With its official worldwide launch at Host Milan complete, the Pilot single boiler machine from Barista Attitude will soon be arriving on Australian shores.
After the launch of both the Storm and Tempesta espresso coffee machines, Barista Attitude was thrilled to bring its newest innovation to the Host Milano stage: the Pilot.
The Pilot is the Italian espresso machine manufacturer’s first single boiler machine, which Barista Attitude Group Marketing Director Jacopo Bambini says was the obvious next step for the range.
“We needed to complete the Barista Attitude range with a machine that will always target the specialty coffee industry,” says Jacopo.
The company amalgamated its favourite components of the Storm and the Tempesta models into the Pilot, while also adding new features based on customer feedback.
“We worked on the machine’s Human- Machine Interface to make it easier to access information that the barista would need,” Jacopo says.
Further adjustments include focusing on the serviceability of the machine while keeping the classic design of the Barista Attitude machines. Jacopo says the Pilot is easy to handle to ensure full access to all the machine’s settings.
He adds that the brand’s goal was to make a machine with the best features of a specialty coffee machine while keeping it easy to control from a barista’s point of view.
Because the machine uses just one boiler, the user only needs to adjust and monitor one temperature.
“Not all coffee shops today have a well-trained and skilled barista, especially now when recruiting staff for coffee shops is not so easy in Europe and around the world,” Jacopo says.
For those that want further control, users can still set two different timings for a pre-infusion on each group to capture intended flavour profiles.
New features that add to the Pilot’s usability include the five-inch touchscreen, and the relocation of the steam wand to the middle of the machine, making the Pilot more compact than its predecessors.
“The automatic steam wand that controls the temperature of the milk and helps barista for a perfect result in the cup,” Jacopo says.
“With the big capacity of the boiler, you can have the steam wand work at a high- performance level without any issues.”
While the Pilot was first introduced in June at the World Barista Championship in Athens, Host Milano was the launch pad to introduce the single boiler machine to a wider international audience that were curious about the range’s newest addition.
“Host was the perfect window to present the machine globally because we had finished all the necessary certification to send it around the world,” Jacopo says.
This means the Pilot is ready to be sold to the Australian market, and the wider Asia Pacific region. Australians looking to add to their Barista Attitude collections can expect the Pilot to arrive in the country by the end of 2023.
“Adjusting for different countries and markets is not always easy, but we feel as if we’ve been able to hit our targets,” Jacopo says.
Barista Attitude unveiled the Pilot alongside other machines in the company’s range, accompanied by live DJs and brand ambassadors Emi Fukahori and Michalis Dimitrakopoulos.
“It was great to be able to present the entire range together,” says Jacopo.
He adds that the Pilot was built with international markets in mind.
“In markets like Australia, the espresso is the base, so the Pilot offers a complete line that best suits the entire coffee-making process,” he says.
According to Jacopo, the way in which Australians treat their coffee puts the country above most other international coffee markets.
“We believe that Australia, in a certain way, is a benchmark because it is not a one-way market,” he says. “Having different varieties of markets in the coffee world is what sets Australia apart.”
More specifically, Jacopo says the Pilot is ideal for cafés that aren’t too big or too small but see enough traffic that allows for experimentation.
“It’s a good machine for those who are looking for a solution in terms of quality of a machine, and who want to send a strong message to the customer about how much they care about their coffee,” he says.
For more information, visit www.barista-attitude.com
This article appears in the December 2023 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
