What is New in Breville BES920XL Dual Boiler Espresso Machine Review

Breville Dual Boiler BES920XL Espresso Machine Overview

Here in this article, we want to talk about the Breville BES920XL Dual Boiler Espresso Machine review.

The Breville BES920XL is a feature-loaded, affordable price double-boiler espresso machine. The coffee maker is designed for the market segment between the professional and consumer markets. All Breville products just like, the BES920XL, are aesthetically pleasing home appliances. Breville Dual Boiler BES920XL Espresso Machine is sized to fit neatly most kitchens and under standard countertops.

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However, those with overhead cabinets using the cup warmer will have to make other arrangements.

Owning the Breville BES920XL Dual Boiler Espresso Machine

Breville BES920XL (along with its predecessor, the BES900XL) are often referred to by the BDB (Breville Dual Boiler) acronym.

BDB ergonomics are outstanding and there is impressive attention to detail at all levels. Rather than legs, the espresso machine sits on retracted wheels. Under the drip tray is a lever that allows locking the front wheels up, so your machine always stays in place.

Unlike most espresso machines, the Breville BES920XL Dual Boiler coffee maker provides the ability to easily drain the boilers, a great feature for descaling and shipping.

The two screws (normally hidden under a rubber cover) at the lower right of the front panel, drain the boilers into the drip tray when loosened. Breville implemented this useful feature that should be also available on all espresso machines.

The other pleasant ergonomic touches include:

1. small storage area under the drip tray,
2. the ability to refill the water reservoir from either the front or back of the machine
3. cute popup float that warns when the drip tray should be emptied.

Breville BES920XL Dual Boiler Espresso Machine is well packed and shipped while double boxed, cradled in fitted styrofoam padding. Unpacking and initial setup took under half an hour. An excellent packing,
and easy-to-follow setup instructions is another thing that Breville deserves compliments.

Setting up the machine is straightforward:

• Clean the water reservoir, portafilter, baskets, tamper, and milk pitcher.
• Rinse and install the water filter in the water tank.
• Fill the tank and turn on the machine.
• Set the water hardness level.

Breville includes a water hardness test strip, and my bottled water measured at the default hardness setting of 3.

Turn on the machine, and allow the vibratory pump to run for about one minute to prime the system. The boilers come up to the temperature in less than 10 minutes.

Flush the machine by running water through the brew group, the hot water tap, and the steam wand a couple of times. Machine is to make you perfect cup of coffee.

Accessories

While aiming to both the experienced and beginner espresso enthusiast, Breville includes two pairs of single/double baskets in the package. One pair are standard baskets, the other are restricted (pressurized) baskets.

Unique among espresso machines manufacturers, Breville truly includes all the accessories you’ll need to get started.

The main ability of Breville BES920XL to deliver water to a puck of coffee grounds at 9 bars of pressure at a consistent and stable temperature. Cappuccino lovers can benefit from the ability that produces latte-art quality microfoam.

The diagram provided by Breville shows three distinct heating systems in the Breville BES920XL:

• 100W group-head heater (#3),
• 700W brew boiler heater (#2),
• 900W steam boiler heater (#1).

Water heated to a steam temperature in the steam boiler and the temperature can be adjusted via the digital menu. Temperature fluctuations caused by cold water injection are prevented by preheating the brew water, and by passing a portion of it to the steam boiler before arriving at the (stainless steel) brew boiler. The group-head itself is heated by its own coil (#3), to improve temperature stability.

Heating elements in grouphead (#3), brew boiler (#2), and steam boiler (#1)

This triple hitting system yields ideal and stable brew temperature, and fast warmup times. The electronic temperature controllers on the brew boiler and grouphead heater are designed to deliver precise desired brew temperature. Breville advises waiting for 15 minutes, and allow the system to come up to the right temperature from a cold start and this works as suggested .

The BDB features two vibe pumps:

• 15 bar Ulka (for brewing)
• 4.5 bar Ceme (for filling the steam boiler).

The pumps work quietly for vibe pumps and function properly. There is an additional low-pressure pump designed to refill the steam boiler without decreasing brew pressure during an extraction.

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Brew pressure

The brew pressure is set to 9 bar in Breville 920XL. This is a deliberate design by Breville to have a constant values and there is no way to adjust it.

Digital Menu

The Breville 920XL has a well designed clear digital menu system allowing the user to monitor and modify various machine settings of brew boiler temperature, steam boiler temperature, and preinfusion time.

The default machine settings work well for making most beverages. The brew temperature of 200F is a good starting point for most espresso blends. The steam temperature of 175F produced slightly anemic steam velocity, and rising it up to 180F for faster milk steaming is required. The default settings for preinfusion (6 seconds, 60% pump pressure) and brew time (30 seconds) are good choices. All these settings can be adjusted through the menu.

Controls of Breville BES920XL Dual Boiler Espresso Machine

The opening photo of the Breville BES920XL Dual Boiler shows controls that include:

• Power button (left front panel).
• Brew buttons on right front panel (MANUAL, 1 CUP, 2 CUP).
• Single and Double cup buttons are programmable.
• Steam dial/lever (on the upper right side of the machine LED on front panel).
• Hot water dial (on the upper left side of the machine LED on front panel).
• Brew boiler pressure gauge (in the center of the front panel).
• Digital display (four control buttons on the front panel).

The digital display allows programming of the machine and adjusting brew temperature, shot duration, preinfusion, auto start, etc. parameters. The menu system is nicely laid out and easy to use. All other options are well described in the manual.

The digital display showing brew temperature, shot timer, etc. indicates when the water reservoir has to be refilled and even when it is time for maintenance.

The Performance of Breville BES920XL

The Breville BES920XL menu system allows easy and intuitive adjustments to brew temperature in 1F increments. In Breville BES920XL you can adjust the duration of preinfusion, and even adjust the amount of preinfusion pressure (as a percentage of full pump pressure).

The Breville BES920XL offers stable brew temperatures, plus the ability to manipulate brew temperature precisely and reproducibly that translates into a full range of flavors in the cup, and better flavors for a given roast.

Dual boiler machines generally excel at milk-based espresso beverages, allowing you to pull the shot and froth the milk simultaneously.

Preinfusion sidebar

Preinfusion is featured to provide a positive contribution to espresso extractions. When starting the shot at lower pressure, preinfusion feature allows the puck to saturate evenly with water. That way channeling and other factors that can lead to a poor extraction are decresed or eliminated .

The Breville dual boiler has programmable preinfusion system. The system allows you to adjust both duration of preinfuson, and pump power during preinfusion (down to 55% of the peak power).

You can simply control over preinfusion Manually: Just press and hold the MANUAL button to pre-infuse. Release the button to begin full pump pressure. This helps to easy experimentation with pre-infusion.

Steaming milk

Latte art quality microfoam should be easy to obtain from the of Breville BES920XL. However, the feature gets mixed reviews from cappuccino and latte lovers. It takes some experimenting to achieve desirable results when it comes to preparing milk-based espresso beverages.

The Breville BES920XL takes 25-30 seconds to steam 4 ounces of milk. Even after bumping up the steam boiler temperature (the menu allows adjustments from 265-285F), the BES920XL is somewhat slow to steam equivalent volumes of milk.

The steam wand itself is nicely designed, the lever/dial allows good control over steam, and it is easy to produce good, latte art-quality steamed milk.

The main flaw is the somewhat anemic steam power and we would hesitate to recommend this machine to “big” latte lovers.

What We Like in Breville BES920XL

• Appearance, compact size, and small weight
• Design and ease of use
• Loads of features and good manufacturer settings
• Fast warmup time (usable in under 10 minutes)
• Double boiler => brew and steam simultaneously
• 3-way valve (no portafilter “sneeze”)
• 58mm group head
• The accessories: 4 baskets (plus blind insert), decent tamper, milk pitcher
• The convenience of water reservoir design (fill in back or front) with integrated water filter
• Clear digital temperature display, shot timer, etc.
• brew pressure gauge
• “Intuitive” digital menu to set brew temp, shot time, preinfusion, etc.
• Easily adjustable preinfusion
• Good manual
• Warning when the water reservoir needs to be refilled, the drip tray needs to be emptied, cleaning (backflushing), descaling, etc.
• Built-in cleaning/descaling protocols
• Hot water comes from brew boiler, not a steam boiler
• Easy to clean and maintain
• 2-year warranty

What We Dislike in Breville BES920XL

• The lack of easy brew pressure adjustment
• The steam pressure on the weak side
• Reliability

Breville BES920XL Specifications

• Dimensions: 16W X 15D X 15H (in) = 41W X 38D X 38H (cm)
• Weight: 30lb = 13.6kg
• Power: 1700W
• Cup Clearance: 4in = 10cm
• Brew Boiler: 10oz = 0.30L (700W)
• Steam Boiler: 32oz = 0.95L (900W)
• Reservoir Volume: 84oz = 2.50L
• Warm Up Time: 8m 20s
• Boiler Material: Stainless Steel
• Case Material: Plastic with Metal Finish

Conclusion – Review of Breville BES920XL

The Breville 920XL is an impressive coffee machine for the prosumer espresso market niche. BES920XL is providing an attractive, ergonomic, feature-laden double boiler espresso machine at an unprecedented price point.

The Breville BES920XL espresso maker is a pleasure to use and delivers excellent performance. The only negative factor is anemic steam power. Also lack of brew pressure adjustment, and yet unknown reliability (largely mitigated by an excellent two-year warranty).

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The Breville 920XL performance is significantly better than its price would suggest, and represents an excellent value in espresso machines.

Breville includes most of the brewing accessories with the BDB: tamper, milk pitcher, selection of microfine baskets, and backflush disk. The design and ergonomics are unmatched, with many sweet touches that are not found on other machines (full drip tray warning, locking wheels for repositioning the machine on the countertop, boiler drain screws).

The digital menu system allows quick, intuitive adjustments in brew temperature, pre-infusion and much more.

Breville 920XL is a reasonably priced, top-performing espresso machine. Although there are several features to improve: no easy brew pressure adjustment, the inclusion of pressurized baskets, Razor tool), yet Breville deserves a high rating for bringing almost everything to the perfection.

A good grinder makes this espresso machine suitable for home baristas at all levels of skill and ability, and it earns a solid 4.0 stars rating from our editorial team.

The Breville BES920XL Dual Boiler offers commercial features and performance, in a domestic footprint.

Espresso perfection requires precision temperature and pressure control, consistently, every time. At the heart of this machine is its dual stainless steel boiler heating system.

The espresso boiler, for the espresso shot, is PID temperature controlled, while a separate steam boiler offers instant and powerful steam on demand.

So you can extract your shot at the right temperature, delivering optimal flavor, while simultaneously steaming your milk to cafe quality.

[+] Dual stainless steel boilers and dual Italian pumps for simultaneous espresso extraction and steaming
[+] Over-Pressure Valve (OPV) limits extraction pressure; Flexible Shot Control
[+] Electronic PID temperature control for precise water temperature
[+] Backlit LCD displays brew temperature, shot clock or time.
[+] Includes water hardness test strip, descale alert and LCD assisted descale procedure

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