Wouldn’t it be great if you could make tasty coffee house drinks like espressos and cappuccinos right in your home kitchen at the touch of a button? Fortunately, these days you can if you buy a high quality espresso machine like the Gaggia 1003380 Accademia.
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This Gaggia Accademia espresso machine is the whole package. It does everything from grinding and tamping the beans to performing the extraction and even automatically frothing the milk for you if you’d like – and that’s just the short of it. Let’s take a deeper look into some of the great features the Accademia has to offer.
Features
Preparing The Grinds
The Gaggia Accademia features a built-in hopper for keeping your whole coffee beans at the ready. When it’s time to prepare a brew you can use the ceramic burr grinder to make an even and appropriately sized grind from your grains. In a pinch and you only have pre-ground beans to work with? No problem. The Accademia can bypass the grinder and dose with your pre-ground beans directly.
Telescoping Dispenser Height
One great feature that was included in the Gaggia Accademia is the adjustable coffee dispenser height. If you’re making an espresso you’re probably using a rather short cup, but if you’re making a lungo or an Americano you’ll probably need a bigger mug. With the Accademia you can accommodate taller mugs, so you won’t have to stand by and hold it while you’re making your coffee drink.
Automatic Milk Frothing
Any experienced barista will contend that creating a velvety and delicious milk froth is a technique that can take quite a bit of time and practice to get just right. If you’re just starting out or you don’t have the patience to do it by hand then you’re in luck, the Gaggia Accademia offers fully automatic milk frothing so that you can focus on enjoying your cappuccinos and lattes.
Detachable Milk Carafe
Not only does the milk carafe allow for automatic milk frothing, it is also capable of conducting automatic cleaning cycles. It’s also entirely detachable, so when you start feeling like it needs a deep clean you can take it over to the sink and give it some love. Then just fill it with milk and reinstall it and you’re ready to make milk froth at the push of a button.
Manual Frothing Wand
A more experienced barista may not be interested in using a pre-programmed automatic milk frothing cycle. Milk frothing is an art form, and you very well may pride your self in your skills. Don’t worry, the Accademia has a manual milk-frothing wand for exactly this purpose, so you can control the precise temperature and texture of milk froth for your cappuccinos.
Pre-Brewing Cycle
There’s a lot that goes on when you’re brewing a cup of espresso. As the coffee grounds come in contact with the warm water used for the extraction they have a tendency to absorb the water and begin to swell. If this happens in an uncontrolled manner it can result in an uneven coffee ground puck and ultimately an uneven extraction. The pre-brewing cycle ensures that the puck is properly set, allowing for a balanced and full extraction.
Removable Brewing Components
A folly of many home espresso makers is that they can be a bit inconvenient to clean, leaving you to dread the cleanup process or even to avoid using the espresso machine all together. The Gaggia Accademia features a removable brew group so that you can easily clean all of the components and reassemble the machine for your next brew.
Large Water Capacity
Refilling your espresso machine’s fresh water reservoir can be a bit of a chore. This is especially true if you’re making a lot of coffee drinks and running the cleaning and rinsing cycles often. The Gaggia Accademia boasts a 1.7-liter water reservoir, so you should have plenty to work with. What’s more, there’s an onboard water filter that helps to prevent scale buildup.
Pros
- The pre-brewing feature makes sure that your coffee grounds are primed and ready for extraction so that you get full and delicious flavor in your brew.
- The adjustable height of the coffee dispenser makes it suitable for brewing into a wide range of coffee cups, so you won’t have to resort to holding and tilting your favorite mug while your coffee brews.
- With the push of a button the Accademia will prepare one of several coffee beverages ranging from espressos to lattes and many drinks in between.
- The strength of the brew can be easily controlled and modified using the intuitive flow knob. Better yet, it’s designed to allow you to control the strength without over extracting.
Cons
- Some users note that the machine has lots of alerts, but not one for the coffee bean hopper. The machine can actually attempt to make a coffee drink without any grinds if the hopper is empty, which could be a bit of an annoyance.
Final Verdict: Should You Buy This Model
There’s no question that the Gaggia Accademia is capable of making a reliably fantastic cup of coffee. Just make sure you’re feeding it great beans, pure water, and fresh milk – the Accademia will take it from there. It has everything an amateur barista needs to keep their up-scale coffee habit at bay, and more.
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If you’re a bit of a coffee enthusiast, you may find that the Accademia’s higher priced siblings offer a bit more control when it comes to the extraction parameters. That’s not to take away from the Accademia though, because what it does bring to the table is more than enough for most people. It’s just that if you want a supremely high level of control you may be able to find a better fit out there.
If what you’re looking for is an espresso machine that is easy to use, can prepare a variety of coffee drinks, and will even froth the milk for you, then look no further than the Gaggia Accademia. It’s a well-designed and fully-automatic espresso machine. It will look great on your counter while it pumps out delicious coffee drinks for years to come.
