MattH The Cafelat knockbox arrived this past Saturday and it’s a nice piece no doubt. Quality materials in a nice/compact design that I imagine will hold up indefinitely. Having used a Breville BCB100 for a LONG time I simply couldn’t complain with the build quality/longevity, but I just wanted to have something new/different. The Cafelat definitely seems to absorb the impact much better, whereas the bar in the Breville would sorta ‘thud’… at the end of the day a knockbox is rarely given much thought, but having something to easily/safely knock the pucks into with no damage to the basket rim, my hand, etc. is worth the expense.
If I had to nitpick, the only negative I see with the Cafelat is the trim strip along the top edge. No doubt it’s there to hide the somewhat sharp stainless edge, but when dumping the pucks as well as washing it there will be a bit of mess caught under that strip and just needs a bit of cleaning to keep things in order. I will say that the Breville design makes cleaning a crazy simple breeze due to the insert type design, but overall the Cafelat is simply top notch.
FWIW here in the U.S. there are quite a few seemingly good coffee product vendors, but I’ll shout out to Chris’ Coffee in New York. I was looking at the Cafelat knockbox listed on their site and wanted to be sure what they carry is the newer design that matched the pic they use. The customer service rep stopped what he was doing and went out to their warehouse to check and be sure it’s what I was looking to purchase. I ordered Thursday and had it Saturday with no extra shipping cost out of my pocket. Delivered by UPS Ground on a Saturday, which was non-existent in the past in this area. All around a great product sold by a fantastic vendor!
