repaired instead.

USA FrancisFrancis! USA, Inc.
Rt. 2, Box 133 27,
Garrison Woods Road Garrison, NY 10524
Tel [phone] Fax [phone]
e-mail : [e-mail]
posted by cazoo at 11:33 AM on September 26

My Rancilio Silvia (and Rocky grinder) are said to be THE workhorse machines in the semi-auto espresso genre. Recommended. Mine's probably 6 years old and I've only had to rebuild the seals/gaskets once - 30 minutes of work. Here's a refurb of the last-gen. The new ones are nicer but mine's even older than the linked one, and it's fine. I did stick a PID on it. :)
posted by kcm at 11:42 AM on September 26

Here's a place in Seattle which repairs Francis units:

Home Espresso Repair
6501 Phinney Ave N
Seattle, WA 98103-5233
[phone]‎
espressorepair.com

They also sell new units.
posted by torquemaniac at 11:51 AM on September 26

Thanks everyone.

I was moving towards a new purchase anyway. Over time, the Francis machine has been breaking down, bit by bit. It had become the equivalent, towards the end, of some sort of gizmo held together with duct tape, piano wires and prayers. But it kept going and going, until today, while drawing a shot it blew out the circuit breaker in the kitchen, and continued to do so after I reset the circuit and plugged it back in. So, I dunno, I'm thinking brand new rather than repair.

The low low price models that were recommended in this thread seem too good to be true. But I'll read up more on them.

Thanks again, especially the peeps who researched the repair info.

ZP
posted by zenpop at 12:08 PM on September 26

You should still at least take in for an estimate. That is one fine machine you've got there.
posted by torquemaniac at 12:54 PM on September 26

I have the ExpoBar Office Control and it is great. Provides consistently good crema and is a solid machine all around. It heats up pretty quick, has a large reservoir and froths milk quite nicely. Downside is it seems incapable of being hard-wired to a pipe for water.
posted by jeffamaphone at 1:11 PM on September 26

I talked with the guy at the Seattle repair shop this afternoon, and he said it's a 50/50 call. To repair or to purchase new. He recommended going with a new purchase, as the element had blown on mine, and then, coupled with the other breakdowns that have occurred over the years a new purchase seemed best.

I also got online and started researching reviews on the Francis Francis and there are a lot of complaints, etc.

So I'm thinking of going with this baby here . The Rancilio Sylvia's pull great reviews across the board.
posted by zenpop at 1:20 PM on September 26

I picked up the same machine you have on craigslist for $150 about 6 months ago. But black -- maybe I'll paint mine to look like yours. About a week after I bought it it blew the GFI in the kitchen, and did that 3 times in one morning. Searching on the internet, I found it is a problem these machines have, but didn't see any solutions. I took mine apart to see if it was anything obvious, and it wasn't. I cleaned it while I had it apart, and it has been making 2 double espressos every day since with absolutely no problems. For about 2 months I didn't turn it on until I was done with the coffee mill, in case the combination was drawing too much current, but now I just don't worry about it. Not knowing what the problem was or why it was fixed is a little unsettling.

My brother has had his Rancilio Silvia for about 6 years and he says it's a rock. You can get aftermarket precision temperature controllers that some people on coffeegeek say is a worthwhile add-on.
posted by Killick at 2:51 PM on September 26

I don't have a high end espresso machine, but I do read CoffeeGeek and the general opinion of FrancisFrancis is that it's overpriced. So if you're buying new, I think you can get alot more bang for your buck. If I had the scratch I'd totally get a Rancilio Silvia as recommended above.
posted by cabingirl at 3:30 PM on September 26

The Silvia is a good choice. A bit more money and you can buy a machine that can brew and steam and the same time. It just depends if you want to be able to make lots of milk drinks back-to-back.
posted by foodgeek at 4:36 PM on September 26

Not exactly in the same caliber, the $15 Aerobie AeroPress makes fantastic espresso and can hold you over until you plunk down a hunk of change on the new machine.

Plus, I always like to have 2 caffeination devices on hand, incase the primary goes off-line. You can find it on amazon, and some sur le table and whole foods stores.
posted by fontophilic at 6:38 PM on September 26 [1 favorite]

The Silvia is my recommendation as well, and I'd add: Silvia is famous for getting along really well with her grinder friend, Rocky. I prefer the doserless model.

I've had Miss Silvia for some 7 or 8 years now, and have been very pleased.
posted by deCadmus at 7:56 PM on September 26

I'll throw in a good word for the Silvia/Rocky combo as well. We had a Miss Nancy (the previous generation Sylvia), and gave it to a friend after 15 years so that we could buy the Sylvia and PID-control it. Every time I have thought it wasn't working as well as it used to, it turned out to be me, the beans, or both -- with good beans and careful technique, it's a superb machine. While I was on that slippery slope, I bought a Gene Cafe roaster. Ahhhh, good stuff.
posted by dylanjames at 10:06 PM on September 26

Seconding the Aerobie. Works great and made in Cali.
posted by buzzman at 10:16 PM on September 26

Get a La Pavoni Europiccola. Besides making the best espresso I've ever had (and this includes the espresso served at some of the best known coffee houses in the country), it is a work of art, literally (it is on display at MOMA in NYC). Its the only thing that is allowed to sit on the kitchen countertop at my house between uses. There are no moving parts so beyond replacing gaskets every few years there's not much that can go wrong. You can replace the gaskets yourself fairly easily if you have any mechanical talents at all, and parts are pretty widely available on the internet since the basic design of the machine hasn't changed in something like 40 years. Plus working a lever machine gives you a greater appreciation and understanding of the nuances of the coffee than a pump machine does as you have a much finer degree of control over all steps of the process.

The downsides: The steam wand is a little underpowered but still highly usable. It is also a bit of a pain if you want to pull multiple shots rapidly or steam multiple pitchers of milk. The whole thing gets really hot, so if you have small children there could be a burn risk. The single size basket they include is a joke--always use the double. Also, if you read reviews, you will hear people say that the machine is finicky and the same process sometimes randomly produces a bad shot regardless of technique, although this hasn't been my experience.

A Europiccola is an espresso machine in the same way that a classic Porsche is a car. There are newer models with more bells and whistles, but for beauty and pure enjoyment of the experience a Europiccola is hard to beat.
posted by jtfowl0 at 11:42 AM on September 27

While I love our Europiccola (and the rebuilt 1970's Olympia Cremina we gave to step-mom), I personally wouldn't recommend a lever machine to anyone but the most serious coffee-nut, and even then, as a second machine. Here's why: they overheat, by design. You can only get maybe three shots out of one before the whole affair is too hot to brew good shots, and because it's a closed tank, your only recourse is to wait for it to cool way down, then refill. It's a great machine for a one coffee-drinking person household, when that one person doesn't mind dedicating quite a bit more time re-learning how to pull good shots, but for two or more people I'd strongly recommend against it.

All that said, it was the lever machine with a naked portafilter that taught me the fine-points of grinding and tamping, which have put me in good stead making great coffee with my Sylvia.
posted by dylanjames at 8:20 AM on September 28

We have a Jura-Capresso Impressa ENA5 that we like. However, if I bought it again I'd get the ENA4 as I don't care for the auto steamer bit. It's an automatic so you don't have much control over things like you would a machine that doesn't grind/tamp for you. It's very consistent however.
posted by jopreacher at 3:33 PM on September 29