It's the harem espresso maker.

It's a manual espresso maker from Brazil.

I don't know what you're thinking.

It looks like a grinder, and it does.

But it's not.

It doesn't grande coffee.

This is just for making espresso, and it's quite interesting.

Now this is a highly highly requested review.

Lots of you want to know what I think about this on.

I can see why now.

This is expensive.

It's 495 U.

S.

Dollars before shipping on.

What you get is what you see here.

You get the espresso maker in the middle, you get the base and sort of stand piece.

Here, you get a little glass that's actually quite clever.

A little dozing funnel and a temper to go with it.

Let me show you how it works.

So this here is the basket piece of the whole puzzle on.

It's just a standard 53 mil basket.

I think this one has less about Sally on the side, and it sits inside this piece that helps it screw into the body of the machine like so.

And this is where things get interesting.

You put your hot water in the top Here.

What's inside is a piston head attached to this central threaded piece.

So what happens is when you unscrew the central piece, this is causing that piston head to lift up on.

The water is pulled through it through a one way valve so that when you fully unwound it, what you should have is your bed of coffee, your hot water and then you're piston head we're gonna do is twist the handle to build the pressure to push the water through the better coffee.

Now, I don't know what pressure you can get up to with this thing.

You get pretty high, but I'm not sure how high.

Now if you are out and about, you can just clip the little glass it comes with in here and it stays, which is a nice little thing.

But if you bring it home, what you'd want to do is use the stand that it comes with now this is a hefty and well made thing.

There's a base piece that has a drip tray in it, which is very nice.

And then the clamp here that holds it in place to put it in.

Do you have to remove the basket?

Sit on top time up?

But can it make good coffee that that's really the question before we even get to?

Is it worth $500?

And the answer is yes, Yes, it can.

With a few caveats.

I don't think it's the most versatile espresso brewer, but I think you can get some really delicious espresso out of it.

And that's what we should do right now.

We should make some espresso with it on What I would strongly recommend when using this is that you run a pre heat cycle at least one preheat cycle.

So I'm gonna put some hot water and this gonna prep my ground coffee, get it packed and tamped rinse it through, and then we'll make some coffee.

So we're just gonna pull until it's full, and then we believe it.

What I've got here actually is a thermometer.

Just put a thermal couple into the body of the brewer to see what's happening to the temperature.

And generally I found that if you put in 95 Celsius water into a totally cold brewer, it dropped to the mid sixties.

This thing sucks up a lot of heat.

It's solid, it's heavy.

It's a big heat sink.

And thermal management with this brewer is definitely an issue.

We want to leave this a couple of minutes, but at some point it won't get harder than 65 when we need to.

Potentially for using a pretty light roast coffee, do a second round of preheating if you If you want to use something a little bit more developed a little bit darker, you'll probably find Bruce straight away.

But I have so far struggled really to get this thing brewing in the nineties in terms of degrees Celsius, not anywhere near close 200 Fahrenheit for those of you with the ancient money of temperature, So we're gonna use something to dump this water into rum.

As I lift this up, water will flow through and all the way back down again.

Now to dosa coffee.

That's pretty simple.

A little funnel put it in there, recommend a pretty heavy dose, and from my experience, I think it's a pretty good idea.

So this is 19 grams of coffee in.

You got in a little tamper with it.

If you already had say a spot.

See, Ali, you probably use whatever tamp you like now.

Occasionally I would get a bit frustrated because the action of screwing this is could be a little bit finicky just to find the start of the threat.

It's growing in nice and tight.

We are good to go.

Now I'm gonna need a little weighing scale to put under here and then some hot water in the top.

And then we can go.

Now, As I start to lift up, that will effectively start a pre infusion phase.

Water will be going through the piston head and started to soak into the coffee below.

And again, if I wanted to, I could only go a certain number of turns up before pushing down again.

By going all the way to the top, I will end up with more water in the brewer that I may want to use for an espresso.

But counting turns is not really a viable thing for me.

So we're at the top and then we're gonna go pretty quickly to build up some pressure and suddenly it should get hard to brew at this point.

Would probably reasonably high pressures and that's a good thing.

We're just gonna keep the pressure there now because I've got more liquid above the coffee that I actually want to push through it and bring a scale.

And I'm essentially gonna pull it out of the way when I get to my desired beverage weight, which is about 38 to 40 grams out and there's our espresso smells pretty good.

We should obviously give it a stud.

I've had some pretty tasty shots.

That's one of them.

It's got nice texture.

It's one extracted.

It tastes like it was brewed a slightly lower pressure than nine bars.

I will struggle to verbalize to you how I no, that or what that tastes like.

But it's slightly a textural thing, coupled with an extraction thing.

I would want that extra temperature G est toe to round it out, sweetened up a little bit more.

Get rid of some of that slightly unpleasant acidity that is, that is in that espresso.

If you like dark roasts, I think you wouldn't really have a temperature problem.

But I think if you like pretty light roasts whatever you define it light roast, but certainly something that's not near second crack, then you're going to struggle a little bit to hit the kind of temperatures that you want now, in terms of grind size grand fussiness, you're definitely gonna need a good grinder for this.

I was going just slightly coarser than I would have done for, say, 19 grams going into a pump powered electric espresso machine.

So again it suggests that maybe we're not working at pressures of nine bars or close to it.

You know you want to grind away.

You've got a good amount of control of your grand setting, and you would be essentially at a Nespresso grand setting.

So that's how it works.

You've seen how you make coffee with it.

What I will do now is clean up a little bit and give you a kind of summary of my thoughts about the build, the machine and the user experience.

So let's start with the build, because this thing is 495 U.

S.

Dollars.

The build must have something to do with it, and it certainly does.

Everything is really beautifully made here.

No corners have been cut.

The wood on the outside of this is local in Brazil.

It's stunning.

The way the metal is machine is very good.

The base is extremely solid.

It is a very well made think in terms of longevity.

It does have some seals inside it where the pistol would be moving around the chamber and any seal will degrade over time.

But I think there's only a couple of seals in it.

I think two or three, they're not particularly complicated to change.

I don't think they're not expensive to change either.

So most of it is designed, I think, to be a long lasting product, not something that you would consider a disposable purchase.

In terms of user experience, it's it's okay.

The need to do substantial preheating is a bit frustrating For me, that's a downside.

I think the locking in and out of the fruit basket can be a little bit fiddly and frustrating on.

That's a small downside for me.

On upside for sure, is how portable this thing is.

Of all of the manual espresso makers that I've used, this is by far the most portable.

The fact that it comes out of the stand that the glass clicks into the bottom, I think is is really nice and really thoughtful.

And while it is portable, it is heavy.

It's a solid, solid thing.

So if you think you just casually throw it in some luggage and not worry about the weight, you're gonna notice it.

It's definitely heavy.

The biggest question on uru X kind of stuff is, Is it better to spin a handle around, on around or to pull a lever down is one better than the other?

And I will say that it feels easier to spend the handle even when it gets pretty hard work.

It doesn't feel quite as muscular, almost is that as the pressing action at the peak of pressing on a lever machine.

But I'm also not sure I'm generating the same kinds of pressures doing it that way.

The one upside of a lever machine is that feeling of a very direct feedback, right?

You pull and you feel that the puck pushback almost against you.

It's quite a a tactile experience.

It's quite pleasant.

That's a little bit more disconnected here.

Certainly the way that you spin, you can feel some level of feedback from the pressure inside the unit, but but it's a very indirect kind of feeling compared to the directness of a lever.

I'm not sure I would say one is better or worse, but I could certainly see people having strong preference is one way or the other.

I do wish I had some sort of pressure gauge or the ability to be modified to have a pressure gauge.

But the nature off this kind of a broom means that you could never really have that in an easy or simple way.

So you'll always be a little bit blind in that regard now to clean it.

It's pretty easy.

Take out your bread basket and then you would knock it out.

You could not get out against the knock box.

You could knock it into a bend.

It's literally just a basket sat in a holdup, so it's incredibly easy to clean.

And then this.

Here, you can see one of the gaskets here on the outside and then your dispersion screen here.

Keeping this plane has been really pretty easy again.

There's no back flush needed on this because there's no pressure released back through the dispersion screen the way that there is in a commercial espresso machine pretty easy to clean.

Which leaves us the last question.

Can it make great coffee?

I think the answer is it can make very good coffee for a good number of people.

But I think it doesn't quite have the flexibility and the range of brewing off something like the Flare or the robot or the Rock.

Those A ll had issues with preheating.

But this one, I think, has a bigger issue with preheating.

I just think it's a much bigger mass that trying preheat The nature of this chamber is kind of different on also that that sort of timings, it feels a little bit slower and you worry about heat loss from that perspective, too.

If high temperatures aren't essential to you, then you may really enjoy owning this espresso machine, and it is an enjoyable thing to use.

I've really enjoyed making coffee, making espresso in more manual ways recently on.

This is certainly not the end of my journey in that regard.

Now, this machine, I don't get to keep as beautiful as it is because this review is powered by my patriarch.

I have supporters unpatriotic who give me a budget to go out and buy these things.

And so I'm not reliant on manufacturers giving them to me.

I don't have to do bias reviews.

I could be honest about what I think and tell you my truth.

And that's what I've done here.

I'd like to know your thoughts, though.

Do you have one of these?

Have you found something very different to what I found?

Have you had a very different experience in terms of brewing espresso with it?

Have you had a very different experience cleaning it, maintaining it, traveling with it.

Did you want one of these?

Let me know your thoughts.

I'd love to hear from all of you in the comments down below, but I would say thank you so much for watching.