# Sage White Glove Service



## Sunil (Nov 19, 2013)

Admin: This thread is to discuss the Sage White Glove Service

There's been a lot of discussion on the forums about the Sage Dual Boiler: Value for money and what the White Glove Service offers, etc. so I thought I'd start this thread and post about my experience with the White Glove Service.

First, a disclaimer: I'm very new to home espresso. Although I really enjoy my coffee, this is my first real espresso machine, so my experience and understanding is severely limited.

I bought the machine and the Smart Grinder last Friday from John Lewis (along with a 3 year John Lewis warranty for an additional £28 - seemed worth it). I called Sage on their helpline number on Monday to book in the white glove service. Absolutely painless: took 2 minutes, and I was able to choose a day and time of my preference. (They offer the service Mon-Sat, 8 am to 6pm.) They also called me today just to reconfirm the appointment, which I thought was a nice touch.

Let me know if there's any questions you want me to ask the person tomorrow. I'll also try and take some pictures to share. Stay tuned...


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## kikapu (Nov 18, 2012)

Probably wise to get the extended warranty for £28. Just over 1200 for a dual boiler machine with some training and 5 year warranty seems good value to me

Hopefully never need the warranty though.


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## Mrboots2u (May 10, 2013)

I'll be interested to see hear how the white gloves service goes . More from whether the guys are enthusiastic coffee people or guys sent into the field with limited training . If people are happy to pay for the service( bundles in the price. ) and it helps the make better coffee then so be it.

Re the price and features and versus the brewtus and other machine s , I'm kind of bored with the debate on it ( this isn't meant as being offence to anyone who comments or has commented ) , just that it's going round in circles a little bit . It's the price it is, with the service it is. You either place value on it as as package or you don't . I'm not going to buy one it's not for me .

Sunil if it fits your taste ,budget and lifestyle and needs ,and it gets you buying fresh coffee from any of the great roasters out there then cool , if it allows you to serve great coffee to other people and turn them away from Nespresso / charbucks then that's good also .

Like I said love to hear what the white gloves are like


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## Sunil (Nov 19, 2013)

To finally share my experience with the white glove service today:

Sage have partnered with Coffee Classics (http://www.coffeeclassicsdirect.co.uk) to provide the service. It seems like they have been in the coffee business supplying the trade for many years and now also offer servicing support retail. I suspect some of you on here might have heard of them before?

I had a very pleasant chap called Josh turn up for the appointment. He seemed to really know his stuff and was very comfortable with the machine, menus, features, etc. He said that they'd had the machines now for close to 6 months including getting at the internals to service them, etc. (I believe they also provide the service support part of Sage's 2 year warranty.)

He started by asking us (the wife and I) how far we'd got with the machine and grinder thus far, and spoke a little bit about the beans we were using as well - Allpress redchurch blend and Ozone's house blend (http://www.ozonecoffee.co.uk/shop/ozone-espresso/). He'd also brought with him Coffee Classic's single origin beans (El Salvador and Sidama)

We then proceeded to talk about dosing (using the single unpressurised basket). It seems I was grinding too coarse and under dosing a bit with the way I'd set it up. So, we tried three or four combinations of dose and grind. With the Ozone house blend, I settled on 7gms in, just shy of 30 ml out in 30 seconds with the machine on stock settings (93 degrees and 7 secs of pre-infusion)

A few handy hints (for me at least) that he shared:

Grind size: If you can get a fingerprint to hold its shape in the ground coffee when you press your finger in, you're probably getting the grind about right

Dosing: After you extract your shot, the puck in the pf should have markings of the group head shower screen on it and should be quite dry and not very springy when you press your thumb in. This indicates that there is no space between the screen and the top of the puck going in where water could pool during extraction / preinfusion.

Crema: He suggested that if you dip your little finger into the crema and hold it up, the crema should not drip down your finger. If it does your shot may be too 'wet'

Tamping: Also, he helped with tamp pressure (suggesting it should feel like a 'firm handshake') - he said that this was one of the harder skills to perfect and one of the main variables in the extraction process. Turned out I was tamping quite a bit firmer than he was. Another handy tip was that you should be able to turn the pf upside down after tamping and nothing falls out!

He also demonstrated the razor tool that comes with the machine that helps ensure that you've got the exact right dose tamped in the pf

We then moved on to milk - steaming and microfoam. As has been mentioned earlier on this and other threads, the Sage is pretty forgiving with milk technique and what I'd been doing until today was not too far off producing decent microfoam.

What was really helpful was using Josh's thermometer to measure the temperature of the milk. What I thought felt like 60-65 degrees was actually just under 50!

Finally we spoke about cleaning the machine. The Sage is set up to prompt you to run a cleaning cycle once every 200 shots. It comes with a pf blank rubber insert that goes into the single basket. They also provide two cleaning tablets with the machine.

You just set one of the tablets onto the rubber insert, lock in the pf and select the cleaning cycle from the menu. Then just hit the manual button (making sure the drip tray is empty and there's enough water in the tank. We didn't actually do this, but it apparently takes 6-7 mins to run.

Overall, Josh spent over two hours with me and I came out of the session really appreciating it's value and having extracted perhaps the best shots so far from the machine, and made the best milk drinks as well. In summary, this represented great value for me and would perhaps do for others who are new-ish to home espresso machines.

i'll try and post some photos tomorrow.


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## Glenn (Jun 14, 2008)

Thanks for sharing your experiences Sunil. That's a good writeup and it seems like you're well on the way to getting the best out of your machine.

Have you considered TempTags? 65c every time

Are you now using the double basket or predominantly the single? Was there any advice given regarding this during the service call?


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## Sunil (Nov 19, 2013)

Hi folks, some pictures are here: https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A1GWZuqDer8RO

@Glenn still using only the single basket. During the visit, we focused on dosing for the single basket only. I'm usually quite happy with 30 ml of coffee and about 70-80 ml of milk.

I will try the double basket at the weekend though


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