Video Overview | Crossland CC1 Home Espresso Machine

Transcript

When it comes to home espresso machines, a little innovation goes a long way. The Crossland CC1 is easily one of the most innovative home machines, packing high-end features into a countertop-friendly package. With PID temperature control, programmable pre-infusion and commercial style parts, this is the machine of every espresso enthusiast's dreams.

Crossland CC1 Home Espresso Machine

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The user can program and store three unique profiles, with settings for brew temperature, pre-infusion, brew time, and even the PID settings and temperature offset.

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Hey folks. Steve from Prima Coffee, here. Today we're taking a look at the Crossland CC1 Home Espresso Machine. This is a really special machine because it packs a lot of high-end features into a fairly compact and rather affordable home espresso machine body.

It's an all stainless steel machine. It has a half-liter stainless steel boiler inside, and it also uses a thermablock for steam production. We'll get to that in a little bit. You'll also notice it has electronic controls right on the front panel, so no random buttons. But we actually have a lot of functionality just between two dials that also function as buttons. We have a 58 millimeter commercial size portafilter and basket.

In the box, you get a couple of different baskets. You get a single and a double. You also get a blind filter for back flushing, and a plastic 58 millimeter temper. It's actually pretty good quality for just coming free with the machine.

Some notable things about this machine. Obviously, it has these electronic controls as the main kind of input. And it actually has a PID built in for temperature control. So, if you're familiar with electronics, a PID is great for selecting a temperature and holding it there. So it has some great temperature stability and you can set it to whatever you want. You actually have three different profiles. You can set a different temperature for each one.

If we take a look at the menu, we have this setup/enter on the left, and basically the brew settings on the right. So, I'm currently set to 2-cup espresso. I can select 1-cup, 2-cup, pod, or steam mode. So any one of these first three; these all have their own settings for pre-infusion, for shot time, for temperature. So, you can essentially just have three different profiles. You don't have to go single, double, pod. You could do Ethiopia Guatemala in your espresso blend. You can do whatever you want and it's very versatile.

It'll store those settings for as long as you want. Now, to go in and actually play with these settings, I just hold this button down for a couple seconds. You'll see, it goes into setup mode. And I can still select 1-cup, 2-cup, or pod in here. I can't change anything for the steam, but say I want to change the temperature or something for my 2-cup espresso. I can just punch in the button, your setting will blink, you can change whatever you want, and then just wait a couple seconds. It'll stop blinking and your setting is saved. So I can change temperature, I can change, it's called pre-steam; it's actually pre-infusion.

That's how many seconds the pump will run for pre-infusion. There's a wait period. So if I want to run my pump for one second and then wait five seconds for that water to just permeate the coffee puck, I can set that up. And then, the total dripping time. So this is including the six seconds total of the pre-infusion and the wait. So that's a total time for your shot to stop running, I can set all that up. You can change Fahrenheit to Celsius. Then you get into the PID settings.

If you're really technical and you know what you're doing, you can take a look at the manual and set all the info for that. Just to go back to brewing, I just hit my brew button here. Now, we've got a couple of pretty good features down below the brew head. Obviously, we have the 58 millimeter basket and portafilter. We also have a fully articulated steam wand. So if I set that to steam mode, I've got a lot of steam that I can get pretty instantaneously, thanks to the thermablock system that is used in here. So aside from that big half-liter brew boiler, I have a thermablock with its own separate heating element. And when I set it to steam mode just by hitting the menu start button here, the boiler will pump a little bit of water into the thermablock, which'll start heating it up. And basically creates its own separate steaming environment.

So, if you're familiar with home espresso machines, a lot of the time they use just one boiler. They're called single boiler dual use. So that one boiler is used for both brewing and steaming. With this machine, we keep the brew boiler at its own separate temperature, which is brewing temperature, constantly. And then we have that separate block for steaming, which means that you don't have to swap back and forth.

You go into steam mode, you have your brew boiler still ready to brew, and your steam block is creating steam all on its own. So you don't have to wait for it to heat up and then cool back down if you're making consecutive drinks. You can pull shots back to back to back. And just wait a little bit for that steam to get ready when you want to use it. So, once I'm in steam mode and I hit the button, it takes a few moments and then it'll give you this "OK steam ready. " I can twist my dial here. I'll get a little bit of water at first because I let that sit for awhile. And then you get a pretty good amount of steam. And this can actually also be used as a hot water wand, so if you're not in steam mode, you can open it up and it'll start pumping water right through the wand. So you can make an Americano or something. This is a single hole steam wand tip. That gives you a lot of control over your microfoam or cappuccinos, what have you. You have a lot of really great steam control potential there.

Now, going back through and pulling a shot, I've got some coffee that I pre-ground here in my Baratza Vario. So I'm just going to fill this up using a cup as a dosing funnel here. Now, these baskets are optimized to hold about 18 to 20 grams. I actually have just over 20 grams in the basket right now. So it's a fairly standard commercial double-sized basket. I have my mode set up for two cups of espresso. I have that dialed in so I get a little bit of pre-infusion. And then right around 33 seconds, I'm going to finish up my shot.

Now, this whole process is essentially automated. You're able to program your own time settings in. You can just be, kind of, hands off. Once you have a good shot, you dial things in. Maybe you dial in once in the morning. Then throughout the day you can get repeatable shots with a touch of a button. Now, say this is running too fast. I can hit the button again and stop it. It's still semi-automatic in that way. I can start and stop a shot whenever I want.

Now, one of the wonderful things about a machine of this type is that it has a 3-way solenoid valve. When I'm done with a shot, the valve opens up and shunts off the pressure into the drip tray. So, not only do I not have to worry about an exploding portafilter, like I might worry about with certain home machines, but I get fairly dry pucks and I don't get a lot of dripping at the end. So far less mess thanks to a 3-way solenoid valve.

The drip tray holds just about a liter. So it's pretty deep and you can dump a lot of shots or do a lot of brew head purges without really worrying about having to empty it out every five seconds. The reservoir holds just about two liters as well. So it's rather large and it's pretty easy to slip out once you have the portafilter out of course. So if you just want to pull it slightly aside to fill it, you can do that. Or you can pull the whole thing out and remove it. There are two tubes here. One's the intake and then one's the over pressure tube that pours a little bit of water back if the boiler pressure gets too high.

This is a really great machine. Again, there's so many features packed into this thing for a rather modest price. It's a great home machine. Solid stainless steel body. Really, a lot to love here and that's why we're super happy to bring it on in Prima Coffee. That is the Crossland CC1 Home Espresso Machine.