The right machine for a busy café
We all have our part to play. The barista’s job is to build you something worth drinking. Every one of us behind the bar at Colbergcoffee takes that seriously, from picking the beans through the skills we bring to the machine itself, which has to be up to the work. The machine is what this post is about.
A machine like the Victoria Arduino Eagle One, which pulls the shots you drink at our café in Kołobrzeg, is the eagle of the espresso world. When you brew, the smallest detail counts, and which machine you put on the bar is not a small decision.
Below is what this one can do, based on my own time behind it, and what sets it apart from the rest of the market.
Key specifications
- Dual boiler technology
- PID system (electronic temperature control)
- Saturated groups (stable brew temperature)
- LED group lighting
- Cup warmer
- Good looks and build quality
- NEO heating system (New Engine Optimisation)
- Cool Touch system: thermally insulated steam wands
- Cup warmer
- TFT display
- Ergonomics: quick and easy to work on
- Volumetric dosing
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
- Build quality: stainless steel and ABS
- Modern design
- Autopurge
What stands out
What is a volumetric system?
In venues that care about what lands in the cup, repeatability deserves as much attention as skill, knowledge and quality. The Victoria Arduino has a volumetric system, which lets the barista set the yield they want and hold it through a full day of service, so the espresso comes out the same way every time.
Each group can hold its own doses, with different yields, water temperatures and brew pressures.
That is the point: the same good coffee whether you are grabbing a quick espresso on the way to work or sitting down with friends in your usual café.
Autopurge
Automatic cleaning of each brew group speeds the barista up and looks after the quality of the coffee on its own.
SIS (Soft Infusion System)
The system adjusts pressure automatically, raising it as the extraction progresses.
The NEO engine
It uses instant heating with an insulating mechanism that cuts both heat loss and energy use. It works almost immediately and heats only as much water as the extraction needs, which brings the energy bill down. Productivity and output stay high while consumption drops sharply. A life cycle assessment found the Eagle One had 23% less environmental impact than other machines in its class.
TERS (Temperature Energy Recovery System)
It uses the waste water to pre-heat the incoming water. That comes to an 8% saving on the machine’s total consumption.
So alongside the focus on what ends up in the cup, the makers put just as much work into energy use and running costs, which is always a good combination.
Very high quality and lower bills at the same time.
What it is like to work on
Time and convenience. Those two words mean a great deal to anyone who makes coffee for a living. Quality comes first, but how long the job takes and how comfortable it is to do matter almost as much.
Making coffee is a process, and any process can be improved, modernised, tightened up. Most coffee people want the cup made as well as possible and as quickly as possible. The Victoria Arduino is where those two meet: quality and efficiency in the same machine.
Having worked on one for six months, I can say it brings me a lot of pleasure and just as much satisfaction.
One real advantage is the two separate boilers, which mean the machine is ready to brew seven minutes after you switch it on, with the steam boiler ready in 20 minutes. That is a result anyone can live with.
This is equipment the best in the business use, and we want to give you the best we can.
Design
A few words on how it looks.
Do you like fast cars? Even if they are not your thing, you have to admit they look spectacular: the attention to detail, the build quality, things worth looking at.
Coffee is my version of that, and the Victoria Arduino Eagle One is the Maserati of espresso machines. Pleasing simplicity on one hand, avant-garde styling on the other, so you can tell at a glance it is top-shelf equipment. Details like the clear TFT display and the concave and convex front show a love of detail and unusual precision in the build. This is a machine that raised the bar through its construction as much as its specifications. For anyone who cares about how a bar looks, it does everything asked of it.
I will say plainly that I have not worked on anything as refined or as practical as the Eagle One.
In summary
Equipment plays a large part in brewing coffee. What ends up in the cup depends heavily on what it was made on. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Plenty of other factors feed into it, and the machine is one of them. I hope this has cleared up what the machine behind our bar actually is, the one making the coffee you drink at our café.
As a barista, working on it is a pleasure.
If you have questions about what the machine can do or about financing options, get in touch with the team at EkspresGastro.pl, our commercial equipment arm in Poland.
