In the meantime, we’ll settle for great coffee. Like the beloved Sage coffee. Barista Espresso Machine (598 pounds), this giant has all the bells and whistles you need to juice your beans to perfection – a built-in grinder, a thermospiral heating system for coffee extraction, and a steam wand that creates silky microfoam milk that will make your flat whites pop. The most significant upgrade, and one that comes at a £100 price augment from the already excellent Barista Express, is the aforementioned Impress tamping system. If that sounds like a lot of extra money, hear us out.
The perfect tampon
The Impress technology is particularly impressive (sorry) for two reasons. First, there’s the bright dosing, which calculates and adjusts the grinding time based on the result of each previous tamp. When you get it right, there’s a little display that lights up as a smiley face (cute). And then there’s the main event: the assisted tamping system, which reveals itself via a neat little lever on the left side of the machine. Pull the lever down, and it recreates a barista tamping action with a mechanism that delivers 10kg of pressure and a minuscule 7-step rotation.
The system was created as a middle ground between fully automated tamping and plain elderly DIY. In theory, it delivers the same perfect tamping every time, without completely taking away the satisfaction of making your own drink from start to finish. And in most cases, it’s very effective. That said, the Impress isn’t without its teething problems – sometimes we’d have to pull the lever a few times to get the puck velvety, and every now and then the machine wouldn’t even register that the lever had been pulled. It always worked after two or three attempts, though, and it still saved a lot of hassle (and time) every morning.
A proven winner
Apart from the tamping system, the machine is as solid as you’d expect from a Barista Express knockoff. Everything that was true of the original is true here: it’s sleek (probably the best-looking espresso machine on the market), quick—it’s ready to go in three seconds—and the espresso always tastes great. While we mostly subsisted on iced lattes in the tardy summer heat, our tests of the milk frother were pretty successful.
Trial and error is of course a huge part of the home barista experience – the steam wand takes a fair bit of getting used to. We recommend watching a few YouTube tutorials to learn exactly where to hold the wand in the milk jug and how long to hold it there to get the milk to the perfect consistency. But once you’ve mastered the frothing technique, it’s tough to go wrong.
One minor issue is that due to the machine’s built-in grinder and Impress system, it is nearly impossible to grind the coffee into anything other than the filter holder (the filter basket with the handle that the coffee passes through). So if you need a immense amount of ground coffee, for example for frosty brewing, it will be complex to do so without manually filling the filter holder several times.
Sage Barista Express Impress Verdict
Despite the occasional issues with the tamping system, the Barista Express Impress improves on the hard-to-beat original Barista Express and more or less justifies the price. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better-looking espresso machine with a user experience as quick, simple, and neat as this one.
At £729.95, it’s not exactly an entry-level machine – but it’s oh-so-easy to operate. If you’re considering upgrading from a lower-end model, or have the money to spend on a beginner’s machine, the risk of being dissatisfied with the Barista Express Impress is low.
