The De’Longhi La Specialista Touch is so close perfection

Introduction

The simple truth is that if you want the best quality espresso, you need a manual machine; but, a manual machine often involves a lot of faff, playing with grinder settings and adjusting tamping. With the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch, you can bypass a lot of those issues, thanks to its touchscreen interface and smart controls that help you get the right settings.

Producing quality shot after quality shot, I found this the quickest coffee machine to get started with, wasting fewer beans than normal.

Design and Features

• Tamp and grind help
• Excellent touchscreen
• Bean hopper is a little small

The De’Longhi La Specialista Touch is a compact manual espresso machine with everything you need in one device, including an integrated grinder, milk frother and a milk jug.

It’s built to take the pain out of learning how to use a manual machine, starting from the moment you turn the machine one when it walks you through making an espresso using the Bean Adapt feature.

The machine started by getting me to add my beans to the hopper. I freshly roasted 300g of Peruvian fairtrade beans, and found that they only just fitted in the hopper. A standard bag should fit fine, but a little more breathing space would have been good.

I was then asked to select the roast level (light, medium, dark, and so on)so that the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch could recommend a grind level (8 in my case). After setting the grind level, the touchscreen then talked me through grinding the beans into the double filter that comes pre-installed in the group handle.

There’s also a single filter in the box if you want to make a single shot of espresso. Both filters are single-walled, which is the best type; double-walled filters are there to increase pressure for incorrectly ground beans, and don’t produce very good results.

There’s then a guide on using the tamper with the Dosing & Tamping guide, which clips onto the top of the filter. Pressing the tamper down, the ‘OK’ mark should be shown. In my case, the +1 mark was shown, so I selected this option and the coffee machine asked me to reinsert the group handle for a quick top-up of coffee.

This got me the perfect level of ground coffee, with the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch remembering the setting for next time.

I then inserted the group handle under the group head, and hit the button to pour the espresso. Cleverly, the machine monitors the pour.

Although the espresso looked pretty good, the screen said that the espresso had taken too long to pour and needed a coarser grind.

I set the grinder to level 9 and found that this time, the tamper showed -1, which is too much coffee.

Tapping this option on the screen, the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch said to use the Dose Adjust tool, which scrapes off a bit of coffee from the top to leave the right amount, and future grinds are adjusted to cater for this.

I then poured a shot of coffee and got the all clear, and was asked to save my coffee under a name. In this way, the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch builds up a database of coffees that you use, so when you switch between beans, you can switch back to the settings, with just a bit of minor adjustment needed.

Overall, the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch made it really quick to go from nothing to a perfect shot. In fact, I found this machine quicker to set up and use than the Ninja Lux Café Premier Series.

Once the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch is configured, it’s ready to pour. For each type of coffee bean, I could adjust the brewing temperature, pre-infusion length, dose time and grinder setting to get the result that I wanted. That’s an uncommon level of adjustment available on a machine at this price, and typically I’d only expect to see this on high-end machines, such as the WPM KD-310VPS.

The main screen shows the drinks that are available: espresso, cappuccino, cold brew, latte macchiato, latte, flat white, hot milk, long black, Americano and hot water. Plus, I could add my own style of drink.

Tapping any drink brings up a simple menu that takes you, left-to-right, from grinding to pouring coffee and, if milk is involved, frothing. It’s delightfully simple to use with just the right amount of handholding going on.

Milk frothing can be handled automatically, or you can set it to manual mode if you prefer to take control. That’s also uncommon: espresso machines typically offer automatic or manual frothing, but not both.

A 1.7-litre water tank lifts out the back and provides plenty of water to make a good number of drinks before frothing.

It’s possible to fit cups of up to 120mm underneath the spouts. For espresso cups, there’s a small slide-in drip tray that raises the cups closer to the spout. This does get in the way of the milk jug, so a flip-down cup holder would have been neater.

Coffee Quality

• Excellent espresso
• Good, fast cold-brew

The De’Longhi La Specialista Touch is largely about espresso-based drinks, so it’s good to see that it’s good at making them. This coffee machine is up there with the best that I have tested.

I used filtered water in the tank, as there’s no option to add a water filter to this model.

After following the process to adjust my beans, I managed to pour a pretty spot-on shot of espresso that had a nice thick crema, with an oily texture. This crema lasted for a couple of minutes.

My coffee was served at 68°C, which is about right for espresso: just about drinkable from the moment it’s poured.

The taste was excellent. My fairtrade Peruvian beans have a bold acidity to them, and a rich earthy flavour that was preserved. It’s hard to get better than this without spending a lot more on the machine and grinder.

As well as espresso, the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch can produce cold-brew coffee, using cold water dripped through ground coffee, into a cup filled with ice. The result is very good: not quite as strong or as rich as ‘proper’ cold brew, but you get a cup within a few minutes rather than having to brew the coffee for days.

Milk Frothing

• Excellent automatic frothing
• Manual frothing is as easy

Milk frothing can be handled automatically by the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch. Just slip the steam wand into the Automatic position, with the jug of milk below, and it will froth to the set temperature and froth level required by the drink (both options can be overridden).

I made a flat white, starting by pouring a double-shot of espresso. A pleasing, thick crema filled the cup, which is important when you want to layer milk on top.

After automatic frothing, I was impressed with the result. A tap and swirl to mix the milk was all that was needed, and then I could free pour a nice-looking flat white, with compact microbubbles.

I then switched to manual frothing, getting the level of foam I wanted, and waiting until the milk was at 64°C. My second flat white is arguably slightly better. If you want manual control, the tools are there for you; if you don’t, the automatic options are available.

Maintenance

• Cleans the steam wand automatically
• Warns you when it’s time to descale

Maintenance isn’t too bad on this machine. The grinder will need wiping down and using the brush to remove loose grinds. Similarly, the group head needs similar attention: a damp cloth after making coffee is useful.

There’s a large drip tray on this model, too. It’s worth emptying daily, but if you forget, the pop-up red sign shows you when it’s full.

It’s good to see that the steamer wand cleans itself. After pushing this back to the Off position, fresh steam is pushed through the wand to remove any milk residue. Just give the end a wipe and you’re good to go. Should the wand get blocked, the pin tool in the box can be used to unblock.

That leaves descaling. Based on the water hardness level you set by using the test strip in the box, the De’Longhi La Specialista Touch knows when it’s time to descale and the on-screen instructions make the job easy.

Should you buy it?