If you hadn’t heard, Breville (known as Sage here in the U.K.) just released an updated version of its Oracle Dual Boiler espresso machine, intended to be all things to all people… as long as they have $3,000 to spare.
The Oracle is designed in large part for cash-rich individuals who enjoy specialty coffee and milk drinks, but who don’t have the desire, time or patience to learn how to make espresso manually.
If you want it to, it'll do everything complicated about espresso for you. It grinds, doses, tamps, pulls shots and even textures milk. All you need to do for a flat white is press the flat white icon and then put the portafilter and jug where you’re told. Et voilà: you have a flat white. No dialling-in. No shot analysis. No texturing milk yourself. No skill required at all.
The thing is, Breville doesn’t market the Oracle exclusively to those people. This machine boasts a slew of features designed to pique the interest of genuine espresso enthusiasts as well. “Enjoy the best of both worlds,” says Breville. “Select Auto mode for automation at every stage or go for a hands-on barista experience with Manual mode.”
Like I said, the Oracle is supposed to be all things to all people: if you have both an espresso nerd and an uninterested coffee lover in the house, the Oracle is intended to serve both.
Only, it doesn’t. It really doesn’t. I’ve spent the last two weeks testing the Oracle. Unfortunately, if you’re an espresso enthusiast this machine will simply not hold up, which is a huge shame given a) how close it came, and b) the price.
So what’s wrong? Just like most espresso problems, it all comes down to the grind.
A plethora of nerdy features
I don’t want to be a total negative Nancy, so I’ll get the many positives down first. If anything, this serves as useful context — when you know how well the Oracle’s other features perform, its negatives are even more annoying.
As I mentioned up top, the Breville Oracle has plenty of really cool features that I’d want to see in a $3,000 machine. First up, emblazoned across its frontage are the words “DUAL BOILER”.
Now, this may be an unpopular opinion, but most people (even hardcore enthusiasts) don’t need dual boilers. Most home brewers rarely need to make more than one or two drinks at a time. A single boiler or thermoblock machine with a PID is more than capable of that. But that fact doesn’t stop me wanting one!
Dual boilers are like the endgame for coffee nuts. Car guys ‘n gals do just fine with their modified Miata, but if they had the money the endgame would be a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Bikers do just fine with their 1995 600cc Honda, but the endgame would be a Ducati Panigale V4. I do just fine with my Rancilio Silvia V6, but my endgame would be the Diletta Mio. If you have the money one day, why not get the best?
And besides, dual boilers let you steam milk and pull espresso at the same time without one affecting the other, which is inherently useful to all espresso lovers: neither sits around while you sort the second, risking your crema deflating or your milk congealing.
The new Oracle also has a manual mode offering lots of cool features for nerds. Pre-infusion, blooming and brewing stages are all manually controlled, as are brew temps, and there’s a built-in shot timer for you to keep an eye on how long each of your stages lasts. All are great to have, giving plenty of fine control over espresso shots.
Sectumsempra!
The wand is also excellent. Pull it towards you and it enters manual mode, which is a joy. It has an interesting quirk where it pumps air at a super fast rate to begin with, spewing large bubbles into your milk. But I’ve found a quick pre-steam purge solves the issue, and thereafter it’s perfect for texturing everything, from flat whites to cappuccinos.
The wand also has a temperature sensor, so you can avoid overheating the milk and destroying the texture. And it’s powerful enough to take on large quantities of milk for oversized lattes or two-to-three smaller drinks.
…But
But — and it’s a big “but”, I cannot lie — all of the above is totally undermined by the Oracle’s grinder. In manual mode, I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s completely unusable.
The only way this grinder works is in the automatic dial-in / espresso mode. In auto, the Oracle’s group uses sensors to determine how well a shot is pulling and adjusts the grind accordingly for your next shot. The grinder likewise has sensors to calculate dose volumetrically, all to meet the correct pour time the machine wants to hit for its preset water volumes.
And it works! Run a couple of shots through, let it change grind size for you, and it doses on point from thereon out. But that ain’t gonna make an espresso nerd happy, is it?
For many, the whole point of getting into espresso is to control this stuff yourself. Breville knows that, and says the Oracle is capable enough to suit. Put the machine into manual mode, though, where you set the grind size and grind time, and the Oracle’s grinder is utterly woeful.
In manual mode, the machine is no longer sensing the volume of coffee dosed into shots. But that shouldn’t matter, because that’s the point of manual mode — you dial-in based on weight out, finding the correct ‘dose/grind size’ combo for the output you want. From then on, with your dose and grind size set, you can start to tweak variables for your desired output. That’s the fun. But your grinder needs to keep set doses and grind sizes consistent for everything to work.
Not a problem, right? If your grind size is the same and you’re dispensing for the same amount of time, it stands to reason the grinder will deliver the same amount of coffee each time. That’s how other timed-dose grinders like my Eureka Mignon Specialita work.
Dosage woes
Unfortunately, that’s not how the Oracle’s grinder works. In manual mode, the grinder is laughably inconsistent, to the point of being unusable. Using my Felicita Arc scale tared to the weight of the portafilter, I dialled in some light/medium roast coffee. At a grind size of 12 for 20 seconds of grinding, my dose was just over 18g. With a 35-second brew time and a 36g output, the espresso was spot on. The drink was good.
The next morning, however, using the same beans, the same grind size, the same grind time, my dose was… 13g. This was perhaps a one-off, I thought, or due to the grinder needing a purge last time around. So I left the grinder at its settings and simply ground a little more, stopping it after a few seconds until I had around 18g. The next shot later that morning — same beans, same grind size, same grind time, same day — 22g. That’s a 9g swing. Wild.
Perhaps it was the beans? Online discourse is damning about the original Oracle’s grinder, particularly when using light and medium roasts. So I switched to a medium/dark roast. Same problem. I dialled back in to 18g only to find a 3g swing to 21g the next day, with a further swing back to 16g later that morning.
So, I went even further, to a properly dark espresso roast — 100% Arabica, just to keep things as bog-standard as possible. Unfortunately, it was more of the same story. After dialling-in to 19g this time, the next morning I found myself with a 23g dose. Then back to a 17g dose. Then a 21.7g dose.
It’s unusable.
Auto-only
Every espresso enthusiast knows the most important piece of kit is the grinder. Breville knows this, too. To my mind, then, it’s completely unacceptable that a product marketed as suitable for automatic and manual use, especially when it costs $3,000, features a grinder this poor. What’s even more damning is that the grinder was also an issue on the previous model. This isn’t a novel problem. Breville owns Baratza (and the Oracle features Baratza burrs), so it knows how to make a good grinder. It could’ve solved this.
You can get around the issue by using the auto dose/espresso mode to fill your puck, then switching to manual mode to control pre-infusion, bloom and shot time. But that gives you no control over your puck. And where’s the fun in that?
It’s almost as if Breville is scared to admit that it’s made a machine purely for posers — and make no mistake, that’s who I think the Oracle is for. To spend $3,000 on an espresso machine when you don’t actually care about making espresso makes you a poser in my book.
The most frustrating thing, though, is how close this machine came to perfection. The automatic modes are fantastic. The automatic dial-in works wonders. The steaming is great, and the manual features are excellent for tailoring your shots.
All it would’ve taken is fitting a grinder that can do its job manually. And for $3,000, that really isn’t a big ask.
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