Two year followup with the 9Barista
Our 9Barista was delivered at the beginning of February 2022, which means that we’ve had our 9Barista for a little over two years now. I’ve made espresso with it nearly every day, and most days I make two — one for me and one for my wife. A conservative estimate is that we’ve made 1200 shots of espresso at this point.
Most reports I’ve seen on the 9Barista mention it as a good option for making your own espresso when traveling. Ironically, we only use our 9Barista at home. Which is the main point of this followup — I think there’s a case to be made for using the 9Barista as your primary espresso maker.
Here are the use cases where I think a 9Barista would be ideal.
You want consistently excellent espresso. This is arguably the most important thing, regardless of which espresso machine you have. Over the time that I’ve had the 9Barista, it has made consistently excellent espresso, and matches up with the best espressos I can remember having in a coffee shop or from other friends who are into the espresso-making process. The only situations where I’ve had to spend time tweaking the process are when we finish the old bag of beans and start on a new one, which is to be expected even if you’re using the same beans from the same roaster, and a little bit of grinding finer as we work our way through a bag of beans, which is also expected.
Limited space. This was one of the primary reasons we bought the 9Barista. Our kitchen is small, and our counter space is extremely limited. My wife is also extremely practical, and does not like having a one-trick pony appliance in our kitchen if we can avoid it. Before we bought the 9Barista, I picked up the smallest Breville espresso machine and brought it home. It was still too big for our kitchen.
The 9Barista is very compact. Here’s how we store the parts when not using it. You can see that it shares space with where we keep stamps, stationary, and other things. You can’t do this with a conventional espresso machine.
(In case you’re wondering, the toothpick is my ghetto WDT device. It works great. 😆)
Beginners. The 9Barista is our first and only espresso machine, and I never made espresso before buying the 9Barista. So I’m living proof that a beginner can learn to use it. In addition, my wife can make espresso with it easily, and she’s generally of the mindset that something like making espresso yourself is not worth the effort and bother, and had zero interest in making espresso at home when I first started looking into this.
Looking back, the way that the 9Barista makes espresso has real advantages for a beginner. The only things you can control are grind and dose. That means that there’s not a lot of things to worry about when getting past the learning curve. In fact, I use 19g as my dose all the time, and only adjust the grind. And having just the one variable to control is great for the learning process.
This may not be ideal for those who want to control flow profile, preinfusion time, and other variables. On the other hand, I’m making my daily espresso right after I wake up, and I’m perfectly happy not to have to worry about those additional things that early in the morning.
Most importantly, the espresso I get is so good that I can’t imagine tweaking other variables would improve anything. I’ve had espresso from set ups where lots of other factors can be, and were tweaked to what I was told was an optimal state. Those espressos were excellent, but not better than what I can do at home.
You want a reliable machine. The 9Barista is a completely mechanical device, with just one moving part — the pin valve that opens when the right pressure is generated. As a result, the thing is bulletproof. The only thing that I’ve had to do with my 9Barista is to replace the O-ring that gets compressed when I fill the bottom part with water and screw the middle part onto it. This is a wear item, and in my hands, it was 1-½ years of twice daily use before I had to replace it. But this is also very easy to do, and probably a lot less complicated than maintenance required for a conventional espresso machine.
There are some limitations to the 9Barista, of course. The first, and most often cited, is the ability to make back-to-back shots. In my hands, once I pour a shot from the 9Barista, it’s about 8 minutes before I’m pouring the second shot. You may or may not find this acceptable, but I wanted to put some numbers on this point. For me and my wife, it’s perfectly fine. I can make her an espresso, and she can drink it while I make the second for myself, and we can still spend time together in our kitchen while that happens.
Another related limitation that’s mentioned is the amount of time to make the first shot. That’s about 5 minutes for me, from picking up the bottom part to fill it with water, to pouring the shot. Again, you may or may not be able to live with this, but I wanted to put some numbers on this as well. I’ll just note that I’ve read that a conventional espresso machine can take 30 minutes to heat up. I know that you can put a timer on an espresso machine so that it’s ready when you wake up, but I also think that the 9Barista is more energy efficient from that standpoint.
Finally, if we wanted to make a drink that required steamed milk, we’d need another device for that. Luckily, we like espresso and Americanos without any milk, so that’s not an issue for us. Having said that, if we did get one, I like the idea of having a milk steamer on its own, so that if it breaks, we could still make espresso.
To sum up, we’re really happy with the 9Barista — so much so, that if it disappeared, we would replace it with another, even if we had a huge kitchen with space for a dedicated coffee bar. It works just fine as a primary espresso machine, as opposed to being relegated to a travel device. The espresso we get is consistently excellent. I don’t see that getting a different espresso machine would be advantageous in terms of getting better espresso. The customer service from 9Barista has been consistently excellent, both before and after the sale, which is more than I can say for my experience with the Niche Zero. And the limitations are not really limitations for us.
Hope that helps!
