Video Overview | Astoria Espresso Machines
Astoria is an Italian based espresso machine manufacturing company whose focus is on providing quality machines at an affordable price. In this video, Steve shares on many of the commercial espresso machines that Astoria offers, comparing and contrasting the benefits of each unique machine. Watch along to discover which exceptional Astoria machine might just be the one you've been looking for.
Transcript
Hey folks. It's Steve with Prima Coffee here. Today we're going to take a look at Astoria's entire line of espresso machines. Now Astoria is an Italian espresso machine manufacturer. They've been around for a really long time and they've got a great reputation for providing economically-priced machines that have a wide array of features to basically suit just about anybody who wants to make coffee in whatever volume. So they have a great assortment of machines across a low-end range, a mid-range, and a high-end, sort of premium, range. To begin at the low-end, we have the Pratic Avant. This is a fairly minimal espresso machine. It's pretty simplified. It's only available in two groups. It is an auto-volumetric espresso machine that runs on a heat exchange resistance. So it has one single boiler and then each group gets its own heat exchanger that runs through that boiler to exchange heat from the steam to the brew water.
Astoria Espresso Machines
Astoria's Espresso machines are known for their quality and affordability
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So as a heat exchanger machine, it's maybe not quite as stable as a high-end, fancy, you know, thermally-controlled machine with, you know, high-end electronics, but it's a great fit for people who just need an affordable, reliable machine to make coffee. So that might be a bar or restaurant, a small cafe built into some other business. It's got a lot of potential fit applications in a low-to-medium volume environment and with those volumetric controls, you can set up four different profiles for each group to pull different coffees and make them as you wish. It's also got tons of steam power, so you can make milk drinks all day long. It's going to be very reliable and, again, quite affordable. Moving up to our mid-range, we have the Gloria and the Perla. Now the Gloria here is the automatic volumetric version. We have six programmable volumetric profiles per group and, again, this is a heat exchanger machine but now we have a little bit more power, a little bit better build quality, and we can have some optional features like Cool Touch Steam Wands.
We have some fun little joysticks for dispensing our steam but on the inside we still have fairly similar components. We have a heat exchanger system, again, if you start to get into really high volume you might get a little bit more fluctuation in temperature but it's still going to be fairly reliable for more mid-range, even pushing higher volume cafes. Now the Gloria and the Perla are both available in one, two, and three group configurations. What's unique about the Gloria is you can also get it in a lever group. Now so instead of having a pump inside, we would actually have a piston per each group that compacts a spring, and that spring pushes down and applies force to the water to extract your coffee. Now that's great because you can convert that into a gas-run machine. You can run it on propane or natural gas, which means that you only need to supply water pressure to the machine and you can heat it up via gas.
So that means you could bring it to a Farmer's Market or install it in a mobile coffee truck and you would have a little bit more flexibility because you wouldn't be in need of 220-volt electricity to run your espresso machine. That would make it a little bit less reliable in terms of shot-to-shot consistency. It requires a little bit more recovery time in between shots and especially if you're doing a lot of steaming but, again, it's a decent option to have if you need a little bit less demands on your power or it's just not available. Another lever machine that Astoria has is the Rapallo. So similar to the Gloria lever, it's the same style spring lever group. Can also be converted to gas and again it's, you know, a machine where you're manually pulling every shot every time. So it puts a little bit more demand on the barista, but it also allows them to have a little bit more flexibility with the coffee that they produce. You can change the way that you apply the spring lever pressure.
You can, kind of, hold it back, let it a little bit more, like, soft cream fusion happen, or you can kind of just throw the lever down, bring it back up, and let the spring do its thing. There's a few different ways that you can actually use that. So there's a little bit more flexibility in how you actually extract your coffee. It's very, kind of, classic and it's, you know, sort of the original way that we pulled espresso. The electronic versions, we have a semi-automatic Perla or an auto-volumetric Gloria and an auto-volumetric Perla. Those volumetrics give you a lot of control. We have six profiles per group on these machines, so you can program, again, six different profiles for different coffees. Let's say you're doing a couple of different blends and a decaf or a single origin or you just have a few different profiles in mind for pulling short shots and long shots of different coffees. You can program basically any profile you need into this machine and you can also still run them semi-automatically by using the semi-auto dispensing button.
So if you want to just pull manual shots you can. There's also a simple pre-infusion in these guys. It's not all that adjustable but it's nice to have a little bit softer beginning point to your extractions. Moving onto our high-end machines, here we have the Sabrina. This is one of the, kind of, premier espresso machines that Astoria has. It's big, it looks beautiful, it's a little bit flashy with our lights and everything, but inside it's a very robust machine and it's going to be quite a workhorse for you. Again, still a heat exchange machine here. We've got pre-infusion, we've got the advanced group heads, we've got Cool Touch Steam Wands with steam actuator knobs. We also have a touch panel TFT display that can show you statistics for your use. You can program your volumetrics. You can do all kinds of stuff. It also has built-in shot timers. So this is, kind of, like one of those higher-end machines where you have a lot of heads up going on to tell a barista how their shots are performing, to tell your shot managers how much coffee you're using, when you're peak periods are, when your slow periods might be.
You can even communicate that to your purchasing. You know, figure out maybe we need to buy less coffee on Tuesday because it's a slow day for us. So this machine gives you a lot of feedback, as well as makes fantastic espresso. We have some other cool features here, too, like these flip down cup trays. So we have a lot of clearance under the groups for maybe, like, a 16-ounce paper cup but if you want to pull into demitasses, you can flip this guy down, put it right under the spouts, and you're good to go. We also have a hot water wand with a cold water mixing valve, so that allows you to tune the temperature to your liking. So if you have...if you serve a lot of Americanos or something, you don't have to dispense boiling water into the cup. You can cool it down just a little bit so your customer is a little bit more comfortable to drink it right away. We can also get an automatic frothing wand on here that will steam to your desired temperature. You can program it right in that display. So you've got a lot of potential features here.
It's a great-looking machine, it’s kind of classically styled after old automobiles and that sort of thing, so definitely a presentation piece to put on your bar. And finally on the premier end of things, we have the Plus 4 You. So that is actually Astoria's only non-heat exchanger espresso machine. It is a multi-boiler machine, one brew boiler per group and a steam boiler. Those brew boilers are all 1-liter with 1,000 watts of heating power. So they're pretty powerful on their own. They're capable of keeping up with your high-volume shop environments, and the Plus 4 You also has a lot of similar features to the Sabrina. We have Cool Touch Wands available, they're not standard. We also have pre-infusion and unique to the Plus 4 You, we also have a different sort of temperature control system. So we have electronic temperature control that keeps the brew temperature nice and regulated all day long, also keeps the steam pressure regulated all day long.
So lots of power in that machine, lots of versatility. It also has six programmable volumetric buttons. So, again, you have plenty of variety for all the coffees that you might want to run. It also is Astoria's eco-line machine. So it has some eco-friendly options that allow it to turn power on and off, adjust it throughout the day, for your low periods or your peak periods. You can even shut off a group if you need just only, you know, one or two throughout the day and you can, kind of, use as much power as needed. So that allows you to cut down your power consumption and reduce your operating costs throughout the year just by, kind of, selectively adjusting how much power is used and especially during those slow times during the day. You know, it's pretty convenient to have a machine that, kind of, adjusts that power down for you. So that is Astoria's line of espresso machines.
As I said, a little bit of something for everybody. They have nice, economical models that are ideal for those situations where you don't really need to focus too much on coffee quality or the minutiae of everything, you just need a reliable machine that will make coffee as needed. And you can go all the way up to this premium end and get really fantastic features that give you data for your operations, help you reduce costs, help you make even better coffee than ever before, and give you beautiful machines to set out on your bar for your customers to take a look at. So that is Astoria's line of espresso machines. Thanks for watching.
