I feel as if I'm in some hi-tech whirl at the moment, with a new phone, router, netbook and not to m...
I feel as if I'm in some hi-tech whirl at the moment, with a new phone, router, netbook and not to mention all the other stuff that keeps needing replacing, I'm no stranger to Currys etc.
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Oh yes, make that three appliances that have crapped out on us in recent months, having had very little real use – our Party Gear iPod dock, our Rexel Shredder and now our Morphy Richards Espresso machine that promised so much with its prestigious build quality and yet lasted three years of merely occasional domestic use.
With hindsight, the perceived build-quality of the latter appears to have been ‘all fur coat and no knickers’. I can’t bring myself to scroll back through my opinions to find out how much it cost, but it was over a ton, of that I’m sure. I’d only upset myself anyway.
IT HAD TO GO
It’ll come as no surprise that I’ve decided to buy something cheaper, covered with an extended warranty this time. Hence it was that I recently found myself in Comet paying £70 for a DeLonghi Treviso, but before you all start checking and finding out that it should have cost £52, it did, before they tacked on the 3-year warranty.
SO WHAT IS IT?
The Treviso is a two-cup espresso machine. That is to say it can make two cups of coffee at a time, and in our household, that’s plenty, most of the time. Espresso machines pump high pressure (14 bars in this case – about 206 psi) hot water through a filter,
squeezing out the flavour of the coffee contained therein, hence the coffee is ‘expressed’ through the filter with all the speed of ….errrr…..an express train.
Compared to a coffee percolator, where the hot water goes round and round picking up extra flavour on each pass, the espresso taste is more like a Rombout filter literally pumped up ‘on steroids’ as Jezza Clarkson is wont to say. Hence, its resulting flavour from a single pass tends more towards that of filter compared when compared to anything a ‘perky copulator’ can manage.
WORKING UP STEAM
An additional feature on most espresso machines is the steam lance, used for frothing milk later to be dispensed onto the coffee, creating Cappucino from black coffee, and the Treviso is amongst these ranks. A lot of reviewers are unimpressed by this feature, but although the instructions say to use half-skimmed milk, we use fully skimmed and it’s fine.
ANY GOOD?
The Treviso doesn’t get bad reviews per se, but that’s maybe in the category of ‘damned with faint praise’. As far as I’m concerned, by hook or by crook we’re going to get three year’s service from it for less than I paid over the last three years!
THE ACID TEST
Does it make good coffee? Yes it does. We stick to an Illy brand of ground coffee designed for espresso machines as we find it neither too insipid* nor burnt tasting.
(* Yes, what is it about drowning sufficient edible vegetable matter in water that seems to make coffee-making such a hit and miss affair, even in restaurants where they ought to know better?)
MAKING A CUP (OR TWO)
To make coffee in most espresso machines, except those that take a proprietary ‘cassette’, you pack a kind of ladle with coffee.
The ladle then ‘bayonets’ into place with about a quarter turn of its handle so that it now sits over where the cup(s) will be – the attachment needs to be secure as there’ll be 200-odd pounds of pressure behind it any time soon.
This machine has a choice of two sizes of liner for the ladle to allow for one or two cup operation. There’s a tamper fitted to the underside to get the coffee nicely squeezed down.
A litre of water goes in at the back. This would be one of my major beefs, as this leaves you forever filling the thing unlike the outgoing incumbent on our work top. If you have a filter jug which removes some of the crud from local tap water, it may be better to use water from this as espresso machines can fur up like anything that boils water. It’s just that they’re trickier to descale, as you can only see half of what goes on.
You are advised to turn it on 30 minutes in advance. Not only does the water need heating but the whole plumbing system benefits from a thorough warming, as does heating a tea pot.
Then you have a choice of two rocker switches to operate. One shoots steam through a lance to ‘froth up’ a milk jug for cappuccinos and the like. This is doomed not to get much use in our house, as we like it tall, strong and black. Hell we don’t even put sugar in it! It’s a man’s life in the Nibbles household, even for me.
The other rocker switch sets the espresso pump into action, and boy does it first make you jump? The pump is quite noisy so thanks goodness that it’s all over in a minute of so. For such a dynamic noise, the brown dribble that oozes from two nozzles underneath seems an inadequate climax (ooh-er missus), but by golly, it tastes good.
To get two cups, you place one smaller one under each nozzle. To get one gutbucket of a mug, you place your favourite “World’s Best Mum/Dad/Teacher/Tax Inspector” mug in there to straddle both.
ANY GOOD BITS?
To be fair, this is something that this machine does better than its predecessor (apart from cost less that is) – it accepts the bog-standard mug without having to decant from something less tall, which is something the previous machine wouldn’t do. I think we even had to buy some new cups to fit. You can also buy an adapter so it will handle those proprietary cassettes I mentioned earlier.
CLEANING IT
There are three main areas needing regular maintenance.
One is to empty the used coffee grounds into the bin without letting go of the liner from the ladle. The ladle’s handle has a natty little flip-up catch to hold onto this whilst you hover perilously over the kitchen bin.
Secondly, there’s a drip tray, just like in pubs, which needs to be emptied out, the frequency of which is proportional to how clumsy you are.
Thirdly, there’s a periodical need to descale it using something suitable for plastic kettles.
CONCLUSION
That’s about it really. A proficient coffee maker that now (dammit) seems to be reduced to forty quid as soon as I’d parted with my fifty-three. At that price, I definitely buy the 3-year warranty just to make them fix it or give you a new one.
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Nov 11th, 2009
(Nov 13th, 2009)
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