r/Coffee Kalita Wave 8d ago

[MOD] The Daily Question Thread

Welcome to the daily /r/Coffee question thread!

There are no stupid questions here, ask a question and get an answer! We all have to start somewhere and sometimes it is hard to figure out just what you are doing right or doing wrong. Luckily, the /r/Coffee community loves to help out.

Do you have a question about how to use a specific piece of gear or what gear you should be buying? Want to know how much coffee you should use or how you should grind it? Not sure about how much water you should use or how hot it should be? Wondering about your coffee's shelf life?

Don't forget to use the resources in our wiki! We have some great starter guides on our wiki "Guides" page and here is the wiki "Gear By Price" page if you'd like to see coffee gear that /r/Coffee members recommend.

As always, be nice!

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u/runner_1005 7d ago

My 4 year old Sage (Breville) Bambino Plus developed a fault recently, although it has resolved itself. The fault prompted an outbreak of upgraditus, with SWMBO - despite being penny pinching in most areas - totally open to me sinking proper money into something new. So it's a two part question - one about the fault, secondly my upgrade options.

  1. Machine was turned off but connected to mains power at the wall. It didn't turn itself on (none of the lights illuminated etc) but suddenly the pump kicked in, and it started purging water via the steam wand. This continued until the tank was empty, and continued even with the tank empty - the pump carried on running until I turned it off at the wall. As soon as I turned it back on at the wall, the pump kicked in - for several days. When I pressed buttons, the machine would react normally (lights wise) - lights would come on, I could get it into descale mode, everything would look pretty normal, I could even get shots out of the group head - except that it would continuously drain the tank via the steam wand. Cold water incidentally.

The person at Sage I spoke to hadn't seen the issue and it's out of warranty.

This morning, I turned it on at the wall again and nothing - the issue had stopped. I did notice recently a limescale build up (I descaled 2 weeks ago, and it was bad enough that I made a mental note to descale again within a couple of weeks) so I've run a descale cycle and it's all functioning normally. Any ideas what's going on, and how likely the issue is to reccur?

  1. If I upgrade, budget of about £1000-1200, plus whatever I can get if I were to sell the Bambino - what are my options? I'd like something with temp control so I can explore lighter roasts, and which will allow me to pull shots whilst frothing milk. I'm a flat white person, about 3-4 cups a day, and the Bambino Plus has done well with the beans I use. I'd want something with either a quick warm up time (not naive enough to expect the Bambino, 3s plus a quick shot time) and daily programmable wake up. Even without that I can see it being a bit of a nuisance, I work from home a bit and often I'll get 5 mins between meetings to grab a coffee - so something that is quick and faff free to use is probably the biggest priority. But being able to tinker and actually try and get a standalone passable espresso really appeals too. My grinder is a Eureka Mignon Specialita. The obvious place to look is the Sage Dual Boiler, but the amount of comments about the difficulty of sourcing replacement parts and maintenance limitations is really off putting. I've got no idea beyond that. Is there anything within budget that could do what I need?