Wasn’t sure where to post this for you guys, but…
ACOFFEE, Sackbukle St, in Collingwood has the best coffee I’ve ever drunk. Insanely good.
Long time lurker, seldom time poster.
Hoping to wrangle some birthday cash to buy myself a new machine. Been running the hand me down sunbeam for a few years and it’s been great, but I want to upgrade.
What am I looking at for a budget of about $1500? Would love a decent Italian machine, but that’s probably going to. E too expensive I guess.
Hit me
You can get an italian machine for under 1500.
Prob a single boiler which means you need to wait a bit of time after pulling your shot until you can steam your milk. (Or buy a seperate milk frother)
Yeah I’ve become accustomed to the system on the sunbeam which allows pulling a shot whilst frothing milk. It’s gold
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is the grinder situation sorted?
Ah not really. Just got a cheap grinder at the moment.
could just sus a breville that has teh built in grinder, or keep an eye out for the dual boiler/grinder combo and keep an eye on the warranty and the sign of anything being wrong replace
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As to a milk frother, I found it simpler and easier to clean, by heating up milk in the microwave, then using a mini hand held battery whisk to froth.
no ones doing that if they want a genuine espresso
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Mama Mia!
I dunno this guy rates this frother.
One of those and a decent single boiler is probably a cheap way out of making good coffees.
Can run both at the same time.
I drink mine black, the frother is for the ones who want it with milk.
you guys should read waht PRE said, he wants an upgrade.
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On that budget. Cheapest options of both these.
And this seems to be the pick of their cheap grinders
Flat 64mm burrs lots of positive reviews
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I was looking at this for a while (heat exchanger so should be able to froth when you want can be had for <1500
If you don’t care about the Italian bit, everyone who has the Breville Dual Boiler loves it
< 1500
You could probably get the smart grinder with your left over cash (if you don’t have it already). It’s perfectly serviceable.
Of course you could upgrade the grinder for $$$
I was looking at these sort, but ended up with the $400 Solis Perfetta plus instead. As a single boiler it works well and has a proper steam wand vs the types you get on the cheap ones generally, which works well. The 10 seconds I wait between shot and steam is fine for me. (And the heat up time from off of less than a minute as well). Overall pretty happy for the price. Getting good coffee out of it.
I’d look second hand, plenty of nice E61 machines for around that price.
Although it’s always said it’s worth spending more on the grinder, you may be better with a second hand Breville duel boiler and a eurkea mignon grinder combo perhaps.
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Thanks everyone, appreciate the input.
I like the look of the Oscar ii at this stage. The grinder I have at the moment is only a cheap sunbeam, so that’ll need to be upgraded soon too.
The wank factor of the Italian machine is high, so I’m inclined to go with that option 
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For the price range this is exactly what i would do. A quality grinder makes all the difference.
I brought an ecm synchronika and eureka mignon specialita combo a couple of years back( after saving my pennies for a couple years).
The machine came with water damage so i had to send it back and was forced to stick with my breville for a little while longer.
Had some speciality beans from Cairns that i wasn’t a fan of and wouldn’t have brought again using them on the inbuilt breville grinder. Tried them using the eureka( which isn’t the most expensive of grinders there is) with the breville and the taste difference was completely opposite and till this day i still buy every couple of weeks.
I always thought the machine was the difference maker but i was wrong.
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Breville Dual Boiler paired with a Mignon is a winning combo. If I had my time again, that’d be my choice. I love my E61 machine and it’s more than paid itself off but for the price point, the BdB can’t be beaten.
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