LUCCA
A53 Mini Espresso Machine by La Spaziale

After three Breville machines, each one lasting fewer years than the one before, I decided to invest in something closer to cafe quality. The Lucca A53 does not disappoint. I looked at a log of machines and three or four different vendors and settled on the Lucca and Clive Coffee. The Lucca because of the front load water reservoir, Italian quality and La Spatziale reputation and Clive due to the great customer service reviews and they definitely did not disappoint! Top notch delivery and set up videos! After a couple days of calibrating the dosing and grinder, it’s been a dream to use. Love it!

Every day works like it suppose to . perfect

Like many others, I studied and tried to do my homework when choosing my first machine. Thanks to Clive (Paul), they confirmed and steered me towards the Lucca A53. It strikes the perfect balance between beauty, ease of use, space. For me, one of the biggest features I had to have, was a front loading water reservoir, due to cabinet configuration in our kitchen. I am still learning the machine. I struggle a bit with the steamer, as it is so powerful, it gives me little time to "get it right". But practice makes perfect. The addition of the wood side panels simply make this a stunning appliance for the kitchen. This matched with my Eureka Specialita, makes me so happy and ask myself, how was I able to drink coffee any other way on the past. Thanks Clive and La Spaziale.

After researching, lurking and browsing for many months my wife encouraged me to "Get on with it" so I called Clive to talk it through. As we all know by know the Clive Staff (Sean in this case) was extremely knowledgeable and helpful during the process and even directly called me back when I asked a couple post sale questions via email (Nice!).

Like many I was coming from a Single Boiler (Ms. Sylvia) and ready / wanted a dual boiler and just an overall higher quality machine and better more consistent espresso experience.

I kept coming back to the Lucca A53 and it ticked all the check boxes for me. We talked through a few options, added a few extras pre-infusion, walnut sides, matching wood portafilter, the SA Wedge Tool (awesome!), shot timer all the goodies I wanted. I had a specific request on shipping timing and Clive was very accommodating and the shipment arrived when arranged in good condition.

The A53 is solid and sleek, the walnut sides are flat-out beautiful and compliment our modern kitchen like was made for it. By visual inspection, it is high quality, seems are tight and I like the new Lucca touches, display panels buttons etc.

It warms up fairly quick, (that was a concern for me) but not an issue, flick it on when I get up and it is ready to go when I am ready.

The front loading water and large drip tray are extremely functional as this is a bigger machine and I had to push it back a bit under the counter, it would be a bummer if I had to pull it out to fill. The drip tray is large and easy to pull out and empty without splashing.

It is much quieter than my last machine when pulling shots, although when it cycles water into the boilers it make a slight whirring noise, which is still quieter than my last machine. I equate quiet with solid engineering and enough power that the machine is not struggling under pressure.

Programming and dialing in is pretty easy / repeatable as soon as you get used to. I try lots of different beans so being able to dial in quickly and easily is valuable so I don't waste 1/2 a bag of expensive beans.

For each bag I do quick dial on the grinder (The Eureka Atom 65 Grinder to pair with it... Amazing in its own right) and dial in with the A53 and usually by 2nd shot I am there, 3rd at the worst. The more I get used to the pair, the quicker I am dialing in.

I set up the single shot program as a quick flush button.

I am a pre-infusion fan so I got that, I like the way it ramps up can pretty consistently get my espresso to start to flow ~7-9 sec or so.

Foaming is actually a little more difficult or perhaps I should say requires a little more skill because the steam wand is so much more powerful than my last machine. Even after watching the video I comically splashed myself with milk the first time, now after a little work I can get some nice creamy micro-foam milk for my caps very fast.

In summary, A53 and an awesome blend of form and function. I'm extremely happy because I am living the life of tasty self created dreamy caps... life is good.

We've had this machine for about a year now, it's our third espresso machine in about 15 years and by far the nicest (last two were Breville and Saeco consumer machines).

First impressions: I called Clive with a few questions to help with a final machine/grinder decision - they were super helpful and the machine arrived in a couple days as expected. Sturdy packaging (although I always feel bad about the amount of packaging material we use - but that's a different topic), machine is fully assembled, and the accessories and starter kit were included as expected. We opted for the wood side panels and the machine looks every bit as good as you'd hope. The machine is built to the quality you'd expect at this price.

Setup: The machine was initially set to 15 amps and we adjusted to 20 amps as per the instructions on the Clive site - simple to do but you do have to open the machine up. The settings (temp, shot duration, hot water volume) are easy to adjust and we quickly got our shots dialed in and water volume set to make Americanos (we were working with our new grinder at the same time - we went through a bag or so of beans in the process).

Issues (relatively minor): When we un-boxed the machine there was a small dent on the back panel, I called Clive and they shipped a new panel the following day - no questions, no charge. Within the first couple of weeks the pressure gauge slipped out of position and I had to open the machine up to re-position and tighten the screw that holds the gauge in place. Having opened the machine twice at that point I have a couple thoughts; overall build quality is very good, the machine could be engineered to open/close up more efficiently, I wonder if insulation would quiet the machine, and the warming plate could be better designed to be level and sturdier and and vibrate less. The time to heat seems a bit on the slow side, but not terribly (when making multiple Americanos we have about 1 min of idle time waiting for the boilers to heat up). The vibratory pump is a bit noisy, the noise lasts for ~30 secs (I believe while the pump fills the boiler). Again, these are minor issues.

A year in: The issues we had were minor and easily solved - it's hard to think we could be much happier. The machine is simple to setup and use, not finicky, and we get great coffee every day! We bought the machine expecting to have it for quite a long time - it is a high quality build and I appreciate it seems to be relatively easily serviced if needed.

Final thoughts: The Clive team is all-pro, and this is a well made, easy to use machine, that makes making great coffee easy! And it looks terrific in our relatively small kitchen. If I were making the decision again today, we'd buy the same machine - although now I'd direct plum. Thanks to the Clive team for great service and a great machine!