Stacy W Natal—April 15, 2020✓ Verified purchase
Overall, the flair is fantastic. It looks beautiful, all the parts are well made and sturdy, and with the proper care and love for coffee, one can make almost cafe level coffee with this machine. There are trade offs, though, in cutting a few thousand dollars off the price from your run of the mill cafe espresso bar. You should understand these things before you buy this product: 1) The flair does none of the work for you. You have to put proper care in to your technique and process for making espresso. You have to preheat the brew chamber, do your own pre-infusion, and adjust your grind size and dose according to taste. The flair is only going to put out a product as good as the care you put in to it. There are plenty of tutorials on youtube and elsewhere for how to dial in espresso, how to preheat, what sort of pressure to apply, and so on. 2) I think that the pressure kit is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for producing a consistent product, though if you're willing to put a bathroom scale on your counter every time you want to make espresso, go off I guess... 3) You need a good burr grinder, better than that garbage stuff like cusinart and kitchenaid. If you don't have a good grinder, you simply will not get good coffee, and this is true for every single machine on the market. You also need a way to boil water, the flair obviously does not do that for you. I would also strongly recommend owning a coffee scale to dose your water, beans, and coffee out properly, however the design of the flair is very well put together so you can certainly get by without one. Wouldn't recommend unless you're in a pinch, though. 4) if you pull a bad shot (muddy, channeled, improperly tamped, too low pressure applied, dosing incorrect) the portafilter is very hard to clean as the puck will be sloppy. If your shot is good, the puck will be hard and very very easy to tap out, leaving no mess. this is an issue with every espresso machine that isn't fully automatic, but it is something to note if you are very averse to a tiny bit of mess Creators, if you're reading this, I think there are still one or two aspects that I was the tiniest bit displeased with that I think can be improved about the flair. The first of these is the stainless steel tamper that comes with the pressure kit. It is just about a millimeter or so to thin and doesn't quite fit snugly into the portafilter. This leads to sometimes having an uneven tamp and grounds are consistently sneaking by, leaving a dust of untamped grounds on top of the tamped puck that has to either be tapped or blown off to prevent channeling, which in turn I found leads to some channeling and a bit of underextraction. I think that if the tamper was adjusted to fit more snugly in the portafilter such that NO grounds were untamped, the ceiling for the quality of espresso created by this product would rise. Second, sometimes when applying pressure on the brew chamber, the front end would lift up a millimeter or two off of the brew basket, causing the downwards pressure applied to be a tiny bit uneven, which in some cases caused channeling in my shots. I'm not exactly sure as to how to fix this issue, but I believe that if the portafilter was ever so slightly deeper or if the seal was slightly tighter, it may be less of a problem. Note that my rating is still five stars. While I hope that in the future, these issues will be fixed, they are CERTAINLY excusable for only $200. Also, they may only be an issue with my product, though I don't believe that is the case. Built 98% perfectly, I think the Flair outputs as good espresso as you are good at making it. A must buy for a lover of espresso on a tight, college budget. Sincerely, Dante, using the family prime account Read more
J.Pargiter—March 17, 2017✓ Verified purchase
The media could not be loaded. I’ve been roasting my own coffee beans since 2001 and for the past 15 years my home setup has been a Rancilio Silvia/Rocky. I also inherited a Pavoni Europicola that I toyed with for a couple years and for anyone who has used one, the Flair will feel familiar, although the Pavoni was far less forgiving. I travel months at a time, and my rig-on-the-go for many years was a Mypressi Twist. The nitrous cartridges were a pain to source and felt wasteful (not to mention expensive), but paired with a Porlex Mini the espresso quality was astounding, as in on par with the Silvia/Rocky. Sadly, my unit gave up the ghost in 2014, by which time the company was defunct. I’ve been on the hunt for a suitable replacement ever since. Enter “The Flair.” I somehow missed the Kickstarter Campaign and only realized it existed mid-February when I happened onto this Amazon listing. I’ve had my unit two weeks, long enough to run it through its paces (around 35 shots). As with any new set up, you’ll have to work out a routine and dial in the grind, but as far as I’m concerned the Flair is exceptionally forgiving. It allows enormous control (over temp and pressure) still the margin of error is wide, so it’s not as though it requires excessive precision or skill. In fact, I’d say the Flair is slightly easier to use than the Mypressi, and while the shots aren’t exactly on par, they’re darn close. In any case, the Mypressi is no longer in production and the units had very limited life-spans. By comparison, the Flair seems designed and built to last. In early 2015 I bought a Minipresso by Wacaco. It seemed worth a go for the money, but despite my best efforts, the shots were subpar. The Minipresso utilizes a pressurized portafilter to “enhance” the crema, which is to say “cheat,” and it made only single shots, not doubles. I was so dissatisfied with the results, I binned it and bought an Aeropress, which makes excellent coffee—not espresso mind you (the hype on the box claiming it makes espresso is laughable) but strong coffee. I know the Flair costs 3x the Minipresso and has a larger profile, but if you care at all about the quality of the espresso, there’s no comparison. I’ve never used or even seen a Handpresso, but like the Minipresso it uses a pressurized portafilter system and reviews seem split as to whether the Handpresso or the Minipresso deliver better results, in which case the Flair is almost certainly going to deliver better results. The other mainstream alternative is the Rok, which costs slightly more than the Flair. I prefer the aesthetic of the Rok (it’s pretty), but the Flair won me over for its portability. I also took seriously reviews by Rok owners who compared their results with the Flair. One last unit I considered is the Espresso Forge, which gets excellent reviews from serious espresso geeks, so much so I might still give one a go some day, but for now I’m quite satisfied with the Flair given the price difference. Am I ready to retire my Silvia and use the Flair full-time. No. But I’ll probably sell the used Siliva I purchased a couple years ago as a backup. And since I generally drink only 2 espressos a day, I can almost, maybe, possibly imagine resorting to the Flair full-time if the remaining Silvia has a catastrophic failure. On the plus side, The Flair is portable so I could put it away when not in use, allowing me to reclaim a chunk of kitchen counter. In conclusion, if you’re looking for a travel espresso rig and aren’t prepared to pay the premium for an Espresso Forge, the Flair is definitely worth a go. And if you’re seriously budget-minded, the Flair is probably a better choice than most consumer semi-automatics at the same price point, and probably even better than many costing twice as much, or at least the ones that use pressurized portafilters. Yes, you have to trade a bit of effort and learning curve for the relative ease of use provided by prosumer semi-automatics, but if you’re willing to learn to actually craft espresso, the Flair Espresso Maker is a worthwhile investment, particularly as a travel machine. ______________________ UPDATE: April 23, 2017 The video attached to my original review shows a shot being pulled using 18g of coffee ground in my aged Porlex Mini. Obviously the shot quality from that pairing was not just satisfactory but quite impressive for a machine at this price point. That said, a friend recently gifted me a Helor 101 and also bought himself a Commandante MK30. Both are wildly expensive manual grinders. We spent the last week running them through their paces on the Flair and the shots we pulled were insanely good. That's not to say you need a $250 manual grinder to get quality espresso out of the Flair (you don't) but with a quality grinder, there is a marked improvement in the cup, and wjth just a little effort, we were able to consistently pull shots on par with what I get out of my Rancilio Silvia/Rocky combo. I haven't had a chance to see how well the Rocky and Flair pair (or the Helor and Silvia for that matter) but it's safe to say the Flair is even more impressive and capable than I originally thought. Read more
