The espresso setup, budgeted in the right order
Most first espresso setups spend on the machine and run out at the grinder, which is the wrong way round. Plan the whole thing as one board with a budget, and see the split before you commit to any of it.
The short version
An espresso setup is one budget split across a machine, a grinder and the small things, and the usual mistake is spending it in that order. The grinder decides more of the cup than the machine does. Decide the split first, keep the portafilter size on the machine, and buy accessories to match it.
A sample board
The setup, done once
One budget across machine, grinder and the rest. The grinder is not the afterthought.
- Items
- 6
- Owned
- 1 of 6
- Total
- $1,530
- Budget
- $130 over of $1,400
Open any item for its details.
$890To buyStore · RavelPortafilter · 58mmBoiler · Dual
$420ConsideringStore · Studio MeraBurr · 64mm flatRetention · Under 1 g
$65OwnedStore · OaklineReadability · 0.1 gTimer · Yes
$89ConsideringStore · Fielder HomeCapacity · 1LControl · Variable
$42ConsideringStore · RavelVolume · 80 ml
$24ConsideringStore · Halden & CoWeight · 250 gFrequency · Monthly
Board photos from Unsplash, by Kevin Schmid, Crew, User_Pascal, Charlie Firth, Irene Kredenets and Mike Kenneally.
Who it's for
Anyone assembling a first proper setup, or upgrading one piece and trying to work out whether the rest still fits.
What people use today
Home-Barista and the coffee subreddits have the knowledge and hand it over in twelve hundred word threads. What nobody has is the thing you build while reading them: a shortlist of four machines and three grinders with the prices and the split visible at once.
What a board tracks here
Fields you name yourself, on the item they belong to. These are the ones that decide a purchase and have nowhere else to live.
- Budget split
- Machine against grinder is the only allocation that matters, and it is invisible in a cart.
- Portafilter size
- 58mm or not decides which tampers, baskets and mats you can ever buy.
- Boiler type
- Single, heat exchanger or dual. It sets the ceiling on what the machine can do.
- Resale
- This gear holds value unusually well, which changes what an upgrade actually costs.
Start one of your own.
Paste a link from any store and Vurra reads the page for a title, price and image. Free while Vurra is in early access.