Rancilio silvia review

The Rancilio Silvia is among our top choices for experienced baristas, as it puts a great amount of control in the user's hands.

Updated: Apr 27, The Silvia Pro X is the newest little one group espresso machine from Rancilio and I had the chance to test it. Let's start with the looks. The classic design is pure Silvia nostalgia. What I love is how narrow it is. With 25cm width, 42cm depth and 39cm height it fits very well in a lot of smaller places.

Rancilio silvia review

This is my review of the famous Rancilio Silvia espresso machine — the latest version at the time of writing the Silvia E V6 You may disagree with this, and respond that surely the Silvia Pro is the latest version of the Silvia, and maybe you're right. In my humble opinion though, the Silvia Pro is not the Silvia… but more on that shortly, and I will include details on the upgraded Silvia Pro, too. So the Rancilio Silvia was one of the very first true home barista espresso machines, and although I don't have any sales figures, I suspect that it's still probably just as popular a machine now as it was back then. Yes, there are more home barista machines on the market these days, but when it comes to getting towards commercial grade, single boiler machines intended for home use, there still isn't a huge amount of competition. Commercial espresso machine manufacturer Rancilio actually made it as a limited edition run in the late 90s, as a gift to say thanks to some of their best-performing distributors. It quickly became a success, and there have been a few tweaked versions over the years, the latest being the Rancilio Silvia E V6 — and this is the version I'm reviewing — but I'll include info on the newer pro version tgoo. Over the years the Rancilio Silvia has consistently been regarded as one of the best, and certainly one of the most popular single boiler espresso machines. The cheapest domestic espresso machines don't tend to have boilers, they usually have thermoblocks, which are on-demand water heaters. Nearly all home barista espresso machines with a couple of exceptions have brew boilers and are either single boiler, heat exchanger or dual boiler. These are thermocoil machines, by the way, slightly more reliable and better performing, more modern version of the thermoblock which have a copper coil inside the block as opposed to the water running through a coil shaped channel in a metal block. Single boiler espresso machines can often be more compact, and as well as being cheaper they can use a bit less electricity too, as there's only one boiler to heat, and heat exchanger machines usually have a bigger boiler to heat up than with single boiler machines.

So with the milk done, the steam button already turned off, and without the portafilter in place as I've already ground the coffee into the basket so this is ready to go I press the shot button, and open the steam valve, rancilio silvia review.

Have a question or just want to talk espresso? Check out the forums! Silvia has a lot of fans and mountains of online forums detailing every aspect of her performance. She can make very good espresso and steam impressive microfoam, if you're willing to learn a few of her idiosyncrasies. The carefully detailed steps in Cheating Miss Silvia are one example of the lengths people go to learn the intricacies of this little powerhouse.

We occasionally link to goods offered by vendors to help the reader find relevant products. Some of these may be affiliate based, meaning we earn small commissions at no additional cost to you if items are purchased. Here is more about what we do. Home baristas who are looking for a budget friendly espresso machine with decent components will not want to miss out on the Rancilio Silva V3. Features such as a large 12 ounce boiler, ergonomic commercial portafilters, articulating steam wand and easy to use control system all come with this home espresso machine. The Rancilio Silvia features a compact design, making it the ideal size for standard kitchen counters.

Rancilio silvia review

The Rancilio brand name is synonymous with espresso machines and has been for many many years. They are an Italian company that is world-famous for commercial espresso machines. In fact, the Rancilio Silvia espresso machine started its life a couple of decades ago as a gift for its most cherished customers. Word soon got out about these little beauties and before long, the demand for Rancilio to mass-produce these machines meant that they had to start producing them for the mass espresso home market. They have since developed these little machines and refined them slightly and the latest incarnation is this, the M V6 version. What can you say about the Rancilio Silvia? To use an analogy with cars, if this machine was a car, it would be a Ford Mustang Shelby GT

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There's the Sage Dual Boiler, but that's four or five hundred quid more. If you decide later to upgrade, its resale is very good. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. There was a rather large indentation in the top of the puck from the hex bolt, just from locking in the portafilter, without pulling a shot, so it seemed like this was the fault of the chunky hex bolt. This cookies is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the colllection of data on high traffic sites. Dan Kehn wrote: Getting "latte art" quality microfoam was my biggest challenge and Silvia's most evident weakness, I believe owing to the rise and fall of steam forcefulness that occurs as the boiler cycles on and off. An excellent choice for those that want the ability to make cafe-quality espresso drinks at home. Since then, coffee has taken me on countless adventures: From ancient coffee ceremonies in Ethiopia to the volcanos of Sumatra. It simply means to get the machine to the right temperature ish and it's usually associated with shot temperature. The descaling process also took a full hour, which was much longer than any other machine. Another machine that will often come up in this price bracket is the Breville Bambino Plus.

The Rancilio Silvia is among our top choices for experienced baristas, as it puts a great amount of control in the user's hands. However, the lack of user-friendliness for those that are new to the nuances of espresso is something to consider and the main reason this machine didn't score higher overall.

If you're comfortable with your latte game and want a huge amount of control when making drinks, this is a good machine to seriously consider. Plus, the machine has more than enough pressure to create beautifully textured microfoam. There are only a couple of other models with a similar history. If you tame this little beast, though, either by working on your routine or with a bit of modding, then you have a very capable, powerful little home espresso machine. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the new Silvia Pro, it looks great, and for the price, I think it's going to do very well — as it's a very competitively priced dual boiler machine from a very trusted name. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. Reminder: Don't skimp on the grinder. If you see yourself preparing lots of cappuccinos or lattes, you may want to consider a heat exchanger or dual-boiler espresso machine. In comparison with other similarly priced machines, the Silvia is built like a tank. For example, there are different grill patterns under the brewing and steaming sections to account for the difference between slowly dripping coffee and forceful steaming. Getting started with the Silvia is a piece of cake. Then you should try a twelve ounce pitcher and a single-sized amount of milk, say six ounces. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. The steam boiler comes pre-set with maximum power, if you feel insecure about your steaming technique you can lower the steam pressure here and take it easy. So I've bought this 0.