The Challenge of Making Fabulous Coffee at Home
A couple of years ago we spent an Easter break with our extended family at Bicheno, on Tasmania's East Coast, and it was there that I had my "light bulb moment" as far as seriously good coffee was concerned. At the local bakery I had coffee like I had never tasted before. It was so good that I decided I wanted to make coffee that good at home. I contacted their supplier and asked if they knew of a cost-effective machine that would do the job. They suggested that, although I would really need a boiler machine to make coffee that good, the Sunbeam EM6900 was worth a look if I didn't want to spend $2500. So I decided to buy one and try it out.
The
Sunbeam EM6900
This
machine was designed by world barista champion, Paul Bassett... so it
should have something going for it.
It has! And for $AUD699, quite a lot. It's a twin thermoblock machine which means you can pull a shot of espresso at the same time as you froth the milk. It makes a good cup of coffee, too, and it can be used in manual, automatic or user-programmable modes.
The portafilter is solid brass which helps stabilise the heat - the secret to consistently good coffee. It's also 58 mm in diameter so you can throw away the useless filter baskets that come with the machine and buy proper ones from Coffee Parts for about ten bucks. That certainly makes a difference, as does getting rid of the horrible plastic liner in the portafilter that makes it impossible to clean (presumably put there because Sunbeam felt that owners of this machine would not have the nous to warm the portafilter with hot water before using it).
It's got an "extraction" gauge that gives some indication of what you can see with your eyes. A temperature gauge would have been more use. It takes about two and a half minutes to heat enough milk for two cappuccinos but, once you work out how to actually achieve it, makes reasonable micro foam. The size of the drip tray is okay and is designed to collect the back-pressure overflow that occurs when you stop the extraction process... but it doesn't. It misses the drip tray and accumulates on the machine's plastic base and eventually appears on your benchtop when the small capacity of the base is exhausted. Nuisance value only!
Where
Sunbeam have really failed with this machine is in recognising the need
for the user to understand how it works... what the barista's art is all
about. Despite well written manuals and even a DVD with Paul Bassett showing
how the machine should be used, there is nothing to tell you, for example,
that this machine is useless without a good grinder. Nobody at Harvey
Norman knows that, or even how to use the machine properly. And because
this product attempts to emulate the results of its professional counterparts,
it requires a skilled user to demonstrate it and Sunbeam have overlooked
that. Once you get into this league of coffee making, bought ground coffee
is a waste of time - you'll never make good espresso unless you have dynamic
control over the grinding process yourself, which changes all the time.
A well-matched grinder for this machine is the Sunbeam EM0480 (pictured). It's a conical burr grinder that has the same high quality burr set as the Lux grinder. It's well made with plenty of adjustment, not too noisy and designed so that the dispensing chute does not clog up easily. There is some "scatter" of grounds, particularly in dry weather or when the coffee beans are drier than normal. The adjustment range is too large, but the increments could be finer as they represent a difference of about 8 seconds in extraction time with each notch... 2 or 4 second increments would have been much better. The grind quality lacks consistency, however, particularly when the beans are freshly roasted.
This grinder is good value for the money (retail around $AUD199 but expect to pay $10-$15 less than that).
However, for around $AUD275 (less than $AUD100 above the price of the Sunbeam EM0480), you can buy the truly amazing LeLit PL53 grinder.
So, combined with a suitable grinder, the EM6900 does a good job for the money. In fact it undoubtedly makes better coffee than the $2000 fully automatic bits of rubbish with fancy LCD displays from De Longhi or Saeco. And it certainly does better than any other domestic machine under $AUD1,800 - apart from the Rancilio Silvia which costs about $790. I have not tried The Silvia but it gets good reviews.
In my opinion the EM6900's consistency is not good enough for it to be taken as seriously as Sunbeam suggest. Particularly when you have friends around for dinner and want to make several cups of coffee at a time. The thermal stability of the machine just isn't up to it. Yes, it makes good coffee... even café standard coffee if you catch it at the right moment in the thermostat's fickle cycle.
So my Sunbeam espresso machine got the flick. I kept the grinder, though, and bought a La Scala Butterfly Lever. Five-star coffee at last... every time - no matter how many in the queue. (More info)
There
are some more complex reviews on both the EM6900
and the EM0480
at Coffee for Connoisseurs'
website.
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