Sage - The Oracle Jet, Professional Coffee Machine with Manual and Automatic Milk Frother, Brushed Stainless Steel

This review is in two parts; the first is a short summary of an excellent machine, the latter goes into it in more detail. I came to the Sage Oracle Jet after my Sage Oracle Touch died. The Oracle Jet Like is a fantastic choice of coffee machine if you don’t want to nerd out on the minutiae of making coffee. It does all the hard work, but you must orchestrate it and move it along. From pressing the power button to being ready to make a coffee takes a few seconds, which makes it easy to duck out and make a drink between work meetings.You can make hot and cold (cooler) brew drinks straight into ice from the menu. The Barista training mode in the Jet helps you get the grind right monitoring the pour time of coffee of each shot and recommending any changes you need to make it better. It steams your milk; dairy or non-dairy, to a good texture for milk drinks; and there are clear differences between latte, cappuccino and flat white. It’s easy to change settings; if you are a mixed milk house you can save drink settings with different milks or just switch as you make it.Managing consumables in the machine is simple; there is a good-sized coffee hopper on the top. The water tank is removable from the back, and you can fill from the tap; and there is a flip up flap on the front you can pour from a jug. The water tank comes with a filter which helps reduce the hardness of the water to protect from scaling. The tank seems to last about 10 shots of coffee and milk steaming: with associated minor cleaning purges. The top refill flap makes it easy to top it up as you go.As the Oracle Jet teaches you how to make coffee better it helps you grow with you; as you can adjust the recipes of the drinks; and save them as the default or add your version to the menu. The coffee from the machine is big step up from an automatic bean to cup machine; giving you a drink that is closer to what you would get from a coffee shop. If you are coming to it from an automatic machine, go slow as the coffee is stronger; and you will notice the caffeine in your beans. You can improve things yourself by tweaking the recipes to your taste and small procedural steps like running an empty shot through the portafilter to warm it up before you start; and purge the water out of the steam wand can make the coffee better for a little water.The Oracle Jet is the better machine for me; the faster start up alone saves me 10s of minutes a day over waiting for the boilers to be ready on the touch. The Grinder is quieter, the screen is nicer – and the barista guidance has helped me make consistently good coffee. Because my touch died, I can’t do a direct comparison between the two; but the espresso looks better, and the automatic milk is clearly a step up. It’s far from a cheap coffee machine; it is well made, easy to use for in and experienced users alike.------This second section is about setup and living with the machine. I came to the Oracle Jet after Oracle Touch died before Christmas. The Jet arrives in an enormous box which contains the machine and an array of accessories (except coffee) to get you going. You can rectify the coffee in the long term via the sage subscription service. You get the machine; a portafilter and a single and dual shot basket for the jet (the dual shot basket ships in it) a few cleaning brushes, a water hardness strip, a knock box (to empty the portafilter), the hopper for coffee beans and instructions. It is a big machine measuring 42.5 (h) x 38.1 (w) x 36.8 (d) (in cm) and it weighs 12Kg. The portafilter works fine with my third party bottomless portafilter too; which is what I was using when I took the photos; the sage portafilter has two spouts.The design is an evolution from its predecessor; there is better lighting of the coffee prep area; the screen is larger easier to read and much more responsive. There are guide marks on the grinder and group head to help you line things up – and the finger loop on the steam wand stops you burning your fingers.When you first turn the machine on it takes you through a setup wizard that teaches first how to setup and maintain the machine, then how to use it to make a good cup of coffee.The basic setup includes adding it to your WIFI (it doesn’t show up on WIFI as Sage or Oracle Jet it shows as Quectel Wireless Solutions, which allows it to download updates – which mine did after the first cup of coffee. There isn’t an app right now, it’s just for firmware updates.With the WIFI setup it takes you through cleaning things, priming the water filter and filling the water, testing its hardness along the way. With that done the machine purges, and then you are ready to make a coffee. You can fill the large water tank by removing it from the back; this is made easier thanks to a lift mechanism that lets you roll it around. You can also fill it from the top with a flip up flap. Unlike the touch this doesn’t have the sprung press release which eventually broke; replacing it with some ever-reliable magnets to hold it shut. The top surface is textured plastic; as there aren’t boilers inside It doesn’t seem to be especially useful to time save on prep; except to have the cups nearby, as unlike machines with hot water boilers the Oracle Jet doesn’t warm up significantly as its on for so short a time; and there isn’t water in a boiler keeping warm.The Oracle Jet has an assistant mode that evaluates the espresso it makes based on time and pour rate and has you adjust the grind size to optimise it. As with the Oracle touch the machine grinds, distributes and tamps as it goes. The final puck on the jet looks superior to the one on my touch; it has a smoother surface. The machine is new. On my first cup we did that 4 times. The last one stepped back its predecessor. I requested a latte as my first drink; so, the next step was milk preparation; I added semi skimmed milk to the included pitcher; and put the steam wand into it. The machine automatically steams the milk; at the start its worrying as it adds a lot of air to about 35c, before switching to steam to heat it up and mix. The final milk had a glossy texture. Mixing the two together left me with my first latte. It’s not going to win an award, but it was a lovely for a first drink, nicely balanced and the milk had a good texture to the drink. When you are more confident in your coffee making skills, you can turn off the automatic guidance (you can also ignore it) and do more thinks manually.After your first cup the machine shows you how to clean things up – you can purge the grinder by pressing and holding on the button on screen; run water out of the americano tap to heat a cup- which splashes a lot and purge the steam wand.With the cleanup done, the machine asked to restart for a firmware update; but doesn’t tell you what it’s doing. It restarted as part of the update; but there weren’t any obvious immediate changes.After that it sits there on the coffee counter; unlike the Oracle Touch the heat up is a few seconds to ready, compared to a few minutes. It helps to run a blank shot to warm the portafilter and run steam out to get rid of water in the wand before you make a coffee. I have found steaming milk whilst coffee grinds then making the espresso is the quickest way to a coffee.The milk auto texturing is a step up from the oracle touch, with a richer milk for flat whites and a lighter foam on cappuccinos. You can use the wand in automatic mode; or run it manually. Since that first cup I have tried it with full and skimmed milk, and you get by far the best milk from fresh full fat milk; it makes excellent flat whites. Fresh Skimmed milk gives good foam but a few days later it is more like hot milk.If you are coming to this machine from instant or an automatic machine, take it easy as it feels like you get a bigger hit of caffeine here.

Just brilliant

I have now edited my review initially I cant quite give it 4 stars mainly because of the milk texturing.I was getting really bad milk texturing results but now it is not too bad, I dont feel like the "MILQ" technology is any better than than previous version, you have to coax it along to get decent results, a lot of swirling and pouring from jug to jug for instance. I came from the oringinal Oracle Touch (actually now relegated to my office) and there are some nice features like helping you adjust the grind to get a better extraction, it will reduce or increase the coffee extraction time until you get they right amount of coffee and then advise you if you need to increase or decrease the grind. Although this only has one boiler it really isnt a problem as it will automatically go from frothing to coffee extraction and it heats up quick. It does seem to get through the water a lot more and thus you have to empty the drip tray more and fill it up with water more, having said that it seems to do a lot more to self clean i.e blasts water out of the steam wand to keep the tiny holes clear, this I always had a problem with on the previous one. Also emptying the drip tray more is not the end of the world the old one used to get pretty manky by the time I emptied it. The double click of icons to purge a bit of water through the wand or group head is good and I like the way you can choose the order you do things like Americano, I prefer hot water first and then coffee but you can do either way around.Hopefully because it connects to wifi it will get updates over time qne introduce new features (if youre reading this Sage this is what I would like to see):1. The ability to switch on or off via the app2. Auto link with coffee beans suppliers (beanz.com) - would be good to tap something on the screen to initiate new beans (I always forget and run out)3. The ability to do an extra tamp or have a polish setting, sometimes I do a tamp/polish if there are free grounds in the portafilter. Currently double tap just purges the beans.4. Would be good to actually grind coffee without the portafilter into a container for filter/cafietere.