Coincidentally, Patrick, who is the man behind the rock espresso maker he got in touch based in London office here and asked if I wanted to come by, maybe look at a unit, maybe review one.

So I did.

I went by The office is we had a chat on.

I agreed to take away a review unit on the condition that I would get to say the truth, how I honestly felt about it.

And that's what we're doing.

So I haven't paid for this.

This is just on loan, but it is super interesting Now.

The rock has been around for a while, like 20 plus years, and this is the first really big update.

Now, Patrick did say something that I thought was just fantastic, which is the updates to this maker can be retrofitted as a kit onto the first Gen Rock espresso makers.

So from the beginning, I have to admit he had me on side.

That kind of approach is a manufacturer.

I really have a lot of respect for So I thought that was super cool.

And this is called the G C, which is short, I think the glass composite, which refers to the new materials you see in the top off the maker here, and that's the part you look to change.

They've also changed the piston peace.

They've made the actual piston narrower, meaning you drive much higher pressures through that pistol.

Now, along with that, he did also let me have a look in a play with the new hand grounded that they have coming out, which is really quite interesting.

This is a hand grinder built for espresso, and there's some things about it that I think are actually very clever.

When it comes to grinding for espresso, I'll start here.

So what you get here, you get a little little cup for wearing the beans and then for grinding into with a little spot for dispensing into your porter filter.

And then underneath here at the bottom.

Here, you can see this is where you are, just the grind.

So you were twisted little cliques for grand settings, and again, it is built to go alongside this.

So it's built to go really pretty fine.

Now, if you've tried to grind for espresso on a hand grinder, you'll know that grinding like that is incredibly hard work.

And the solution is actually just have a much longer lever arm to allow more lever force and be able to do that.

So this is actually really quite nice, Designed to have the lever on the side, a table mounted unit, and to really have, like, a lot of travel here.

So actually grinding for espresso is physically not that demanding it all.

There's a very simple gear here to allow a vertical driveshaft to drive a metal conical burr set in here.

And I know a lot of people in espresso really have come to prefer flat profiles.

But Conical Burr is just allow you a much larger cutting area in a smaller footprint, which is why they're so popular and things like hand grinders.

Just it really gives you a lot more cutting surface in that small space.

So the flow of using this thing is you're gonna grind here, you know, where your beans you gonna grind them well, do that a second and then into the little porter filter in here poi water in the top, left the arms up, push him down and then you're making coffee.

So a za workflow know too fiddly.

Well, let's get on and make a shot And now we grind.

So even though I'm Saturday at what isn't a great angle for doing this, that actually physically wasn't particularly difficult to do.

And I wasn't working super quick, but it felt pretty easy on actually in the unit.

If you look inside, there's a little sort of metal finger, toe help kind of feed and push beans down into the birth set, acting almost like an order just to sort of keep it nice and even in uniform, the grounds out of this thing out surprisingly fluffy and uniform looking out, is actually really pretty impressed by the ground's coming out of this thing.

You can use it for filter coffee if you want to a lovely grind much faster, and you just need to move the borough jester.

I think about one and 1/2 full rotations, coarser to get like a filter coffee ground.

But I haven't tested it at that.

That was just what Patrick told me he'd had some success with, however it espresso.

I'm I'm pretty impressed now all too.

The rock espresso maker.

Now you can get a standard porter filter that the little plastic Porterfield spouts that come with this that fit on the handle.

They just clip on very easily, which is good.

I think they know most people would probably just want to brew a double, so they're not gonna use them on.

They do feel a just a little bit delicate.

I can't break them quite easily, but they keep on off very easily, and that's kind of a nice little extra.

I guess they do do naked porter filters as well, if you want that in your life, which is kind of fun.

So the challenge of any espresso machine that doesn't have a heating element in it, where you're gonna add hot water to it is making sure that the machine doesn't steal that heat before the water hit the coffee.

And that's true of just about any one of these kind of units.

And this is true here.

So you really, really, really want to make sure that you've preheated your porter filter as well as the unit itself.

It's probably easiest to do those two things together.

Don't put water in this and lift the arms up without a porter filter being in place.

Otherwise, you'll just make a mess.

So what I would typically do is get some hot water into this and kind of pulling a blank shot to try and get some heat into the unit before I add my coffee before I pull a shot.

Now, if you're used to using espresso machines a lot, there's one little thing that may throw you most espresso machines lock in from left to center.

This doesn't this looks in from right to center, so that will catch you out the first time if you're not used to it this way.

So right now, let's just do a little pre heat so boiling water in.

So now we're rinsed preheated.

You could get this hotter.

Probably if you sucked a little hot water.

That wouldn't be a bad thing to get a maximum maximum temperature.

I guess One complaint I have is that this cup can be a little messy in the dispensing of grounds into the port filter.

They are vory fluffy, which is good, but it just means it's quite easy for you to be messy.

Where some grand is like the E K 43 cafes, you'll see them using some sort of dozing tool.

And I think actually, something like that for this could be could be quite useful so that it sent me a temple with this.

It is very heavy, actually for its size, which is impressive.

It is just for me a little bit small.

If I'm honest, I could do is just a little bit more wit.

So you have to do like a couple of additional of sidewall times just to catch everything or ever looked in.

Now you really want to get your water straight off the boil, right?

Don't let it sit around.

You're gonna lose temperatures as hot as you possibly can get.

It gave me the best results.

He comes.

He filled a different levels, depending on how much you want this much water definitely was more than I would need.

So if you raise this up now, you begin pre infusion and I had best results with at least 15 seconds of pre infusion just to help up the extraction a little bit, and then we press Now.

At this point, I don't necessarily want more liquid in the cup, but there is still some liquid in the brewer itself.

And I learned the hard way that what you don't want to do is just take the port filled right now because it will be messy, right?

So if your espresso is the size that you want it and typically I was brewing 16 grams of coffee to about 40 grams of liquid espresso, a reasonably long shot.

But that way I could have hit the extractions that I wanted to.

Once you've enjoyed your coffee, either bring the cup back and just give it a final squeeze through just to make sure you pushed all liquid out.

It just makes knocking out the puck afterwards much, much, much cleaner and easier.

And so once you pushed out all the water, what you're left with is really a very dry cake.

Very easy cleanup knockout.

So that's definitely worth making.

We've done completely.

So how's the coffee you ask?

Well, the coffee's I've had from here have been pretty good.

Getting your extraction up is definitely a key to this and that means heat management.

First and foremost, you can grind really pretty fine for this thing.

Getting everything as hot as you possibly can with this is definitely at my number one priority.

And it'll also mean typically, the second or third shot out of it will probably be better than the very first.

But often you really wanna make one first thing in the morning.

So so it's spend the time getting it as hot as you can now.

I would recommend brewing on scales if you can.

That's how I would bring most expressive in most places, and I feel like getting a new, accurate idea of how much liquid you've produced is definitely useful.

The shape and design of this make that pretty easy to fit scales underneath here, and that was definitely not a problem for me in using it.

So let's wrap this up into what I like, and maybe what I like less the pros and the cons.

Let's start with the grinder.

I think the design is great for an espresso hand grinder.

That's definitely grounding fine enough.

The ground is really quite even.

The long lever arm on here is a good thing, and it's good to use.

It's pretty easy to use.

I have no riel complaints about it.

It is in the world of hand grinders, expensive but not absurdly expensive.

So I think it's about 100 and £1569.

It's a little bit more than the espresso maker, but it is well built.

It is sturdy, and they thought it through from a usability perspective for grinding very fine, so that, I think is good.

I don't love the little cup for dozing out off, but this probably another solution to that anyway.

As for the espresso maker, things are like its compact.

It works well.

You're definitely hitting high pressures by having a narrower brew chamber the normal.

It means that the force exerted per square inch means that actually pushing with only 16 or 17 kilos of force will give you nine bars of pressure inside the brood chamber.

So that's a kind of nice, smart thing.

It does make good tasting coffee on the condition that you manage the heat off this unit.

You definitely need to get as hot as you can before using it, especially if you like slightly lighter roasts in your espresso with doctors that maybe just less of an issue.

You can use this to make much larger expresses that I have done, though I don't particularly enjoy those.

That's kind of just my thing.

I really preferred shots that were about one full piston of water, which was usually about just about 40 grams out, betting on how long you left it to preen for useful and again, pre infusion is definitely useful.

And having total my new control of that is a good thing.

I'd like some more guidance on the inside of this to know where my film level is, so that if I have a preferred water amount, I can sort of dial in that rather than try to fill it completely or fill it.

So it's about a centimeter from the top.

A little, a little extra here would be nice, though.

I do like this new material they using here.

I think it's a great improvement on their existing maker, I think £149.

I think it's well built.

Start to finish.

It could be a little messy, but actually you can just pick this thing up and run it under the tap if you want to.

So you know the single unit construction is nice.

I think it's well designed.

It's thoughtful.

It can make most espresso again.

Like most of these type of units, it's a little bit of extra work, and it's up to you.

If that's something you're willing t incorporate into your morning routine, as lots people are.

Or actually, if you'd like the convenience off an element of a pump of the extras that come with a good home espresso machine.

Or actually, if you just want something easy, convenient, oddly kind of Zen to use, it's quite satisfying to push this thing down.

There's no doubt that's kind of pleasurable, but that's it.

That's the rock.

That's how I feel about that.

I think it's broadly available about now.

I think it's just about released Now if you have questions or comments, if you got one of the old ones, if you go to the new ones, let me know using it to make espresso at home.

Still, how your shots?

What's your best technique?

What works for you?

I'd be really interested to hear it as always.