I purchased the casabrew for my daughter and she loves. Now I'm getting one

After working in a cafe for the summer, trained as a barista, I had to buy an espresso maker for home. This looked like the perfect introductory maker. Worked right out of the box, for sure. I bought a grinder and began working on my dose and yield. Dialing in the timing for extraction is the most difficult part, as you can’t adjust a knob or set a time, you have to manually time the extraction - whether single or double - and set it yourself. So getting back to a previous setting and fine tuning is near impossible. You’ll go through a lot of coffee in this process. I got great creama from the original spouted portafilter, but inconsistent yields. Switching to a bottomless portafilter, I find my grind and pulls definitely have flaws - so starting all over again! The steamer works well, but requires cooling off before pulling another shot. All in all, a nice home machine to get started with.

This espresso machine is so wonderful, and this is my first espresso machine and it is so easy to use and understand!

Perfect little espresso machine. If you’re looking for a great coffee without all the bells and whistles (or learning curve), this machine does the trick. Ordering a tamper now since the plastic one that came with is the only disappointment.

The pressure gauge is actually more useful than I expected. I can see when my grind is too fine or too coarse, so dialing in beans feels way less like guessing.