Rating the Francis Francis X7 Espresso Machine

By Josh Quittner

Technology put a man on the moon, but it has yet to enable the average Joe to make a perfect shot of espresso. Scores of websites are devoted to this topic. For my money, none is better than Coffeegeek.com which I scoured some years back to come up with my current rig: a Rancilio Silvia. I adore Miss Silvia and use her daily while my dog Sticky sits at my feet. But the machine is for people who like to fiddle--and not everyone wants to grind beans, pre-heat demitasses, tamp at just the right pressure, "temperature surf" and do all the other hoo-ha necessary to produce a perfect shot (or "God shot," as they call it on Coffeegeek). Even the lazy have a right to God shots at home, I suppose.

It is with those consumers in mind that illycaffe, the innovative Italian maker of espresso machines (and the top European exporter of coffee to North America), recently made an audacious claim: Its new Francis Francis X7 would consistently create a "perfect shot of espresso." You can get a machine now for $395 at illyusa.com the X7 will be rolled out to national retailers shortly. I tried the machine for a week and have to concur; it did, indeed, produce perfect shots. Simply, cleanly and with no fuss--complete with a thick layer of crema atop the espresso.

How does the X7 make foolproof crema? "Pressure--this is the old story," says Andrea Illy, 43, a grandson of the company's founder. After years of research, "we ended up discovering we had to change the way espresso was prepared." Thus was born illy's iperEspresso brewing system. The X7 brews shots from capsules you purchase--prepacked plastic thimbles that hold about 7 g of espresso. Though the system sounds similar to what a competitor, Nespresso, has been selling for years, illy says the X7 has a unique, two-stage process: hot water is injected into a chamber and infuses the coffee grounds until it reaches the proper pressure, then a valve opens, and a jet of espresso flows out. My tests produced crema like the head of a draft Guinness. It's so easy, my wife could (probably) do it.

I noticed one odd side effect, however: though quieter than the Silvia, the X7 makes a small, pneumatic hiss during brewing that consistently sent Sticky into heavy-panting, tongue-lolling shock. One morning the noise made the dog jump into the shower with my daughter--and Sticky hates water. Illy says he has never heard of such a thing but notes that even perfection can be perfected. "There is never an end to possible improvements," he says. "It's an endless process." Perhaps. But I still love to fiddle, so I'm sticking with Miss Silvia. You can pry her from my cold, dead, still caffeinated fingers.