Breville Coffee Machines Singapore
One of the models that we heard a lot from users who are upgrading to the Bezzera Espresso Machines are the Breville coffee machines or the Delonghi Dedica machines. The Breville coffee machines drew more of our interest as they were marketed to be home barista machines.
Typically most own them for a few months to a few years before the upgrade. What is the common reason for their switch?
Table of Contents
- Breville Coffee Machines Singapore
- Where’s Breville from?
- What does Breville sells?
- What are the Breville Coffee machines do people usually purchase?
- Where are Breville made?
- What is the reason for people to give up on the cheaper Breville models.
- What about the more expensive Breville models.
- WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Where’s Breville from?
Breville is an Australian brand, found in Sydney.
What does Breville sells?
Breville is best known for their home appliances along side brands like Delonghi, Phillips, Krups, etc. They are commonly found in your nearest electromarts and you may have seen their toasters, kettles and ovens. In 2013, they had a partnership with Nespresso to produce their coffee machines. They later on bought over home appliance coffee brands like Baratza coffee grinder and Lelit, an espresso machine company from Italy. They seem to have a preference for small but growing coffee home appliance brands, small coffee machines instead of the luxurious or commercial brands.
What are the Breville Coffee machines do people usually purchase?
We do not have the statistics of what are their best sellers but base on what we know at the experimental room. The common models we have heard were the Barista Espress, Breville Bambino Plus, Breville Dual Boiler, Barista Touch and Infuser. There were mentions of the Oracle model, but most do not agree that the price was worth the premium.
Where are Breville made?
Breville’s products are mostly engineered in Australia. Most of their products are produced or assembled in their large China factories.
What is the reason for people to give up on the cheaper Breville models.
Coffee quality
Like most domestic machines, those Breville small coffee machine like the Bambino, Barista Express, Barista Touch, Infusers may start up fast. That’s because they are using the same type of heating system as the automatic machine machines. Using Thermoblock heaters to heat quickly.
Thermoblocks are basically aluminum blocks with narrow water passage to travel. When the water travels through the block, it gets heated up. The problem with this type of heating is it starts cooler and heats up higher at the later stage.
In commercial heat exchangers boilers used in professional coffee machines, the temperature runs from the opposite pole. They start from a higher temperature to help kick start the extraction, when the beneficial oil is at the most. Then gradually decline in temperature. This is beneficial as the longer you extract, the greater the amount of astringent may appear. So a declining heat profile helps reduce the amount of energy exerted in the later extraction and reduces the amount of astringent. This greatly promotes clarity.
If we apply the same science to Thermoblocks, they could not bring out the best flavors during the initial extraction, when the oil is at its most. And the increasing heat profile would increase the astringents released at the later phase of extraction. This diminishes the flavours and cause many coffee to taste flat or similar, dull in character.
Poor milk frothing capability for lattes or cappuccinos
The machines use the same thermoblocks for creating steam used in the steam wands.
How it works is the heaters will be heated at a higher temperature, droplets of water are slowly released to the heated up aluminum, which causes mini explosions of steam to be formed.
As you can imagine, the steam won’t be consistent or powerful, this causes incredible difficulty to users trying to froth well. The process is also more cumbersome as the user has to perform rituals to switch the machine to different modes of different temperatures.
Concern of aluminum
As users are more informed and more concerned of the materials used. Aluminum toxicity drew wide concern as users are worried of its link to permanent kidney diseases, bone disease, neurological issues such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.
Especially when coffee is acidic, which could cause metal to leach at an accelerated rate.
What about the more expensive Breville models.
Not much people would purchase the more expensive models as they are not priced far from a Professional Bezzera Coffee machines which are priced equivalent or cheaper. So most informed users would prefer to have their money worth.
One model that still has some people purchasing is the dual boiler as a commercial dual boiler could cost double. However, dual boilers are complicated machines that have many more components and many weak points to fail. They fail plenty even in commercial setting.
The main reason for people for giving up seems to be related to its reliability.
Know more between heat exchanger versus double boilers
Since it has not one but two boilers, which pressurize and could explode. You will want as many safety mechanisms as possible, it’s not impossible that safety mechanisms go malfunctioned. That’s why a Mechanical Safety Valve is the most critical since it’s not an electronic but spring loaded.
The machine is very light for a dual boiler. From the picture above, it’s hard to tell what was trimmed. The two domes above are the machine’s boilers. It could be the boiler is thinner or there are more plastic components. It’s interesting to see that no copper tubes were used, brass fittings are few. Plastic seems to be the preferred material for transfer of water. Usually we prefer more brass and copper as they are good thermal conductors and not deteriorate from the high heat.
With the tight space limited by the chassis, it’s also a question if they could install a full suite of safety components like pressure relief valve, overpressure safety valve, thermostats,etc. We can’t see nor could confirm, but I believe it should have at least a overheat cut off thermostat.
Below is a photo of what we typically find in a Bezzera coffee machine.
- Vacuum relief valve to bleed excess air to prevent false reading in the boiler.
- A big safety mechanical safety valve that bleeds out excess pressure or water to prevent explosion.
- Water probes to detect if the boiler has sufficient water to prevent heating dry.
- Thermostat, overheat cut off thermostat (Below the boiler)
- Thick metal chassis to shield from explosion
As you can see above, the heat exchanger from Bezzera is much neater and has all the safeties in place
It seems that from the schematics, Breville has a coffee safety but it looks more like an overpressure valve.
What the Overpressure aka OPV does it it is more for adjusting the pressure to the brewing group and bleed out the excess back to somewhere.
In these machines, they are more functional in pressure adjustment than safety.
Another point is serviceability. For most home domestic machines, the parts may reach an end of life after the models phase out then it’s no longer serviceable.
For professional espresso machines like Bezzera, they are using commercial components, they are always available. The electronic components are made by 3th parties that specialize for industrial environment and not proprietary. Suppose the part is no longer available, it’s always possible for an alternative from another brand.
Hope you guys have enjoyed reading my article.
You might be interested in this article: Why is everyone buying the best coffee machines for homes and offices?
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