Sage’s new coffee machine guides your hand like a friendly virtual barista

Sage has launched a new bean-to-cup coffee machine that helps you brew 11 different hot and cold drinks (including cold brew coffee and cold espresso), lending you a guiding hand to ensure you get the best possible results.

If you’ve not mastered the art of using a manual espresso machine, it can be easy to over- or under-extract your coffee, spoiling the taste and wasting your expensive beans. Grinding your beans too coarsely, tamping the coffee too loosely, or using too much water pressure can cause water to flow through the grounds too fast, resulting in an under-extracted drink that tastes and feels strangely sour in your mouth. If your beans are ground too finely, the grounds are tamped down too hard, or there’s not enough water pressure, your espresso will be bitter and lack depth.

The new Sage Oracle Jet helps you avoid this problem, letting you choose your preferred drink via a large touchscreen, then helping you through the process of making it.

Sage is known as Breville outside Europe, so this is the same machine as the Breville Oracle Jet that launched in the US back in August. Somewhat confusingly, Breville UK is an unrelated company that also makes small kitchen appliances.

Smart troubleshooting

The Oracle Jet is a semi-automatic espresso machine, which means it doesn’t take over the entire process and lets you enjoy the barista experience without expert knowledge. Like the five-star rated Sage Barista Touch Impress, the Oracle Jet has a smart guidance system that lets you know whether an espresso is under or over extracted, and suggests ways to correct the problem and ensure consistently good results in future.

The Oracle Jet has a built-in grinder with 45 settings, an auto dosing system to grind the correct weight of beans for your chosen drink, and an automatic tamper to help you create a perfectly even puck. Transfer the portafilter to the group head, and the machine will use water at precisely 93C and the optimum pressure to extract the espresso shot. If the shot is extracted too quickly or slowly, the display will suggest a specific tweak that you can make for a better result next time.

The machine also has an automatic milk frother, which can be set to start foaming milk for cappuccinos and lattes so it’s ready as soon as you’ve finished pulling your espresso. Unusually for an automatic system, the Oracle Jet’s frother has presets for dairy and various different plant-based milks. Even the best coffee makers are usually optimised for full-fat dairy, and produce quite poor results if you use oat, almond, or soya instead.

The best bean-to-cup coffee machines never come cheap, and the Oracle Jet is no exception with a price tag of £1,699.95. It’s available to buy now direct from Sage, and from John Lewis. Hopefully we’ll be able to test it soon to see how it compares to the best espresso machines we’ve reviewed this year.

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