5/19/2023 0 Comments Decent espressoThe water intake tube drops down from the machine into the reservoir. The drip tray, meanwhile, slides in in front of it. The reservoir slides in under the machine, which is raised above surface level by four sturdy feet. Perhaps the best parts are the water reservoir and drip tray, which are made of heavy-duty ceramics, giving it a really sold feel. The whole construction is pretty solid and the machine is well-built with smooth curves. There’s a bespoke mounting on top for the tablet, although there’s no reason you couldn’t mount it somewhere else if you want to, or, indeed, carry it around in your hand if it takes your fancy. Without it, there’s a danger that as you twist the portafilter into place, you could twist the whole machine with the torque. There’s a handle which screws into the group head, a clever addition which gives you something to hold onto as you attach the portafilter. However, whereas my Sage has a built-in group head, the Decent Espresso machine has the group head extending out from the front of the box, which gives it a slightly smaller footprint (in reality, it takes up roughly the same space, but it certainly feels smaller). The machine is roughly cubic, and, I’d say, about the same size as my Sage Barista Express. In a matter of minutes, Mat had taken it out, assembled it (not that there was much assembly required), plugged it in, put some water in the reservoir, and was pulling shots. The case folded out in two halves and inside, packed in perfectly-cut Styrofoam, was the Decent Espresso machine. I’m now kicking myself that I didn’t take any photographs as he started unpacking it, because that in itself was a thing of beauty. Mat had turned up at The Good Coffee Cartel with a fairly standard-size wheeled suitcase which he’d brought with him on a flight from Bristol. So, with those caveats out of the way, what did I actually find? Well, you can read all about that after the gallery. Partly this is because I’m not really qualified to say what’s what and, perhaps, more importantly, while I do care at a technical level, I care much more at a practical level whether it works or not. I’m not going into the technical side to any great detail, although I’m aware that there’s quite a lot of really interesting mechanical and electrical engineering going on under the hood. However, what I did see was pretty impressive. Unlike my piece on the Sage Barista Express, where I had the machine at home and used it extensively, here I am merely reporting what I have seen/been told. In what follows, please bear in mind that I have not had a chance to play with the Decent Espresso machine myself. Because he’s Mat, and he’s nice like that. Sadly I couldn’t stay, so Mat gave me a one-on-one demo ahead of the event. It turned out the Mat (of Full Court Press fame) was there to give a demonstration of the machine at a public event that evening. To answer the question you have to fast forward a year and a half to May 2018, when, in Glasgow for this year’s Glasgow Coffee Festival, I found myself in The Good Coffee Cartel along with Mat North, who just happened to be in possession of a production model of the Decent Espresso Machine… You can see what I found out after the gallery. Would the final product live up to the promise? However, that was a prototype, and there was plenty of work still to be done. ![]() ![]() Using the tablet, you would be able to control every aspect of the process, from pressure to water temperature, from flow-rates to shot times. Perhaps most exciting of all was the use of a dedicated Android tablet, running bespoke software from Decent Espresso, to control the machine. The goal was certainly ambitious: to produce performance equivalent to that of a professional espresso machine, but at a price which would be in the reach of the home enthusiast. What I saw was just a prototype, still on the lab bench, but I could see its potential, particularly as John explained his design philosophy. It was there that I first laid eyes on the Decent Espresso machine, a high-end home espresso machine that John and his team had under development. As a result of an intriguing e-mail I’d received from John, of Decent Espresso, I found myself in a multi-floored factory building in an out-of-the-way part of the New Territories. In October 2016, I was in Hong Kong at the start of my around the world trip.
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