Sage - The Duo-Temp Pro - Bean to Cup Coffee Machine with Milk Frother, Brushed Stainless Steel

If you just want to press a button and have a drink made for you, this isn't your machine. However, if you're the type of person who wants total controll over your espresso and steamed milk. The type of person who isn't just going to feed the machine supermarket beans. And you're someone enjoys the process of making tasty coffee drinks, then I highly recommend this machine.With help from youtube, I've gone from someone who had never used fresh beans before. Someone who'd never even seen an espresso machine outside of a coffee shop, let alone be in controll of one. To someone who now has a fresh coffee bean subscription and way too many coffee accessories. And I'm also someone who's now used this machine for 5 months, having pulled shots with it almost every day.I can honestly say it's been a great entry into home espresso. It's not perfect, or the best machine out there, but I've really enjoyed using it so far. And I can highly recommened it to anyone on the fence about taking the plunge. It's well worth the effort, and cost wise, it's really good bang for your buck. Especially if you can get one on sale for under £300.I've paired this machine with the Sage dose controll pro and couldn't be happier. There's a bit of a learning curve at first when learning to dial in fresh beans. But even the first drink I made tasted better than any coffee I've had from a coffee chain. You just have to source good quality beans (with a known and recent roasting date) and follow a few guides to get you going.Once you figure everything out, it's a super simple machine to use. You switch it on and turn the dial to the function you want activating. Then turn the dial back to the center to stop. Super simple and you have full controll.If this is your first machine, you'll likely need to buy a few extras with this, as it doesn't grind or dose coffee for you.Along with a decent coffee grinder, I'd recommend getting a good set of coffee scales (I use the Timemore basic 2), as it makes the whole process of making a drink a lot easier. Especially when following a recipe or experimenting with grind size. Being a manual machine, you have a lot of controll over your espresso and you'll need to learn how to controll the things that this machine doesn't (like when to stop the water or what grind setting to use to get the right flow rate). Good coffee scales help with all of that. At the very least, you'll need a scale that goes to 0.1g and a stopwatch. Without those, it's hard to get good results.For me at least, it's really nice to have a machine that doesn't hold your hand. All this really does is push hot water through whatever you put in the portafilter, and shoot hot water/steam from the wand. A whole 2 functions! It does each of them really well, though.If I had to be picky and say something negative, it'd be that the noise is a bit high when steaming. There's a repetative thud from the pump when using the steam wand, and it's a bit annoying. The thudding seems to echo throughout the house when it runs, too. It only lasts a minute while steaming, so it's not that bad. Something to consider if you have thin walls and live next to neighbours that like to complain, or have relatives that you don't want to disturb.Overall, it's been an amazing addition to our kitchen. It's basically a hobby now. Just make sure you source good quality, freshly roasted, beans. And that you refrain from using the pressurised baskets!

I’ve been umming and ahhing about whether or not to get a home espresso machine to replace my ageing Nespresso one. My biggest problem with the Nespresso is the difficulty of cleaning it, simply because of its poor design.Lots of research suggested that enjoyable home espresso is not easy to achieve and takes a barista skillset otherwise it’s not worth bothering with. Also the machines available at the cheap end i.e. this one, are not that great and unless you have a couple of grand to spare it’s cheaper to go to the local coffee shop.Actually however much you spend it’s probably cheaper to go to the local coffee shop.Still with that knowledge, and plenty of youtube videos under my belt I picked out two possible machines – this one and the Bambino plus. The Bambino makes milk texturing easier and was my first choice. But the Duo Temp dropped in price by over £100 here so that really made the decision for me, and after 6 months of not being sure I bought one.It comes really well packed with all the accessories in smart little white boxes a la Apple.You get four coffee baskets that fit into the handle (portafilter). Two are single cup, two are two cup. Two are for home ground coffee with your own grinder, two are for using with coffee bought already ground. The pre-ground coffee baskets are double walled and more forgiving of beginner barista errors, so I started with that. My intention is to eventually add a Sage grinder and grind my own beans if I don’t get bored with the faff by the end of my first bag of coffee. You also get a cleaning tool for the steam wand tip, and some cleaning tablets for the portafilter.I noticed a couple of things I didn’t like. There’s a water filter in the water container. This needs replacing every three months and so is an ongoing additional expense. The handle on the water container is a pain. It concertinas and folds flat, but it doesn’t hang straight down in use and so gets in the way of the tap when filling. This is stupid and annoying. It is also flimsy, uncomfortable, and looks like it would break at the drop of a hat. Functionality seems to go out of the window when looks are concerned because it folds down and looks part of the smooth top of the machine. One thing you might need to be aware of is that the water container lifts vertically for its full height, so if you plan on popping this machine on a worktop under a wall cupboard, you will have to move it every time you want to fill it with water. It also has a cup warming space on the top. Again this is only usable if there’s nothing immediately above the machine. Unfortunately the only space I have is under a wall cupboard so I have to put up with cold cups and inconvenience when I want to fill it.You need to run hot water through both the portafilter and basket, as well as the steam wand, several times before the machine is ready for use. This is useful because it sort of gives you a free go of the controls without wasting any coffee.You have to brew coffee and then steam your milk. You can’t do both simultaneously. The large central dial, which is quite stiff, controls which way the water goes, so twist left for espresso brewing, up to vertical to stop, and then to the right for steaming milk and back to vertical to stop. Nothing is automatic with this machine, so you control the brew time of the coffee and are in total control of the milk heating/frothing. So you really need either a handy timer to time the shot length, or a scale to weigh the brew so you can stop when enough water has passed through the portafilter (twice the weight of coffee is a good place to start with about 19g of ground coffee and 38g of finished drink). A thermometer for the milk jug would also be a good addition so you don’t accidentally cook the milk (aim for around 65C). Too hot to hold in your hand is a good indicator if you don’t have a thermometer and the ‘razor’ tool (supplied) lets you put a consistent amount of coffee in the basket. The coffee needs compressing in the basket with the supplied tamper. This is held in the unit with a magnet. The coffee needs to be a solid barrier so the water cannot find any easy way through.You don’t need anything other than what’s supplied with the machine to start pulling shots, but one or two extras might make coffee making a bit more consistent.I bought some pre-ground coffee from a specialist roaster, and with more than a little trepidation, filled the pressurised two cup basket, tamped it, razored it, pulled a shot, frothed up some soya milk, added it to the brew and took a sip of one of the most delicious cappuccinos I’ve enjoyed in a long while. I think in part it was the coffee blend I’d bought. What it wasn’t was skill on my part because I don’t have any. But I had a cup of delicious coffee with my first attempt.I suspect a single walled basket and my own grinder would not have produced such a positive result but at least I know that that will be down to me and not the machine.So I think the Sage Dup Temp Pro is a good place to start with home espresso as long as you don’t mind the extra time it takes filling the basket, remembering to clean the wand immediately and a fair bit of additional washing up afterwards (portafilter, jug, wand, thermometer if used). Espresso is a slowish business, but I think that’s part of the fun. I have one or two cups of coffee a day, because of that I want it to be the most delicious coffee I can make, where I can choose the part of the world the beans are grown, how they are roasted, and who I buy them from. There are loads of roasters selling freshly roasted coffee online nowadays so there’s a ton of choice that I’m now looking forward to exploring – and it all tastes better than Nespresso pods.Anyway, my first attempt produced a very enjoyable cappuccino. The machine itself has fairly simple controls, but you do need to participate in the process. It’s very different from popping a pod in a Nespresso machine, pressing one button, and picking up a cappuccino moments later. So, and bear in mind this is based on one cup so far, if you fancy upping your game to really fresh and delicious espresso, lattes, cappuccinos, et al, this might be a good machine to start with. It’s basic but you have control over coffee dose, fresh ground or pre-ground coffee, brew time, and milk steaming. For me it seems the perfect place to start without spending silly amounts of money. Mind you, this machine was actually considerably cheaper than my Nespresso machine was when bought new 4 years ago.I like the Sage duo temp pro, and hope to get many years of use out of it, and I’ll certainly update this review if I encounter any problems.