Breville BES900XL Dual Boiler Semi Automatic Espresso Machine

The Breville Dual Boiler machine is the first attempt by a mid level small appliance manufacturer to make a home espresso machine with the capabilities of a competent semi-commercial espresso machine, at a price point that might be acceptable to mainstream audiences. In large measure they have succeeded, however the question of long term reliability/durability remains.By way of introduction, I am a long time high end home espresso enthusiast, and have owned commercial espresso machines and grinders for use in my home since 1995. Back when the available choices were limited, I even modified equipment in order to make it provide the capabilities that we now take almost for granted in semi-commercial equipment, such things as pre-infusion and the possibility of tight temperature control. I currently own 3 high end single group commercial espresso machines plus 5 commercial grinders. I roast my green beans on a 1kg commercial coffee roaster. I only give this background because I am not new to this interest in home espresso, and I do have considerable experience on real commercial equipment. But I digress :-)I ordered one of these Breville Dual Boiler machines solely out of curiosity, and knowing that I'd probably never have enough opportunity to evaluate one without buying it. The recent sale on Amazon of this machine gave me the little push to just go out and order one, strictly for "fun." In order to use this machine productively, you will need a good high end grinder. For me, this means you will have to spend at least $350 or more on the accompanying grinder. I have read many negative reviews of the companion grinder that Breville tries to sell for this machine. I'd avoid that grinder and instead look to buy something more serious. If you don't buy a good grinder, this machine purchase will all be for naught.I've had the espresso machine for a week now, and have used it primarily for the past week, although I have also made a few comparison shots on my commercial machine du jour, a Cimbali Junior Casa, the latest model. I've also owned a couple of La Marzoccos, and still own one, however it is not in my residence at the moment.I am not going to go over every detail of this machine; many others have done that and I don't want to be repetitious. The machine overall has a futuristic appearance, has lots of stainless steel (surrounded by matching, greyish plastic), a reasonable counter-top footprint for what it is, and is quite intuitive in operation. As an experienced home espresso enthusiast, it took me less than 3 minutes to figure out how to get the machine set up and to turn it on. The actual operation was very easy because the machine is well designed and anticipates what a user would want to do with it. Although the machine is not "plumbed in," which is to say that you have to manually put water into it and manually drain the drip tray, the water tank is large and easily refilled, plus the drip tray has a large capacity and is easily removed for emptying. The machine has "pre-infusion," which means that the coffee is not immediately assaulted with the full pressure of the pump, but rather there is a period where a lower pressure is presented, which tends to reduce the likelihood of a bad espresso shot due to "channeling," due to poor portafilter basket preparation. This is especially true if you "updose," or use larger quantities of coffee in the basket, which is the custom in N. America and I believe also, Australia, where the machine was designed.In addition, the dual boiler design, coupled with the use of a heater in the group head plus electronic temperature control ("PID" in this context), makes shot temperature control easy to the inexperienced user. In contrast, with a machine having a simpler design such as a heat exchanger, some user experience is necessary to know how to "flush" water through the group head in order to attain the desired shot temperature. As someone experienced with heat exchanger machines, this benefit is only slight to me, but to a neophyte this could be meaningful.Milk frothing is easy, if a tad slow, and I had no difficulty attaining excellent "microfoam" for a cappucino, from my first usage. There are many other layout and design features that show that this machine was designed by people who understand the ins and outs of making espresso.A minor annoyance for me, and a major one for some owners, is the inability to turn off or modify the "green power" features of the machine. You can program the machine to come on in the morning before you wake up, which is a real plus. On the minus side, after one hour of inactivity, the machine goes into a low power state where the brew boiler water retreats down to around 150 degrees F, where it stays for another 3 hours, followed by the machine shutting off altogether. If you come onto the machine in the low power state, it will take several minutes before you can make a straight shot, and perhaps 15 minutes before the steam boiler is heated up enough to reliably foam milk. And, as I said, there is no user programmable function (nor is the machine set up for reprogramming, such as a "bios update" at a later time, of the motherboard through a USB port or anything else) that would allow you to disable the power saving features. If you buy this machine now, you will be stuck with these "green power features." Personally speaking, I make one cappuccino first thing in the morning and after that, I only make straight shots, so this does not effect me all that much. Anytime during the 4 hours in the low power state, I would be able to re-awaken the machine and after several minutes make a good shot.Speaking of shots, how good are they? In my several comparisons between this machine and my Cimbali Junior, I preferred the Cimbali produced shots, but not by a huge margin, and the Breville produced very good shots, very good shots indeed. For most people lacking my experience with a machine like the Cimbali, I think that they would find the Breville much easier to get good results from than your typical commercial machine. And perhaps over time I'll get better with the Breville, and then the results will end up being equivalent.It is clear that the designers at Breville have succeeded in their attempts to produce a very capable, intuitive, high end home espresso machine, at a price point hundreds of dollars less than the nearest real competition. The only remaining question is durability, and the jury is completely out on that. Reading through 70-something pages of a forum thread devoted solely to this machine, on the Australian website coffeesnobs.com, plus several other threads on other coffee related boards, one is left with considerable uncertainty about the wisdom of buying this machine. On the one hand, Breville has been responsive to consumer complaints and to consumers with malfunctioning machines since the machine was first introduced, even to the point of providing service way beyond the end of the written warranty period. In Australia, there is a network of repair shops, however in N. America it appears that up until now Breville has simply been replacing machines that malfunction with new ones. How long this will or can go on is anyone's guess. There do seem to be quite a few owners who have become enthralled with their machines, only to have them fail suddenly and catastrophically after several months to a year and a half.If I was financially constrained and risk averse, I would probably avoid this machine and seek out a technologically less sophisticated machine like a semi-commercial heat exchanger (think NS Oscar, or Bezerra, or any of several other makers) and go that route. If I had more financial resources and I could deal with this machine maybe turning into a boat anchor after a year or two, then I'd either get this one or consider an even more expensive machine in the $2000 range. And if I was really into espresso and was handy, then I'd seek out a used commercial machine in good condition and do the restoration myself, which could mean that you get a $5000 machine for a couple of thousand dollars, and learn a lot about it by fixing it up and tinkering with it. It all depends on what you are looking for, and how much time and money you are willing to spend in the process.Yes, I would buy this machine again, but I would be sure that I acknowledged that there are some durability concerns and that with a relatively sort 1 year warranty, that I could get left holding the bag if the manufacturer were to decide at any point to cut back on the excellent customer support they are now gaining a reputation for providing.************Addendum 12-26-2012*************My business partner has now had the opportunity to use this machine for 2 days, instead of the Cimbali we normally use in our little business house located in another city. This partner knows how to use commercial equipment but is rather lazy in his technique and lately drinks only milk drinks. He found the Breville to be easy and fun to use, in fact he preferred using it over the Cimbali Junior. He thinks I obsess about such things as durability, and said, basically, "so what if it breaks, just get a new one." So I guess if you consider a $1200 espresso machine to be a "disposable" item, than this could be the way to go :-)

20 month update: It's turned out to be a VERY well supported unit. Breville stands by their stuff. Breville tech support is right here in North America.I had originally posted a very negative review on this unit, as I purchased one of the first ones off the assembly line. All of the solenoids failed, it was not cleanable, had faulty software, persistent power-save mode, and eventually the unit failed over a short period of use and just quit.A call to Breville. About 3k questions later, they conceded it was a faulty unit and simply replaced it. <<- yep, they just replaced it. How's THAT for customer support?Now I had to give them a $600.00 hold on my CC until they got the broken unit back. So I tossed the old one back in the newly received box, and as soon as they saw it was enroute they dropped/canceled the CC hold. Viola - done. No charge - thank you Breville.So yea, I was told the original (900) design had a boatload of issues, but they keep updating the materials and engineering I was told. Now it's the model (updated) 920, and although it looks the same externally but it's all new design inside. Keeping fingers crossed.===30 month update:They shipped yet another replacement unit last month. Sure enough, the pesky POWER SAVE (aka COOL DOWN) mode is alive and well - and never has been deactivated despite thousands of complaints. A few comments out here mentioned it had been fixed. But NO, believe me, it has not:After one hour the machine cools down to 120deg, and you WILL wait 15 mins for your next cup while the machine warms up to the usual 200 degrees. YOU'LL WAIT. Period. It DOES have a no-shutdown option, which prevents the machine from shutting down altogether after 4 hours. A small consolation. But these "features" still, after 3 years of incessant complaining from owners, make the machine very aggravating waiting for a warmup every time you go to get an espresso, if not totally unusable.Now for those of you who only want 1 cup a day, and can micro-time the 1-hour daily window where the machine is hot and ready, then you're all set. Breville gladly provides you, after initial warm up, a once-a-day window of one hour to get your coffee. Otherwise you WILL wait a while, in your bare feet, in that cold kitchen, until the machine re-warms itself. "You have been protected from yourself" they claim.This is nothing more than sloppy, ignoring-the-customer programmers, that have ruined an otherwise good machine through their arrogance, laziness, and stubbornness. And a company that is really struggling to keep these things into the market. You get a whole lot for what you pay for really. But if an errant programming and product staff renders your flagship product worthless, then there's no hope for you Breville.I've had it. I'll just have to shell out another $1000 and get an Italian unit, where they don't cripple their units with save-the-ignorant-users from themselves mentality. I notice the more modern Italian units have usb-updatable firmware, to prevent such a mess as this thingThere. Done with it

First of all- I shopped around and got this on sale at Amazon. At $999 the price was fantastic compared to other retailers. Having tried a cheap ($200) machine in the past I decided to spend a more considerable amount for a higher end machine.Pros-It's a nice looking machine-The programmable volume control works great-It gets up to temp very fast (other people have complained about the wait time but it really is only 7-8 minutes on mine)-The ability to brew and steam at the same time is a must and a key element of this machine-The magnetic tamper is cool and convenient (not lost in a drawer)-perfect steamed milk with lots of foam in 30 secondsCons-Its pretty big. Measure your counter space and height limits before ordering.-You can't descale yourself it must be returned to Breville every couple years for this. I don't find this a big deal. Its a large investment and like any other big ticket items it should be serviced properly.All in all I think this is an excellent item without spending thousands on a high end machine and the difference between this and a $199 machine is enormous.

I waited for 2 months (tried 5 different machines during this time and couple grinders, tried infuser, delonghi,baby gaggia). One thing this machine does is gives you all the data which you need to pull a perfect shot of espresso (very forgiving with the quality of beans). You can adjust the brew temprature, time your shot, figure out if it is under or over extracted (once you find the perfect shot, combined with your Breville smart grinder you can keep the same settings and get the even results every time).Even took me a while to get the perfection(right shot , with right consistency and great taste). I've never owned any espresso machines, it started a year ago with a DeLonghi machine (never made a good espresso) and then i got obssessed :). Bought the DB i think for few days only it was for $699 at Amazon and i was lucky to buy it at that price. Ok so what i've learned it with dual basket (i make a shot of 20 grams), with consistent dosing, then you adjust your grind (lil coarser or finer) and consistent tamp (with a built in tamp), you can pull a perfect double shot (25-28 seconds). You can keep it on Auto start so it'll come on every morning or any specific time everyday and ready to brew when you are ready :) very good feature. Perfect machine for home (i don't know the longevity but Breville's products are good and quality oriented so i don't think it'll not be great).Ok espresso part is done, now milk steaming (this took a long time too lol without thermometer), but this machine can create microfoam everytime, without effort and real quick, you just need to learn to keep the tip lil bit under milk surface (to add air) and check the temprature with your other hand. Microfoam very quick for even a double latte. steam wand is very convinient, got 3 spouts, the steam lever works great. Perfect coffee in no time :). Hop this was helpful

Purchased the BREBES900 and the BREBCG800XL Grinder as a Christmas present for myself and BEST Gift ever. Saw the machine at Amazon ordered it on December 21st and the machine was delivered and in our house by late afternoon Christmas Eve. The machine is very easy to use and makes awesome expresso and lattes. Our house has now become the place to be for our neighbours as they are very impressed with the machine. The service department is awesome as I sent them an email inquiring about purchasing an extra bean hopper and response within 6 hrs! If you are thinking about purchasing an expresso machine this is the one to get!

I bought this Breville in November 2012. Made great cappuccino and lattes, you have to play with the temperature, etc.. lately, the water output has been reduced...December 2016, and the pressure the last year has been off. I contacted Breville support, they think I am due for descaling. They sent me a pre-paid postage, to have the machine serviced in Toronto, Winnipeg does not have a service center...bummer! will keep you posted once all resolved and re rate if necessary. This machine has not been used since las Xmas...so really 4 years of use, mostly during holidays...surprise it need TLC this soon, I had done the regular maintenance as recommended!!!

My 10 yr old Italian espresso maker, for which I paid $2K, finally ceased to work and it was time to look for a replacement. I wasn't ready to spend another $2K, so came across a deal posted on RedFlagDeals for this unit at $699 (on sale). I'm glad I got it as it's a huge improvement over my old Italian machine.It's fairly quiet. The Dual Boiler system is a big plus. My espressos are definitely tastier.I don't have any regrets. Highly recommend this unit, especially when it goes on sale.