After years of trial and error, my espresso setup is properly streamlined. I’ve an Oxo 8-Cup for a full pot or fast single cup, an AeroPress for a higher-end mugful, and a French press for when I’m feeling nostalgic. Thanks to a tiny, bare-bones new machine, although, I’m contemplating altering up my countertop lineup.

The Bonavita 5-Cup One-Touch Thermal Carafe is tiny, and like lots of the firm’s brewers, wholly ungimmicky. In an thrilling twist, my first cup was good, one thing that nearly by no means occurs with a brand new brewer. Using my espresso of the second, French Sumatra from Seattle’s Lighthouse Roasters, the primary sip instantly made me consider Christmas and was adopted by a scrumptious wave of chocolate taste. I get simply a few cups this good in a 12 months if I’m fortunate. It was such an sudden efficiency that I forgot to take notes.

Hidden Genius

The 5-Cup has the stripped-down look of an old-school espresso maker, with a water tank, filter basket, smaller-than-normal five-cup carafe, and only one button. Its dimension and ease had been instantly interesting for somebody like me, who slams two cups very first thing within the morning, then slow-sips for the remainder of the day. Since I’m the one espresso drinker in my home, this implies I can brew a full pot, which is simply about 2.5 mugfuls.

I used to be blissful to study that, at this scale, a half carafe is basically a single-cup choice that is surprisingly good. For people like me, that is preferable to utilizing a bigger brewer, as most of them make their finest espresso solely when making a full pot; by the point I hit the underside of a pot that dimension, it is properly previous its prime.

Much of the Bonavita’s talents are beneath the hood, like a generously sized showerhead, excessive water temperature, and controlled brewing time, all of which make for a greater cup. At a time when brewers can have sprawling management panels and complex apps to match, I like how this machine steals the present with generic appears to be like and a single button. As a type of secret weapon, press and maintain that button for 5 seconds, and subsequent batches get a pre-brew soak referred to as a bloom, which dampens the grounds earlier than the complete brew cycle so that they launch carbon dioxide, which may create a bitter taste within the cup.

It all jogged my memory a little bit of the way in which Bryan Cranston souped-up a near-invisible getaway automobile for Ryan Gosling within the opening scene of Drive. “Plain Jane boring, just like you asked for, but I dropped in 300 horses on the inside. She is gonna fly,” he says, as the 2 stroll previous muscle machine after muscle machine within the storage earlier than arriving in entrance of a nondescript grey Chevy Impala. “[This is] the most popular car in the state of California. No one will be looking at you.”

Taking benefit of the sturdy efficiency beneath Bonavita’s Plain Jane hood allowed me to confidently tinker with the fundamentals and constantly get a high quality cup. I puttered with ratios of water to espresso and adjusted grind dimension and was all the time within the ballpark. It labored so properly, I went from testing to simply utilizing it as my common espresso machine with out actually noticing. Having simply reviewed a countertop behemoth, this was a city-dweller’s dream, with a footprint slightly greater than 6 by 12 inches and only a hair over 10 inches excessive.

Strict Control

My happiness with it was no shock to award-winning barista Sam Schroeder, co-owner of Washington state’s Olympia Coffee Roasters. Sam had a Bonavita at house for seven years, so he was instantly comfy with it. At Olympia’s lab in Seattle, we put it by its paces surprisingly rapidly. Since the fill strains on the water tank are in variety of cups, not quantity, Sam did some fast and intelligent work, setting the empty machine on a scale, taring it (zeroing it out) then filling the tank with water, at which level we discovered “five cups” is about 750 milliliters. Then he used a normal brewer-friendly ratio of 1 half beans to 16 components water, rounded down a bit, and began a batch with 45 grams of Olympia’s Little Buddy grounds.

Immediately, the machine hit its marks, making espresso with a complete dissolved solids rating of 1.4, which means it was the correct power. It had an extraction share of 20.98, which meant the steadiness was what he referred to as “straight up good.” The espresso tasted nice. It was so good, in actual fact, that Sam instantly broke out the great things, opening a six-ounce bag of Panama Bambito Gesha Peaberry from Oliver’s Custom Coffee, the place he is additionally a co-owner. Soon, we had been marveling on the espresso’s bonkers umami notes. I used to be fairly impressed with each Sam’s confidence within the machine and its one-button means to make nice espresso.

Watching Sam work was additionally a very good reminder of how even on a easy brewer like this, you may nonetheless management a number of variables, resembling the quantity of espresso and water used (by weighing it as an alternative of utilizing the fill strains on the tank), together with grind dimension, and doing so could make notable modifications to the standard of the espresso.