It’s a thing of beauty. I was a little nervous at what my wife’s reaction would be when pulling it out of the box - despite already having her seal of approval from pics. It is a lot bigger than the Sage Bambino Plus that it has replaced in terms of overall footprint, but fits in the same space really nicely and neatly. It does indeed match really well with the look of the Solo too. My argument for the Minima was assisted by stating that it was the smallest dual boiler I could get. Not sure if this is true or not, but it’s here now so who cares? lol
Alexvs, it’s a stunning machine in the flesh, or so to speak - the pic doesn’t do it justice in my opinion. One concern that I did have, and have now realised is that whilst it sits nicely up against the unit, in practice this is not the best place for it when in use, essentially you can’t get the portafilter into the group as the handle hits the unit on the side. There’s a very simple and easy fix - slide the Minima forwards a bit or to the side a bit, which is very easy to do on the felt pads that I have stuck to the feet. Same goes for filling the water tank. I can pivot the machine by 90 degrees and access the water tank very easily.
My first shot wasn’t great (a decaf), but this is down to 2 things. Firstly I think the grind needs to be tightened on the Minima against the Bambino, so this is a question of dialing in my beans again - easily done. The other, and more tricky issue is the tamper. As a bit of a schoolboy error, I don’t have a 58mm tamper although I have a Nomcore V4 58.5mm tamper on order and due by 4th February. The plastic tamper that came with the Minima is pretty bad so I’ve just bit the bullet and ordered a 58mm tamper from Amazon for £12.99 which will come tomorrow and can serve as a reserve when the Nomcore arrives. Nevertheless, the 2nd shot was a lot better than the first and I could really taste a difference with the coffee from the Bambino. Once I have a proper tamp to work with I think it will improve things significantly.
I must say David at Black Cat Coffee was an absolute legend to deal with - he’s set up the machine at 9 bar pressure and flushed it for me when bench testing, so it was ready to be used as soon as I got it on the counter and water into it.
Very much looking forward to what tomorrow brings with it!
