Breville Barista Touch Impress Espresso Machine BES881BSS, Brushed Stainless Steel

What an Upgrade!
I have had, used, and loved my Breville Creatista Plus using Nespresso pods for about 7 years. The machine still functioned well, but it was just starting to slow down. I had been waiting for an excuse to upgrade, got a raise at work, and decided to treat myself to a new machine. Boy, am I glad I did. I was deciding between the regular Impress and the Touch Impress. The Touch seemed to have a few upgrade, grinder, milkIQ thing, ease of use, better heating system, that I decided to pay the higher price. I am sure the Impress is an awesome machine, based on my Touch. The Touch, however, it out of this world. It took two times to get dialed in, and in less than 10 minutes, I tasted a better flat white than anything I had ever had. Sure, a lot had to do with the beans, but this machine is AMAZING. Easy set up, like super easy. Put beans in, figure out your grind size, hit the button, tamp it, put the portofiler in, push. the button, put the pitcher with milk under the frother, and done. Next day, made my normal morning mocha. first time, used half the mocha I did with my Nespresso, and it was a top 5 mocha I have ever had. For context, any city I visit, I search for the best rated coffee house. Starbucks is a last resort. I have had great coffee in many places. This machine matches any of them. The only one I know was better was at Palo on a Disney Cruise. My daughter came home from college. Made her a vanilla latte. Said it was the best she has ever had. The level this machine produces espresso and other beverages is so far above most chain coffee shops, and equals the smaller mom and pop boutique coffee shops I love. Even now, I am sitter here drinking the best salted caramel mocha, it is fall after all, I have ever had. Made my wife an americano, her favorite drink. She LOVED it. Easy to use, makes you look like a coffee genius, and looks pretty good in the kitchen. Not even worth mentioning how much of an upgrade it is over my Nespresso, which was a great machine. This machine is everything I hoped and more. For context, I used Koffee Kult beans, which can be found on Amazon. Best beans you will find.Update-It has been 6 weeks and wanted to give a quick update. First, this machine only gets better. I have heard people downplay the milk technology. To me, this is a great feature. Who knew, I didn’t, that oat milk gets bitter at 150 degrees? Well Breville did. As you learn more, like using the tap lever twice as some online reviews suggest, produces a cleaner puck. Their different temps make a difference in the quality of the milk, regardless of kind. The machine is pretty clean, but you will find grinds slipping out every now and then. Not a big deal, but trying to keep it real. Something that might frustrate people, but it is the result of fresh beans, not the machine, is dialing in the grind and length of the shot does fluctuate a little. A 12 grind produces 26 second pulls one time, and maybe 23 seconds the next day. Not a big deal to me, but to perfectionists, might be a worry. Again, not the machine, but I believe it is the natural variance of fresh beans. I read a lot of complaints about the grinder. I don’t know act people are expecting, but it is a grinder. I think it is surprisingly quiet. Maybe it is because I saw people write about it, but I was quite pleased with the grinder. The machine heats up quickly. It takes about 25-30 seconds to pull a shot. The milk frothing is fairly quick.My daughter went to breakfast the other day. She got a dunkin with her friends. She came home and asked me to make her something, the dunkin didn’t taste good. That is my one warning, you can make amazing espresso drinks with this machine. It will change your palette. When I have meetings at Starbucks now, instead of something I look forward to, it is more ok, I will deal with spending $6 on a very average cup of coffee. This machine is expensive, but much less than some. I am not sure you can produce a better espresso shot. I know I haven’t found better in even the best coffee shops.

Great idea terribly implemented. Must recalibrate grind and dose settings every use. Wasteful.
Consistency. That’s what I expect from a good espresso machine. At 66yrs old, this was my 5th espresso machine in the $1000 + price range. Most of my other machines, all super-automatics, lasted a minimum of 10 years. My Jura J9 lasted 10 years and was still making quality espresso when I sold it. I had a Spinn after that. Good espresso, horrible machine. I decided to upgrade to the Breville as the idea seemed genius. And it is. It’s just too bad that Breville cut corners and decided to go ahead and market a machine that wasn’t really ready. I really loved every concept about this machine. Great quality grinder, auto-dose, PID controlled heat block and extraction pressure. All things that would have made this a fantastic machine, all poorly implemented. To achieve a quality espresso, one must use freshly roasted beans. I buy mine from Onyx and have never had an issue with any of my other machines using their beans. I am a retired engineer, so I take pleasure in things like setting up, calibrating and testing, all which I did meticulously with this machine using coffee scales, weighing doses and timing shots. Every day it required re-calibrating the grind setting, only to have it return to the previous days setting after wasting 60g of very expensive coffee. Once re-re-calibrated, it would make consistent shots until the next time you turned the machine on. Then it was reset grind setting, dose, waste more beans and time to finally achieve a decent shot. Keeping this machine would have been very expensive and time consuming. It would be less expensive to drive to my favorite coffee shop and have a barista make my coffee every morning.Pros: Genius idea and concept. Really everything I wanted in an espresso machine.Heats up quickly. Quiet.Cons: Poorly built product. Doesn’t work as advertised.Will not produce consistent shots until full re-calibration of dose and grindExtremely wasteful.I read literally all of the nearly 400 reviews on this site and knew I was taking a chance with this purchase. I did not experience any actual machine failures as others have, specifically machine turning off during frothing, low temperatures, solenoid valve failures, error codes or the dreaded failure to power on issues, but given my experience and all of the negative reviews on build quality I could never recommend this machine. Oh Breville. Such a wonderful concept, and if anyone could have pulled it off, you could. It was your reputation that got me to buy. It was a poorly designed product that made me return it to you. I shall look elsewhere as now I don’t trust Breville.

Awesome machine. We had it for three months now and it makes constant quality coffee every morning. Really nothing to complain about. Highly recommend.

Purchased this machine to replace my older Breville barista – new technology and innovation in design and features is truly remarkable. Still nervous about how this machine will stand to the test of time, given the smart technology, but so far it’s been incredible. Milk and froth texture is spot on and espresso shots can be customized or set based on preference. Super easy for everyone including our kids to tailor and save their speciality drinks. We use this 4-5 times a day!

Great machine easy to use and making a very good coffee so far I love it .