It took me almost a month to write this review. Even though this is probably the easiest latte machine you could possibly buy, there are still a couple of variables that will take you some time to work out if you've never had an espresso machine before. The variables that will affect the quality of your drink are as follows: 1. Coffee quality and grind size (please buy whole bean and grind yourself with a quality grinder). 2. Amount of espresso you try to cram into the porta-filler. 3. Temperature of the water coming from the machine. 4. Level-ness and tamp pressure you put on the espresso in the porta-filler. For #1: Buying a whole bean from a local roaster that is as fresh as possible is ideal. Buying it whole bean is even more important. The quality and taste of the coffee declines quickly as soon as it is ground, even in a bag you re-seal. In a coffee container that is air-tight like the coffee gator, it will last a bit longer, but still. Just buy whole bean and suck it up. Next, the grinder should be a burr type grinder (I bought the mueller conical burr grinder). Finally, dialing in the grind size is important. At first I went with the smallest grind setting on the grinder, but it wasn't ideal. The grounds were too small and didn't allow enough head pressure to get through the machine. Result was poor tasting espresso with no crema. I settled on '3' on the mueller which is on a 1 (finest) to 10 scale. For #2 AND #4: I battled with this for way too long. Everything online says to put 13-18 grams of coffee into a double porta-filler. The most I could ever get was 15 and that was after tamping the hell out of it so I could cram more and more in. Result was same as #1 with too fine a grind. I finally threw the common internet wisdom for grams out the window and just did it by logic and feel. Numbers wise, it's somewhere around 11g of grinds. Logic-wise it's 'fill to top of porta-fill. tap tap tap on the counter to settle and even it. Fill again from grinder to top. tap tap tap to even. Take your tamper (buy the nice heavy metal one for 15 bucks) and apply force as evenly as possible. Don't do 30lbs of pressure like they say online. With a home machine like this with 15 pressure head, 30lbs of tamp force is way too much and will barely allow the water pressure to come through making terrible coffee. Just do a nice twist/push with a LITTLE bit of weight/pressure. Try to get the puck as even as possible. For #3: This one was weird. I measured the temp of the water coming directly out of the pump with a hand held thermometer. It was consistently around 155-163d. This is not nearly hot enough. Online, the consensus is 180-190d. I thought the machine was broken, but I read a review or two that said to descale it and it would help. On a new machine? Weird, but IT WORKS. I didn't have vinegar, so I used CLR mixed with water. I ran a full reservoir of that mixed solution, then a full reservoir of just clean water. Result? Water temps were instantly 180-187d. Fixed. We are on a well on top of a mountain so we have hard minerals. I have to do this about every 2 weeks, but it's worth it. Overall I am happy. Even with the above, the consistency of my pour/shot varies (which I hate!). It's pretty dialed in where I'll only pull a crappy non-crema shot once in ten tries. When that happens, I'm still not 100% clear on if I didn't follow my own advice above closely/carefully enough or if the machine can just be inconsistent sometimes. You can tell instantly how good the shot is going to be. For a double, it should be about 5 seconds of dark coffee coming out, followed by 10 seconds of perfect looking crema, followed by 5 seconds of slightly watered down looking crema. You can kill the watery crema by hitting the espresso button on the machine again. When you are pulling a really crappy shot, you will get dark coffee followed by what looks like really watery coffee. I have no idea why this happens. Will update this if I nail it down. Otherwise, 9/10 times it makes great espresso shots! The latte portion of this machine works great and just as advertised. Sometimes if you put it on Latte as ooposed to espresso froth it can jip you a little bit on the amount of steamed milk it gives you. If this happens, just run the latte cycle again and stop it manually when you have the amount of froth you want. Cleaning is pretty easy, but takes some time. You have to keep pushing the clean cycle every time it ends. I wish it would just do it continuously until the water runs out. I tried a couple of other machines and espresso specific machines. None of them were worth the hassle and this Mr Coffee is so much easier/time saving. The espresso specific machines I tried from DeLonghi took way too much time to make myself a latte in the morning because of the separate frother. Yea, I know 1st world problems but between setting it up, making it, and cleaning it we're talking 10-15 min vs 5. When you have to run to work that time savings makes a difference. Overall, I'm really happy with it after figuring things out. Will update is something crazy happens.
