Breville Puck Sucker Overview

Go proper right into a espresso retailer and in addition you’ll hear the thwacking of baristas knocking out spent espresso pucks.

Espresso machines use a pump to drive 9 bars of stress—spherical 130 kilos per sq. inch—by the use of espresso, leaving dried, compacted pucks of their wake. Eradicating these espresso pucks requires some elbow grease (and a rubberized bar to knock the portafilter in opposition to). Nevertheless, eek! This can be noisy, and some pucks don’t want to budge. To that end, Breville launched a vacuum pump-powered knock area referred to as the Puck Sucker. We put it by the use of two important checks to see if it actually works any greater than a traditional knock area.

The Exams

• Espresso Puck Test: We used the Puck Sucker to remove fairly a number of espresso pucks from a portafilter, evaluating its ease of use to our favorite knock area.
• Usability Test: We evaluated how simple the pucker sucker was to rearrange and performance.

What We Found

What’s the Breville Puck Sucker? 

The Breville Puck Sucker is a vacuum pump-powered knock area that routinely engages when you place your portafilter in it. When the vacuum prompts, it pulls the spent espresso puck out of the filter basket and into the catch bin below, so it’s simple to do away with or compost the espresso grounds. 

Does the Puck Sucker Work? 

Certain—with a catch. In our testing, the Puck Sucker did a terrific job of gently eradicating stuck-in espresso pucks with out us having to exert any bodily vitality. The portafilter fits neatly throughout the cradle, the pump routinely kicks on, and the puck is neatly eradicated. There’s only one topic: On account of the portafilter should create a good seal throughout the opening for the vacuum pump to work, the Puck Sucker is designed to carry out with 58-millimeter Breville portafilters. So it’s solely acceptable with the Breville Twin Boiler, Breville Oracle, or Breville Oracle Contact, making it a a lot much less widespread product than we’d like. (These moreover happen to be a number of of Breville’s priciest fashions.)

Most Breville espresso machines have 54-millimeter baskets, which means they don’t seem to be acceptable with the Puck Sucker. And though we advocate quite a few completely different, non-Breville espresso machines with 58-millimeter portafilters, they gained’t have the becoming proprietary type needed for the Puck Sucker to operate.

The Verdict

The Puck Sucker is a vacuum-powered knock area that quietly and successfully eradicated stuck-in espresso pucks from 58-millimeter Breville portafilters. It costs larger than the widespread knock area and is restricted to utilize with just a few fashions, so we can’t broadly advocate it. Nonetheless, do you have to’re eager to spend the money and have a acceptable Breville espresso machine, you’ll take pleasure in its simple operation and mess-free design. 

Good to Know

The Puck Sucker is compact ample to swimsuit on an espresso machine’s drip tray for storage, and its catch bin might be dishwasher-safe for easy cleanup. It would keep 10 to 12 espresso pucks sooner than it have to be emptied and we similar to the rubber bottom that retains it in place.

What Must You Get Instead? 

When you have got an espresso machine that’s not acceptable with the Puck Sucker, we have good news: There are cheaper knock containers that work with any machine’s portafilter. As soon as we examined knock containers, we had been notably eager on the homeffect Knock Subject, which has a sturdy column as its knock pad as an alternative of a horizontal bar. It absorbed have an effect on in a strategy that popped out stubborn pucks whereas decreasing the noise and vitality required to take motion.

Why We’re the Specialists

• Jesse Raub was Crucial Eats’ writer and spent over 15 years working throughout the specialty espresso commerce. 
• He was our in-house espresso expert and repeatedly examined espresso gear for this website online along with espresso scales and espresso grinders.
• Jesse beforehand examined 10 knock containers.