Out of the BoxSilvia Pro
The Rancilio Silvia is a big machine and arrives carefully boxed in a commercial double-boxed cardboard container; It’s not really meant to show pretty pictures on a shelf at some mega mart. The machine does weigh 20 kilograms (44 lbs) bone dry after all and the sturdy box supports that.
Here’s the unboxing process.
Included is what Rancilio calls a Barista Kit. There’s a dispersion screen showerhead cleaning brush, a water softener, Rancilio’s commercial ergonomic 58mm portafilter handle with a double spout, a rubber backflush disk, cleaning tables, a single and double filter basket, and a coffee measuring spoon.
Probably the best thing in the kit is a really nice and pro-grade black wood handled tamper with a stainless steel flat 58mm base. It’s quite nice and I love seeing manufacturers include a perk like this, which normally you’d be spending $50-$100 on.
Here are some Rancilio Silvia Pro Specifications.
Machine Dimensions | |
---|---|
Width | 250mm / 9.8" |
Height | 390mm / 15.3" |
Depth | 420mm / 16.5" |
Work Surface Depth | 140mm / 5.5" |
Drip Tray Height | 80-90-100mm / 3-3.5-4" |
Machine Weight | 20kg / 44.1lb |
Water Reservoir | 2l / 67fl.oz |
Drip Tray Volume | Not measured |
Boilers and Brewing | |
---|---|
Brew Boiler Material | Brass |
Steam Boiler Material | Steel |
Steam Boiler Volume | 1l / 35 fl.oz |
Brew Boiler Volume | 300ml / 10.5 fl.oz |
Insulated Boilers | Yes |
Power Draw | 950-1000W, 120V, 60Hz |
Temperature Control | Yes, Both Boilers |
PID | Yes, Both Boilers |
Electronics and Controls | |
---|---|
Auto On | Sort of* |
Auto Off | Yes |
Shot Timer | Yes |
Volumetric Shot (Automatic) | No |
24H Clock | No |
Temperature Control | Yes, 1C / 1F both boilers |
Auto Clean Cycle | Yes |
Auto Fill | Yes |
Hot Water Function | Sort of** |
Boiler Empty Function | Yes, Both Boilers |
* the Silvia Pro has a very rudimentary, “number of hours in the future” single use auto on setting ability.
** The hot water function isn’t available when powering up the machine; it only becomes enabled when you power up the steam boiler (which can take up to 15 minutes).
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DesignSilvia Pro
The Rancilio Silvia Pro is designed to look just like a Rancilio Silvia, albeit in a bigger and deeper footprint. In this light, Rancilio has done exactly what they intended: the Silvia Pro can often be confused for a standard Silvia if you don’t look too carefully.
The entire machine is clad in a nice thick plate of brushed stainless steel, save for the black painted frame you can see running up the left and right side. It is thick too – when compared to the paper thin metal used to sheathe Breville espresso machines, it’s night and day difference.
Underneath it all sits a sturdy metal frame (part of which is visible, see comment above about the side panels). Everything is bolted to this frame in some fashion, making the entire machine very sturdy and solid. Indeed, almost the entire machine is metal of some sort: it’s easier to list the plastic bits (grouphead shroud, rocker switches, steam knob, display panel, water reservoir lid and reservoir) than to list all the metal parts.
The Silvia Pro weighs 20 kilograms bone dry; that’s a decent jump up from the Silvia’s impressive weight of 13.5kg. The dimensions across the board are bigger, with the depth of the machine being the biggest difference. You can see this in the cup tray: where the Silvia can easily hold 3 rows of 3 espresso cups, the Silvia Pro can hold 2 rows of 4 espresso cups, plus a row of 3 cappuccino cups.
The Silvia Pro does not use the steam boiler as a heat exchanger to pre-heat water for the small brew boiler. This innovation was pioneered in the La Marzocco GS/3 and is what allowed that machine to run on 110V household current – the steam boiler does most of the work (including heating up the brew water via a heat exchanger) and because of that, recovery time on that high end machine is almost instantaneous. Other brands, including Breville, also use a similar system for rapidly heating up the water going into the brew boiler on their double boiler machines.
The machine uses two pumps: one for the brew boiler, and one for the steam boiler refill. The water intake is via a single hose, which splits into a Y valve inside the machine, with one tube feeding the brew boiler pump, and the second feeding the steam boiler.
The control panel of the Silvia Pro is fairly basic: top centre is an LCD display with a plus and minus button on either side of it. These, combined with the rocker brew activation switch below, are the three inputs to changing the machines’ functions and services. The panel shows the brew boiler temperature most times, but switches to a shot timer when you are pulling a shot using the rocker switch below it. When the machine is on, but idle, it displays the current brew boiler temperature.
Three additional rocker switches dominate the left front of the control panel: a power on button, a steam boiler activation button (the steam boiler is off by default), and a hot water tap button. On the right is the steam knob for producing steam from the full-rotation steam wand, and above the knob is a small but bright indicator light that shows the steam boiler status.
The steam arm is a full rotation wand, and has a nice 4 hole tip. It is not insulated, so it can get blazing hot, but it does have a rubber collar on board for easy and pain free handling while steaming.
The hot water wand moves forward and back on an angle and is on the left side of the brewing group.
The grouphead on the Silvia Pro is similar to the original Silvia, and is made of brass. It fits a 58mm Rancilio standard commercial portafilter. The dispersion screen is removable and replaceable, as is the portafilter gasket.
The portafilter is Rancilio’s standard commercial double spout design with a nice ergonomic handle. The machine comes with Rancilio’s single and double commercial baskets, with the double holding a max of 16.5g of coffee.
The water reservoir is nearly identical to the original Silvia: it holds 2 litres of water when full. It does have a low water sensor (something the original Silvia did not have), and the front display panel will indicate when water is low with H20 on the display.
The cup tray on the Silvia Pro is adjustable in height, like the cup trays on the Silvia since around 2010. A removable inner tray facilitates the emptying of waste water.
Of course, the Silvia Pro has standard advanced features like a 3 way solenoid valve for instant pressure relief once your shot pull is done. If you have manually activated the steam boiler, the machine can brew and steam at the same time. Recovery time is something we’re going to be looking at in the full detailed review.
Using the Silvia Pro
When you power up a Rancilio Silvia Pro for the first time, get ready for a shock: when the pump runs to fill the steam boiler, the machine is just about the noisiest I’ve ever experienced in testing literally dozens, if not hundreds of machines. Even though this is a First Look, I’ll have more on that below, because it could be the machine’s single worst feature.
When the machine powers up, the digital display runs through a few numbers and function settings, and then settles into showing you the brew boiler’s active temperature as it heats up. If you have not used the steam boiler yet, or have had it turned off in the last use of the machine, the steam boiler doesn’t automatically heat up: you have to activate the steam boiler rocker switch to activate it. Once you do, the bright single light above the steam knob starts flashing.
The brew boiler heats up very quickly; but the steam boiler can take about 12-15 minutes to get up to temperature. This presents a problem.
Hot Water on the Silvia Pro
The hot water delivery system on the Silvia Pro is not well engineered. Any hot water you get from the machine comes from the steam boiler, via passive pressure, and in order for it to even work, the steam boiler has to be up to full operating temperature. This means if you have just turned on the machine, you can brew an espresso within a few minutes, but you cannot pre-heat your espresso cups, or draw hot water for an americano or for tea, at least until the steam boiler is fully up to temperature, which can take up to 15 minutes.
When hot water is finally available, the flow out of the tap is very slow and sputters quite a bit. And then, the machine will auto-fill the steam boiler, scaring the crap out of you with its noise and vibrations. But again, more on that below.
Lastly, if the steam boiler needs to activate its heating element to re-heat the water inside of it, hot water will not be available until the light above the steam knob goes solid again: this is because an electronic switch inside for the hot water solenoid is disabled anytime the steam boiler is actively heating.
It’s a poorly engineered hot water system and the second worst thing about this machine (see later on for the worst thing).
Brewing Shots
The Silvia Pro is ready to brew espresso only a few minutes after you turn the machine on. This is because it has a decent element in the brew boiler and it only has to heat up about 300ml of water. If you are brewing as soon as the display reads your set temperature, I do recommend running a heating flush shot (no coffee) to heat up the grouphead and portafilter.
I do have some concerns about recovery time: a typical double shot will use up about 100ml of water at a minimum and that’s a full 1/3 of the brew boiler’s volume. I will be testing this for the full review.
The Silvia Pro’s filter baskets are the Rancilio standard single and double, which means you cannot put much more than 16.5 to 17g of coffee in the double basket. If you are used to dosing 18, 19g, you will need an aftermarket basket to accommodate the bigger dose.
The Silvia Pro does not have any kind of active or passive preinfusion mode, nor does it allow you to volumetrically program in a shot volume for automatic brewing. It is a “semi automatic” machine in the truest, old school sense.
With all this said, in my initial testing of the production version of this machine, it brewed excellent shots even with a 16.5 dose, and my Scace device testing showed the grouphead could keep up with your dialed in temperatures, staying within about 1F of your front panel setting 20 seconds into the shot. I also quite liked how the display panel would switch to a shot timer as soon as you start a shot.
Steaming with the Silvia Pro
This is a serious highlight of the machine: it’s one of the best steam ability machines I’ve tested in some time. Right out of the gate, the 4 hole tip and steam boiler power allowed me to make fantastic foam with first rate control, and in a very quick time: I measured taking 175ml of milk (6fl.oz) from 5C (42F) to 60C (140F) in about 21 seconds.
The resulting microfoam was world-class calibre; normally it takes me 5 or more pitchers of milk to fine tune my steaming technique on a new machine to get suitable microfoam; the Silvia Pro let me do it within the first two pitchers. In the Detailed Review, we’ll have a lot more on this subject.
Using Controls and Advanced Features
Get ready to have the manual ready, or have a cheat sheet handy, if you want to do anything advanced on the Rancilio Silvia Pro. Beyond the machine’s basic functions, not much is intuitive in this machine’s design or its control panel. You have to memorize all these F. functions or refer to your cheat sheet. Everytime I used this machine’s advanced features, I found myself wishing Rancilio had spent $20 to get a nice advanced colour touch screen control for this machine.
The Silvia Pro does not have an internal 24h clock, so while it does have an auto-on “feature” it’s hardly that: it’s auto on is a one-time event where you tell the machine how many hours in the future (up to 24) you want the machine to turn on. If you decide at 4:30pm you want it on at 7am the next morning, get ready for some mental math: okay – er, 5.. 6.. 6.5… or is that 7.5 hours till midnight, then another 7 hours, so I need to say wake up er 14, 15? 14.5 hours from now? And what function is for auto on. Is that F.03? F.01? Oh, it’s F.02. Okay, go into that, and hey, I can only set the wake up time in hours ahead? What did I calculate again? Sigh, never mind.
The auto off is a bit smarter: by going into the settings again and finding F.05 (why isn’t it right after the auto-on setting?) you can set it to 30 minutes, 60, or 120 minutes, or disable the feature, so the machine stays on as long as you leave the machine on.
The Silvia Pro does have a couple of nice features in its programming that you don’t often see in machines in its class. First, it has a guided cleaning cycle that takes you through the steps of backflushing and cleaning the machines (this is the F.01 function). Next, it has two functions (F.03 and F.04) for draining the brew and steam boilers, which is super handy if you want to store the machine long term or transport or ship it.
Rounding up the functions is the first one you see: T2, which lets you set the steam boiler temperature, and F.06, which lets you change between Fahrenheit and Celsius.
The Noise
By far the worst thing about the Silvia Pro is the noise. Noise and vibration. Specifically from the steam boiler’s pump. It’s so bad it seems a deal breaker on getting this machine, but it’s also something I think Rancilio can fix, relatively easily. My thought though is, why didn’t they already do so?
(ed.note July 12, 2021: since publication, I have been informed that Rancilio has addressed this noise and vibration issue with the steam pump boiler on current and future shipping machines, and will have a retrofit kit for existing early adopter machines; more info at the bottom of this section)
Once I had the back panels off the Silvia Pro, I understood why it was so noisy.
The brew boiler’s pump is mounted on a rubber holder, as is the steam boiler pump behind it. You would think both would have the same noise dampening from having the same housing mounts.
The thing is, the brew boiler pump’s water output goes to an armored flexible hose that feeds into the brew boiler. When the pump runs, any vibrations and noise it produces gets muffled and dampened by the flexible hose, so it’s not vibrating the brass brew boiler much by the time that connection is met.
The steam boiler pump is set up differently. The water exit from the steam boiler pump is a solid copper tube, directly attached to the steam boiler. Any vibrations from the pump is directly transmitted and fed to the rigid connections, then to the steam boiler itself, which is hard mounted to the frame of the Silvia Pro.
The result is, the pump’s vibrations shake the crap out of the steam boiler and machine frame, creating a ton of noise. On top of that, the vibrations transmit through the Silvia Pro’s frame, causing the cups on the top of the machine to dance across the cup tray, creating even more noise.
I’ll be talking about this more in the detailed review, and will have suggestions on how it can be remedied. In the meantime, enjoy a video of cups dancing across a Silvia Pro.
Since publication of this First Look, Rancilio has informed us that the problem with the noisy steam pump boiler has been remedied and a fix applied to all current and future shipping machines.
All existing machines with the original steam pump design can be remedied via a retrofit kit that can be ordered from Rancilio USA. The fix will make the steam pump have the same noise levels and vibration levels of the brew boiler pump, which is much more in the acceptable noise realm.
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ConclusionSilvia Pro
This isn’t supposed to be a review, but I would be very remiss if I didn’t point out the three worst features of the Rancilio Silvia Pro (something none of the vendor review sites are mentioning): the poorly designed hot water system, the basic and janky advanced controls, and the worst thing about this machine: the noise and vibrations from the steam boiler pump. (ed.note: which has been fixed in current and future shipping models)
With that said, there is a lot of great things about this machine to consider, even from this initial First Look. It brews excellent shots, has a super quick heat up time for the brew boiler, has absolutely phenomenal steaming power, it draws a relatively low amount of power, and the insulated boilers are a great long term benefit. Almost all the parts inside are commercial grade, which means long life.
The machine also looks absolutely fantastic, and keeps that Rancilio Silvia heritage intact. At under $1700, it’s one of the least expensive dual boiler machines made in Italy, and has the potential to be a long term, even multi-generational machine (meaning you can pass it down to your kids), especially since the entire machine is serviceable and uses commercial grade parts that most espresso machine repair shops stock regularly.
In fact, that last point is a major selling point and something to consider: if you buy a Rancilio Silvia Pro, chances are, if (and I hope, when) Rancilio decides to address and fix the steam boiler pump noise and vibrations, it’s something that many home owners should be able to fix themselves on existing machines.
And if the Silvia Pro needs a new heating element, wires replaced, or a new boiler 10, 15 years from now, it’s a $100-$500 local shop fix, instead of throwing the machine out and spending another $1700 on a new one.
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