LUCCA A53 Mini V2 Espresso Machine

What a machine! Makes a great espresso machine! Can’t make me any happier!!!

Excellent professional experience. The LA Spaziale Lucca a53 mini is a beast. Also Clive coffee is such a supportive vendor of this machine. Please of videos on you tube as well can call and ask questions. We have the non-plumbbed version but added the preinfusion chamber a month later. Recommend making it standard(Does anyone NOT want preinfusion). Easy to take apart and customize/clean. Love pulling shots on this machine. Makes going out for coffee now subpar as our Lucca mini can do it all.

I have owned a least 8 espresso machines and this one is the only one I have been 101% happy with. Also th support Clive offer is outstanding. Keep up the good work team Pierre

This is a great machine and easy to use. After just a couple of days practice and dialing in the grinder, my cappuccinos rival any cafe!!! I’m practicing my latte art cappuccinos now😊 Sean and team were incredibly patient walking me through a couple of minor kinks of my learning curve and they came through during the busy holiday season! Clive and Lucca A53 is the perfect combination!

An absolute workhorse and looks fantastic in my home kitchen with the maple wood panels. It seems to be the only machine in its segment that isn't an eyesore. Easy to use, easy to clean. Love the front-loading water reservoir.

We bought this for our small church espresso bar. It's easy to use and set up and makes amazing coffee.

Smazing

I live a pretty easy life — working from home, no hard labor, pretty much entirely first-world problems. One of the few annoyances I used to experience was having to go somewhere to get a good latte. This machine fixed that.

I was intimidated by it at first, but frankly the videos on this website got me to an acceptable result on the second try, and by now (a few months later) I’m making exactly what I want on autopilot every morning.

My only preference-complaint is that when doing the monthly cleaning (which, by itself is also super easy, and thanks Clive for emailing me to remind me to do it the first time), I don’t love where the water drains. I’m probably just going to fix that with a hose and then have zero complaints. I’m also pretty terrible at putting the magnetic wood side panels on, but I’m pretty sure that’s more of a personal failing.

If you’re sitting on the fence about this, like I was for literally years telling myself it’s too expensive and I won’t use it enough to make it worth it, get over it and pull the trigger. The few-minute ritual you’ll get out of making your own espresso drinks in the morning is going to save you time and eventually money if you’re buying those drinks somewhere else right now. I’d buy this thing again in a heartbeat.

The ONLY thing I wish was better is a/the timer. There S1 app isn’t very good.

Nor only are we extremely happy with the machine but we are very content with the customer service. This company went above and beyond and I can't wait to continue working hard to potentially purchase our 2nd Commercial machine soon. -17KM Cafe

The machine overall is great keeps up with what I need. The only problem is the bottomless portafilter ear was messed up on arrival so I can’t use it but other than that great machine!

Pressure gauge hard to read, porta filter fit to tight.

The machine is very well built and aesthetically pleasing. It fits very well under my cabinets. This is my first machine and the included "intro to espresso" class was excellent. I was having a little trouble dialing everything in and after a quick text chat with support I was all set. I highly recommend using Clive for their solid and prompt customer support.

The boiler on my unit failed and starting tripping the breaker during the first year. I had to ship it back for repairs which was a long process and ends up with shipping damages by UPS, which of course they wouldn't cover. It's been 8 months since I got my machine back, and has started the same issue again. Very disappointed in this unit!

We recently outfitted our van with the Lucca espresso machine and grinder, and couldn’t be happier. Our Destination Everywhere crew traveled cross-country for six months—through the U. S. and deep into Canada—bringing coffee, community, and cycling together at group rides and activations around North America.

The Lucca setup handled everything we threw at it. Reliable, consistent shots, and impressive quality day after day on the road. Once the machine was back in San Francisco, we opened a to-go coffee window for cyclists, and it didn’t miss a beat.

Huge thanks for the support and for supplying us with such fantastic equipment. It elevated the entire experience for our International Cycling Community.

Solid machine- easy to set up and super stable! Works well in a commercial pub setting with strong steam and is well appointed with features. Side note: the supplied group cleaning brush is a beast- I'd only recommend that for cleaning your BBQ, so get a spare group brush when you buy the machine.

She’s a beauty 😍 10/10

Hurley, Wisconsin – Mobile Coffee Shop Owner

We’ve been using the Lucca A53 for a little over a year now, and when I say we’ve used it, I mean used it. Not abused, but absolutely pushed to its limits. This machine has never once let us down.

We operate a mobile coffee shop out of a decommissioned ambulance in Northern Wisconsin, so we needed a machine with a small footprint. We ended up buying a slightly bent and bruised refurbished model, and let me just say…we were wildly impressed. We still are.

This machine has been bounced between a tent setup and our ambulance setup, used both indoors and outdoors, in 90° heat and 100% humidity, under the beating sun. Not once did it slow down. For a prosumer machine, it truly blew us away.

In over a year of daily use, we’ve had to replace the gaskets three times; that should say how much we’ve used it. On our busiest days, we’re pulling shots back-to-back for 8 to 10 hours straight, sometimes even longer depending on the event. Aside from pausing to refill the reservoir, the A53 kept up without missing a beat.

The only reason we’re not using it now in our mobile setup is because we’ve grown and needed a dual group head. The Lucca A53 will happily retire to our home kitchen, where it will continue to perform like a champ.

If I had to nitpick one thing, it’s just the need to refill the water tank during long shifts (but it could easily be solved by buying the plumbed in model), but once you know the machine and how it operates, it’s a non-issue. The boiler size is compact, which explains the longer steam times, but again, totally expected for a machine this size.

We bought this on a bit of a whim, even though we did our research. We were nervous about it being refurbished, but it’s been nothing short of rock solid. We’d absolutely recommend the A53 to anyone starting a business, building a home bar setup, or looking for quality on a budget.

If we had to start our business all over again, we’d still choose this machine as our starter model, no question.

I'm pretty sure I'm not a master barista, but the Lucca sure makes me feel like I am. Paired with Clive's expert guidance, I was able to ramp up and start pulling decent shots with a couple of practice sessions. Within the first week, I was making coffee at home that is better than anything I get anywhere but my very favorite coffee shop.

This is 10 year review.

Mu Lucca A53 still works great. I am getting my 2-3 cups of coffee everyday and am very happy.

I want additionally highlight amazing customer support team that Clive Coffee has. I had a couple of issues with the machine and even though I am not very handy, they guided me though the process and I was able to make all the fixes by myself.

Awesome!

The machine is great, it’s absolutely beautiful, but buy it from another company. Voltage coffee sells the same machine for the same price but they actually include the wooden portafilter and knob for the same cost instead of charging an additional $170. Not to mention how there were delays in the shipping of my machine by over a month that were not communicated until I reached out making it an overall frustrating experience. But the machine just don’t buy it from Clive coffee you’ll get a better deal and likely better service elsewhere.

I've owned this machine for a year now and overall am extremely happy with the performance of this machine. Knowing what I know using it basically every day, I would make the exact same purchase today.

Very easy to use, has been reliable so far (still have 2 years on the warranty) and produces great espresso. I previously owned an e61 heat exchanger so the temp stability and warmup times are standouts on the Lucca. I've been able to make multiple drinks back to back with no worry of the machine not being able to keep up. The machine inputs are great, particularly the steam lever. Buttons for what you need with little else to clutter or confuse. Navigating the menu system is also simple. The app is pretty barebones, but once you set it you really don't have to mess with it and the on/off timer function has worked flawlessly for me. The ability to independently turn the steam boiler on and off is really nice too.

I knocked off a star because I do think some minor improvements could be made to the machine.

-I went for the most basic, black plastic sides and they do make the machine look a little cheap. Their fitment isn't the best and when I lock in the porta filter the whole machine flexes. The flexing has caused some light scratching on the stainless steel.

-I really wish there was some sort of viewing port for the water reservoir. You don't really know where your water level is at until the low water light comes on. A simple clear slit on the front of the reservoir would fix this.

-The volumetric dosing setting hasn't been great. It'll be +/- 1 gram the first day or two and then slowly drift to the point it's unusable. I planned on setting it up for my partner to make the process a little easier for them, but unless I reset it every morning for them it's useless.

-As is often mentioned in reviews of the machine, the work space is a little cramped and you have to bend down to view the pressure gauge. Not the biggest deal to me, but figured I'd mention it since it's one of the commonly brought up things. FWIW I have no problem fitting my cups under the bottomless portafilter w/ a Timemore Nano Scale and I only occasionally check the gauges.

Love our machine!!!

Absolutely love my Lucca A53! Makes great espresso!

I've been using A53 Mini for the last two months and couldn't be happier with my purchase. I was upgrading from a Crosslands Coffee CC1 (a single boiler with PID that uses a thermoblock for steam). I made a pretty broad search and considered heat exchange and double boiler machines that were less than ~$3k. In the end, I has drawn to the mix of features and robustness of the A53 Mini. I feel confident that I'll be able to find parts and keep this machine running for a long time, plus there is an awesome online community of users. When I began my search, I viewed the 53 mm portafilter as a negative. After using the machine for a bit, I view it as a wash (Relative to a 58 mm portafilter, I find the 53 mm portafilter a bit more forgiving for tamping, but it is of course easier to get accessories for 58 mm machines). For home users that are far along in the search process, I would recommend the A53 Mini relative to the other similar machines by La Spaziale. Relative to the the Mini Vivaldi II (same inside, but slightly different asthetics on the outside), the A53 has a much better mix of accessories at the same price point (the A53 includes a bottomless portafilter and a nice tamp, whereas the Mini Vivaldi II includes a single spouted portafilter and a piece of plastic that barely qualifies as a tamp). I prefer the aestheics of the A53 Mini to those of the Mini Vivaldi II, but that is a personal preference. Relative to the regular A53 or regular Vivaldi II (the plumbed-in version of the machine that includes a rotary pump), the A53 Mini offers faster warm-up time (smaller steam resevoir) and I find the pressure build up of vibratory pump very forgiving. For a shop or office environment that leaves the machine on and pulls a lot shots, the pumped-in version would be better. (Although I haven't tried the preinfusion option, I do not feel that the A53 Mini would benefit from that option. The machines with the rotary pump would probaly benefit from the preinfusion option). Bottom line - I love my machine! Now I need to save up for the wooden panels!