The Sanremo YOU, the Most Exciting Espresso Machine Since the La Marzocco GS3

The new machine on the block 

It’s become increasingly trendy in the coffee influencer sphere to exclaim that this product is the “killer” of so-and-so products, including clickbaity titles that draw you in to see a singsongy talking head drone on about how they weren’t paid to say this and why you should buy this and that. Yes, there are a lot of milquetoast coffee products out there, but the speed at which new machines and grinders are released is remarkable. So, naturally, we’re going to *tongue in cheek* do precisely what we were just protesting against and see if the Sanremo YOU is, in fact, the La Marzocco GS3 killer. We, of course, do this in jest. We heart La Marzocco machines with a passion. Still, we’re incredibly excited to offer the Sanremo YOU, and the entire staff is stoked about its fresh combination of style, build quality, performance, and features. While both of these machines are here to stay, let’s understand why you should get excited about the Sanremo YOU and why you should buy it over the GS3 MP. 

How we got here: home espresso innovation begins in the café

La Marzocco has always been on the cutting edge of espresso machine innovation, especially with one of their most widely adopted dual-boiler espresso machines, the GS, in 1970. GS stands for Grupo Saturo, meaning “saturated group,” and introduces us to, at the time, unparalleled temperature stability and consistency where the group head is welded to the coffee boiler. La Marzocco’s innovation meant baristas no longer had to wait for pressure to build again to pull another shot, transforming cafés forever. 

The saturated group head laid the groundwork for better espresso

The saturated group head led La Marzocco to 2008 with the introduction of the GS3. A few years later, they introduced the MP (manual paddle) version, allowing the home barista to pressure profile manually. Now a countertop legacy, La Marzocco reinforced its well-deserved brand reputation and meticulous build quality and performance by putting the café experience in the home, unlike any other manufacturer. 

The Sanremo YOU takes the torch from La Marzocco 

Naturally, the GS3 took the coffee community by storm, and La Marzocco’s innovation birthed GS3 clones and other machines that built upon what’s possible for home espresso. In many ways, you can trace a straight line from GS3 to Sanremo’s new flagship espresso machine,  the Sanremo YOU. The YOU takes the groundwork laid by La Marzocco and runs with it at full speed. 

One manufacturer that deserves mentioning is Decent Espresso. The Decent also took the groundwork that La Marzocco laid and made a machine that gives the user much more freedom, along with visual feedback from their extractions. The difference between the Decent and the Sanremo YOU is that Sanremo aims to give a precise and repeatable espresso-making experience on a larger scale. Notably, Decent has a DIY aesthetic popular with many modders and tinkerers, a constantly evolving project. On the other hand, The YOU is ready-made with more substantial commercial build quality. 

The YOU is the future of home espresso; even the machine’s body looks postmodern, and its controls feel almost alien to an espresso machine, but only at first. Once you touch the machine, the controls are tactile and responsive. The Sanremo YOU is a different machine with an edge regarding what an espresso machine can allow you to do with espresso and the amount of freedom it allows for home baristas at any skill level. 

Folks, we have arrived at the pinnacle of espresso-making artistry here, where you get to push the limit of what’s possible to experience from coffee. Buckle up and brace yourself.  As people keep getting turned on to making espresso at home, their relationship with coffee becomes more profound and intense. To get to know a coffee is to know a region of the world, to glimpse at hands harvesting the coffee cherry and processing the beans. Now, let’s take a closer look at the GS3 MP. 

The GS3 MP—A Living Legend

Let’s take a quick step back and analyze the GS3 MP and who this machine is still for. The GS3 was remarkable for its time, but it had its time in the proverbial spotlight. The manual paddle can be used in two different ways when pulling shots. 

• Pulling traditional 9-bar shots by moving the brew paddle from right to left
• Modulating the paddle ramp pressure up and down at every point in the extraction 

The latter way is the reason why the GS3 is so revolutionary. It allowed home users to change the pressure in the brew chamber in real time to impact the outcome of any espresso; thus, pressure profiling became an extraordinary variable to explore and experiment with. One of the most significant forms of feedback from customers that we get on the manual paddle is that it takes time to get used to how the paddle functions because it can be incredibly sensitive to movement—moving the paddle just a little too much can make a change that you did not intend, easily over or undershooting your pressure target. This one is more tactile and takes more practice to get down fully. 

As we turn to the Sanremo YOU, we’ll focus on how the YOU took the concept of pressure profiling and made it more intuitive, easy to use, and gives you the option to automate the process.

The Sanremo YOU—The New Home Espresso Legacy 

Is this title too premature? We think not. We gladly pass along the torch to this awe-inspiring machine. Here’s why: complete and unfettered freedom to make espresso in any shape or form. While the GS3 gives you two modes, the Sanremo has many: 

• Manual paddle mode—full pressure shots by moving the paddle from right to left
• Pressure profiling
• Select six automated pre-programmed profiles from a ristretto profile to a lungo—an excellent option for beginners.
• Can program up to 10 additional custom pressure profiles. 
• Can program six lever profiles. 
• Three profiles of your choosing can be selected to be saved on the main screen for easy access at all times.
• Volumetric programming—the YOU’s gear pump can change pressure on a dime, on demand, giving you more precise control from pre-infusion, infusion, and post-infusion stages. 

The advantage of the YOU’s technology is that you can see the profiles you create mapped out on the main screen, giving you all the necessary information to adjust your espresso recipe much faster and understand what’s happening to your coffee while brewing. The screen displays The temperature in the brew chamber, extraction time, Real-time bar pressure of your extraction, and espresso yield in milliliters per second.

Clicking the right arrow on the screen displays this same information, but in list form, clicking again reveals pressure profile and flow rate graphs. This information gives everything you need to geek out and perfect your espresso extraction. 

The YOU’s gear pump gives incredibly accurate flow rates as you can program your shots to stop down to the milliliter. You ultimately control your extraction, whether using the paddle manually or want to program custom profiles to run automatically.  You simply cannot get this level of feedback from the La Marzocco GS3. 

The Sanremo YOU and the La Marzocco GS3 MP can live in perfect harmony, but both machines are for different types of home baristas. The La Marzocco GS3 MP is for the supreme coffee head that wants a level of control over their espresso but with a tactile feel. The pressure profiling ability with the GS3 is not for beginners, as it takes practice to use and understand how the act of pressure profiling impacts your espresso—as a result, offering you a level of precision with the feel of being very involved in the espresso-making process. 

On the other hand, the Sanremo YOU is an uber-GS3—its gear pump allows you to shift pressure on demand and more easily control extraction in each step of the shot. The YOU allows you the most freedom and precision out of any espresso machine on the market to program and save custom profiles or even have a more automated experience. The heart and soul of the YOU is its ability to replicate the profiles that you create on demand, making the possibilities endless.