San Remo showed off their latest single group professional machine at Host Milano last week. The San Remo ‘You’, is a high-end machine aimed at professionals, small cafes and home baristas with deep pockets.
Unlike the San Remo Cube, which we felt missed the sweet spot on price and features, the ‘You’ model is San Remo doing what they do best – making stunning designed machines for the high end professional.
The only thing they didn’t reveal at the show, was the price, which we’re expecting to be in the eye-watering category. A single group Slayer comes in around £9,000 including tax here in the UK, so I wouldn’t expect to see it come in at much less for a similarly specced machine.
The single group slayer makes amazing coffee, and I was fortunate to have used one recently at a friends roastery. But the ‘You’ takes things to a new level with a very smart looking digital readout and ability to connect to an iPad. The app connection is something I’ve personally got little interest in, although once into flow profiling, I can see the use of going through saved profiles and tasting notes.
As you’d expect on such a machine, it uses a saturated grouphead for thermal stability, and we noted from the demonstration that temperature was set using 1/10th degree changes. This is probably attributable to the electronic temperature control.
We wonder if they use the same method as Decent espresso, in which they use a small group head, that can be quickly heated with some electronics, instead of relying on a large heavy block of metal for thermal retention. This allows more precise control, with a PID directly on the head, and would explain how San Remo can make such small adjustments, and keep thermal stability across multiple shots.
I’ve noticed that the water tank is very small, and appears to be a secondary option behind the mains attachment. Although you can purchase a version without mains connectivity, which relies on water from the tank, I don’t see the point of this for such a premium machine.
We didn’t see an explanation of if or how pre-infusion and flow profiling would work if the machine had no direct water connection. Some machines can do this with a specialised pump and internal gate controls.
Finally, we need to see how easy the ‘You’ will be to disassemble and perform maintenance, which will be important for understanding the long term cost of the machine.
Overall, I’ve not been so excited about a machine in some time. We’ll see how it performs, but after fumbling with the Cube, San Remo have gone back to their roots and got this one right.
