276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Sage Appliances BES100 Espresso Knock Box, The Knock Box Mini

£174.5£349.00Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

This would seem like the perfect opportunity to introduce you to the supplier of freshly roasted, high-quality coffee beans that I started a couple of years ago, initially as a little project with a few special coffees. The Coffeeworks now supplies 19 different freshly roasted coffees (roasted within a few days of dispatch), and we have a small but growing section for coffee gear too including coffee machine accessories. If, like me, you consider your coffee drinking as not just a way to get caffeine into your body, but as a hobby, you’ll be well aware that you end up accumulating a lot of different pieces of equipment. Pod coffee machines with special nests to store your pods, filter coffee machines with airtight storage for your grounds, grinders (hand-held or electric), portable coffee makers, espresso machines, milk frothers – not to mention all the different cups and mugs. It goes on and on and on. As you would expect, we’re looking at a quality stainless steel unit here, which just glistens and oozes with class. It’s a lovely thing to have in your kitchen, and wouldn’t look out of place in the trendiest of coffee shops. What is clever about this, is that there is an inside section within the aluminium housing which you can take out to empty and clean. This means you don’t have to lug the entire box out with you every time you empty it, but also, the inner section is dishwasher safe, so when it comes to cleaning it, you can just pop it straight into the dishwasher and go about your business! That being said, you're not obliged to use the Sage milk jug, obviously, and there are loads of different milk jugs on the market.

Some may see the plastic body as a disadvantage, when compared to the stainless steel that some of the others are made out of, but it does have the benefit of not being as noisy when you are emptying the portafilter. It’s a nice size as well. Measuring 11.5×11.5×12 centimetres, it is big enough for domestic use, but without being so big as to prove a problem to fit on to your kitchen worktop. With its look and size, it won’t look out of place in almost any kitchen. Personally, I think most people using the Oracle or Oracle Touch aren't going to want to mess about doing this, and I think it's fairly unlikely that they'll notice the difference in cup quality anyway unless they happen to have an amazing, Q-grader level palate. Dosing Ring So I'm breaking this post into two main sections, the two groups of coffee machine users who I think actually need coffee machine accessories, and that are hands-off speciality coffee drinkers and home baristas. The next product on our list is this neat little box from German kitchen utensil manufacturers, Cucino.They need it to wake up (or at least think they do) and don't really care all that much about how it tastes. This category of coffee machine users are what I refer to as “normal” coffee drinkers, and I'm not having a go at this kind of coffee drinker, not at all, in fact, I think this kind of person has a perfectly normal relationship with coffee, it's geeks like me that are weird! 😉 It's as if the marketing department of some of these brands have been given one brief, and the manufacturing team has been given another, leading to other machines being sold as if to provide the same kind of cup quality and experience of the immensely popular Sage coffee machines, but they just don't come anywhere close. When you don't get it right, it's not so mesmerizing to watch when you end up with an espresso spurter to the eyeball, so you may want to invest in a shot mirror! ;-). If you have the Sage Oracle or Oracle Touch, or one of the “in-between” machines from Sage that, as I've mentioned, kind of straddle the home barista and hands-off machine user market, then you'll need a milk jug as all of these machines have a steam wand. They all come with Sage milk jugs, though, so you don't need to buy one.

If we're talking about the espresso machines that are really made for the hands-off user, we're really talking about the Sage Oracle Touch, and you don't need a tamper for that as it tamps for you, using the internal tamping fan. The Oracle also has a tamping fan and takes care of the tamping for you, so you don't need a manual tamper for the Oracle either.Some would say that if you're going to fit a pid you may as well buy an espresso machine that doesn't need modding to include a PID, and while that does make sense for the Rancilio Silvia given that you're actually quite close to the price of the Profitec Go or ECM Casa V by the time you've pidded it, it's not quite true of the Classic. Or, should I say, on any coffee machine. The Grindenstein has been specially designed to fit on an espresso machine’s drip tray, meaning that it won’t take up any extra room on your work surface. It measures just 10.2×10.2×10.2 centimetres, so won’t have any trouble fitting in – although obviously this does mean that you may end up emptying it quite often.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment