- October 08, 2018
Whirlwind showroom purchase!
Thanks Liyang for your purchase. It was a spontaneous drive from London to the Bella Barista showroom.
Having already owned a prosumer coffee machine it makes the purchase quicker than normal. However the Bella team were impressed how you made the visit with no particular machine in mind and went away on the day with the Lelit Bianca and had it up and running back at home the same day.
If its possible to make the trip to our showroom we strongly recommend it. You can see most of the range on display, along with a demo area, barista training room and coffee roastery. You can also hopefully gain some advice that might save you hours and a lot of wasted coffee at home. Driving a coffee machine home on the back seat of your car is always safer than a courier.
The Lelit Bianca Dual Boiler coffee machine is a new addition to the Bella Barista range and merits it’s place with its unique features. It’s worth viewing the Bianca on the shop section of the Bella Barista website. It has a link to DaveC’s comprehensive review.
In this particular situation Liyang had limited space and the detachable reservoir tank was a important factor in the purchase. Other considerations were the boilers having access for descaling by unscrewing the elements from the bottom of the machine, shot timer and ability to manually pre-infuse.
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Very compact. The Mignon fits perfectly into that little corner—thanks for talking me into that! (Haven’t gotten around to steaming any milk yet; that may necessitate some rearrangement. Also my Motta jug seems to have gone walkies.) On the metal access door (barely visible) to the left of the machine I’ve stuck a two-socket plug board with double-sided tape, and the power cables of the Bianca and Mignon are neatly tied up and hidden away in the corner. (There’s a SodaStream hidden back there too…) The one mains lead from the extension runs along the length of trunking stuck to the top edge of the countertop splashback, and below that the drain pipe running into the sink. Not shown here is the timer/smart plug at the other end, so the machine is ready to go when my alarm goes off in the mornings—or in today’s case—as soon as I got back home. 🙂 Aside from not having an under-sink water treatment unit and a direct plumb-in, it’s perfect…
One thing to note though: the pressure adjustment / bypass valve bolt poking out of the body seems to be a bit bent to one side, rather than centered through the circular cut-out:
I’m not sure if it wasn’t slotted back into its corresponding hole in the polystyrene properly when it was repacked at the shop, or it came like that from the factory. The brass part was touching the stainless steel body, and when I first switched it on it made quite a scary racket! I was convinced that the pump was running dry, even though I could see water flowing through the tube attached to the filter in the water tank. Took me a few minutes and a couple of panicked reaches for the power button to figure out where the rattling was coming from. I gave it a firm push so that it’s no longer touching the body when the pump is running, so no more rattling for now. At some point I’ll take the case off and see if I can align it properly… Definitely something to watch out for & to warn people about.
You can also see it here in Lelit’s video: https://youtu.be/fh-VUwnMd_g?t=2m19s , although it seems to be perfectly centred on the cut-away model, earlier on in the same video: https://youtu.be/fh-VUwnMd_g?t=36s
> Have you seen DaveC’s review of the Bianca since? Internally it’s very impressive.
This one? https://coffeeequipmentreviews.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/lelit-bianca/ I’m reading it now…
I’d only quickly read through https://coffeeforums.co.uk/showthread.php?44436-Lelit-Bianca while I was sat outside before I decided to give the Bianca a shot. (Hur hur… ) No regrets so far!