I was nervous about paying so much for a home espresso machine but the first latte I made put my fears to rest!

every time, you can grind as fine or coarse as you wish

but I also sneaked in some real lattes on a weekly basis

Some good espresso beans and you will be making the best lattes that you have had

The machine makes great Latte's and is very easy to use once you get used to it.

This machine has produced the Best cup of Coffee, that I have ever had

Of course, it can also make a miserable cup of coffee if you make a mistake in the process, but that's part of the fun in my mind

The only beans this machine made a decent cup of coffee out of were some older and drier Brazilian beans and it abused my fresher Columbian, Nicaraguan and Honduran beans

It's only $0.29 per cup and are far more convenient that trying to clean out a million dirty coffee cups from your car/office each week.

Now that the grinder is working the machine makes a great cup off espresso.

I have had great luck with Lavazza super crema, top bean

every time, you can grind as fine or coarse as you wish

It was very easy to learn to use and produces great espresso with a nice crema.

I love the different settings and I love that you could store the beans and the being hopper and then grind them as you use them; very convenient

Super easy to get a great espresso with a nice crema, I read a couple of reviews saying that it was complicated to get the best of these

I now know what a seriously undesirable shot tastes like, simply because I didn't just chuck it out

And does the Rancilio pull a better shot than this machine

Other than that, with a little practice I have been able to pull a perfect shot 90% of the time

If the shot tastes too bitter, increase the coarseness of the grind which will therefore decrease the brewing time overall as water passes more readily through it

Initially we couldn't get the machine to automatically extract the perfect shot.

There is no excuse for such shoddy quality and short lifespan

This is a great quality machine and I am very happy with it

I LOVED this machine and the quality of espresso it delivered

I got this to replace a cheaper delonghi machine which had started delivering inconsistent shot quality

Great machine but quality is lacking for a $600 machine.

If you're using the Breville to grind your beans, make sure your not using a very coarse grind.

For some reason, this machine can't handle too fine a grind until you've pulled some shots with a coarse grind first

I also think that each type of coffee bean that you use, the amount of time since the bean was roasted, and the age of when that coffee bean was roasted also plays a factor in terms of what grind you use and how much you have to pack or tamper the grinds

My other dedicated burr grinder (that my wife uses for drip coffee) was able to handle the grind no-problem

It grinds the right amount at the right grind setting, it dispenses the right amount at the right pressure

Excellent Product it works great and the coffee tastes delicious, easy to use

The product broke after 1.5 years (loud noises, no water during espresso shots)

I just think it's too expensive a product to replace every year or so!

but I would like those who are struggling (or worrying about) under-extracting issue on BES870XL to read this before you write a bad product review here

Again After Only 6 Months It Seems Kind Of More Like Poor Product

It's your standard machine, but it makes a great coffee

So, I ground coffee in my old and reliable Krups grinder.

Once you have your setup down, it does make a great coffee

After another advanced cleaning it would grind rice, but not coffee

We love this coffee machine, easy to use and makes great coffees

Second improvement is the fact that you can now have hot water from the steam wand.

The water here in LA is really hard on espresso machines

Well in areas where hard water is available, pre removal of Calcium is very beneficial to the machine

Maybe the water is too hard where I live... that could be the problem

I turned the machine off and it continued to spew water.

Do a google search as to modifying the grinder to grind finer

That stresses the grinder, and will lead to its failure

The grinder is great and pressure gauge works perfectly.

The grinder is fantastic and is just as good now as a year ago

Even the grinder became erratic, gradually grinding less and less coffee

Sure, I had to experiment a bit with the espresso beans, the fineness and amount of beans to grind, and pressure for tamping them down

It takes a little bit to get the right amount of grounds so that the pressure is correct

Once you figure out your grind size and the right pressure you will get the best coffee ever!

I have to adjust the grind almost daily to get the right pressure for the pour

It is a good machine but requires you to mess with the setting for grind size and amount until the pressure is just right.

I bought a basic Delonghi model, which gave me a good cup but nothing as great as I was hoping for.

It seems like it would have been an easy design flaw to correct with some sort of enclosed grind shoot

But the bean feeding is a design flaw, which Breville should fix to perfect such an otherwise fine machine.2

This may not be a design flaw, because when you tap the filter onto the counter, the grinds settle and you do have the right amount, it's just a mess though - someone slightly OCD like myself finds that hard to deal with

I also have some pre-ground decaf and Cuban expresso that I use with the double wall filters and get very good results, although not as good as with the fresh beans

We used SB espresso beans, and had to set the grind much coarser (10) than the recommended starting point (5)

We also pretty much gave up on buying beans from local brewhouses, we found the quality and taste not as good as we could do ourselves, so off we went and bought a small roaster (Fresh Roast SR700 Home Coffee Roaster), and frankly, this make the cycle complete - not only can we buy green coffee beans via amazon very cheaply, but we can also control how much we roast, and when we use them, making it a very turnkey and enjoyable experience

I also tried playing with the dose, the grind coarse/fine (tried fine, tried a high enough dose to just allow locking with firm pressure)

and I gotta say it works great as of the day we bought it

I also have some pre-ground decaf and Cuban expresso that I use with the double wall filters and get very good results, although not as good as with the fresh beans

Breville's small knock-box (avail on Amazon - BES001XL) is the perfect size and a must-have to knock the coffee pucks out efficiently from the portafilter.

The other features are incredibly well thought out; especially the feature that removes excess water from the filter basket after coffee extraction, so the used grounds form a dry puck for quicker cleanup is incredible

Clean up is also a breeze because the coffee grind is literally always a very dry "puck"

He gets a nice dry puck

This results in a nice 1 oz shot and a dry puck

(that's a plug for Square Trade, great people to deal with BTW), so we'll get what we paid for it back.

A few people complained about the grind amount knob not going low enough

Many other people in online forums have complained of buzzing noises just before their unit failed

Maybe some people are captivated watching the lights blink as their coffee grounds spill all over during the manual transfer step?Anyway, I am disgusted -- and stuck with a $600 paperweight since I was travelling and couldn't return this joke of a machine within the 30 day return window.

The vibrating/buzzing noise people are talking about is - I think - because of scale and or coffee build up

In that model the beans, especially fresh oily ones, sometimes would fail to slide down the slope; this is no longer an issue with the new design

The replacement unit had the same issue just after the warranty expired.

If you enjoy your coffee, this shouldn't be an issue.

Although I was outside of the one-year warranty I decided to alert customer service to this dangerous issue.

Now I don't seem to be able to connect with the seller to remedy the issue

Another common issue is that the machine will make a loud "buzzing" sound and/or leak water out of the bottom of the machine

The machine makes all the right sounds as an industrial/commercial machine which I am used to

To be exact, after 6 months it started making a terrible buzzing sound

The weekly cleaning sound intensive but really takes maybe 5 minutes

After two weeks, the steamer setting was making a loud, and I mean A LOUD, screeching sound while steaming

well I

I've now had two of these and they both worked well for the first 18-24 months, then they started making a loud noise when brewing and the pressure no longer worked.

After the clast cleaning it started making a very loud buzzing noise and there is no water flow and no pressure either

the noise the clean up etc.

I've now had two of these and they both worked well for the first 18-24 months, then they started making a loud noise when brewing and the pressure no longer worked.