Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker review: a top battery-powered device for making espressos on the go

Newcomer Brevoy enters the burgeoning arena of portable espresso makers with a brilliant small-form product that heats water to just below boiling point before automatically extracting a delicious espresso, replete with obligatory crema.

We’ve reviewed a number of portable espresso makers over the years and you can read about them in our guide to the best espresso machines. However, when it comes to  convenience, portability and performance, the Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker is our new number one portable choice.

Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker review: price and availability

In the UK, the Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker normally retails at £146 but if you’re quick enough, you can take advantage of the company’s latest Black Friday deal direct from the Brevoy website and nab one for £122. Alternatively head straight for Amazon where it’s going for a song – just £95.99.

Live Stateside? Visit Brevoy where it’s retailing at $149.99 or, for an even better bargain, Amazon, where it’s selling for a very reasonable $111.99.

Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker review: why you need a portable espresso maker

If, like me, you can’t start the day without a premium-quality espresso, you should seriously consider buying yourself a portable machine like this sterling little operator. Let me explain.

I’ve long been a huge fan of portable espresso makers, in fact ever since around 2006 when Handpresso produced what I believe to be the very first hand-operated portable espresso maker on the market, a weird-looking product that worked just like a bicycle pump. This marvel of simple physics required no electricity at all so you could feasibly make an espresso on top of the Matterhorn using just a small gas burner to boil some water and a bit of forearm muscle to pump the hot water through some pre-ground coffee. Make no mistake, this wasn’t some half-arsed attempt to compete with a proper espresso machine because the dollop of black gold it extracted had all the tell-tale signs of a genuine espresso – namely a rich, aromatic, full-bodied extraction with an impressive dollop of all-important crema.

Fast forward a year or two and others like Wacaco and Staresso soon entered the fray with their own versions that also involved manually hand-pumping pressurised water through a coffee basket, albeit via a different method. This hand-pumping malarky isn’t as silly as it sounds because all espresso machines – including those monsters you see in coffee shops – use a similar technique for pumping hot water through finely-ground coffee. They just use an electrically powered water pump instead.

So why would you need one of these wondrous gizmos? Let’s start with going away on holiday. Unless you’re staying in a half decent hotel you might find that the only beside beverage offerings are tea and, if you can hack it, instant coffee, which any coffee aficionado will tell you isn’t really coffee. But that’s no problem because there’s a kettle and you have your own portable coffee maker with you. Job’s a good’un. Or say you’re camping in the wilds but you at least have a gas cooker to hand. Voila, instant espresso. Or maybe you’re visiting your grandparents who perhaps haven’t yet left the 20th Century so all they can offer is ‘a nice cup of tea or an instant coffee, dear?’. You get the gist.

I always make a point of packing my Staresso portable espresso maker whenever I go away, whether it’s a hotel-based holiday, an Air BnB, a camping adventure or a canal boat boat trip. All I need is some freshly ground coffee – or, more conveniently, a clutch of Nespresso pods – some bottled water and access to a kettle for a perfect pick-me-up every morning. And I mean perfect with a capital P.

However, that’s all about to change because I’ve just taken delivery of this new battery-powered toy from Brevoy which not only does all the water pumping for you but it also boils the water. For me, this is a liberating revelation in portable coffee makers because it quite literally cuts out that very last hurdle – access to hot water.

Let’s get down to the review.

Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker review: design and features

Available in Camping Green, Oceanic Black and Lunar White, the Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker comes in a handsome sleeved box with everything you need to get started. Firstly, there’s the machine itself which measures 23cm in height and 8cm in width – compact enough for any hand luggage or backpack. Granted, at 650g it’s not the lightest on the market but then you are getting a fully-featured espresso machine for a fraction of the size and weight of even the smallest electrically powered model. And with its IPX6 waterproof design, you can happily rinse this battery-powered unit under a tap without setting the tent on fire.

Included in the package are the following items: a single espresso basket (7-9g), a larger double shot basket (14-18g), a clip-on basket funnel to prevent overspill when filling the basket with coffee, a slim metal coffee grounds stirrer that also serves as a coffee or sugar stirrer, two sizes of coffee scoop that also function as tampers, a USB-C charging cable and, already attached to the machine, a Nespresso-compatible capsule holder for truly mess-free espresso making.

The Brevoy comprises a 50mm to 70mm water boiler on top with a rubber-sealed push-on lid to prevent spillages. Just below this is a big On button that you press once to see the unit’s state of charge in four bars. A longer press activates the boiler which dispenses the water automatically after a set period of time which I will expand upon in the performance chapter below.

To make a standard pre-ground espresso, fill the water chamber to the 50mm or 70mm mark depending on which size portafilter basket you’ve chosen, fill the coffee basket with fresh grounds and tamp them down with the rear of the coffee scoop. Now screw in the portafilter nice and tight. You can either dispense coffee into the included opaque plastic cover which also serves as a not especially pleasing cup or, for true authenticity, hold the unit above your ideally pre-heated espresso cup of choice. Now long press the start button and wait until the water is heated to between 92˚C and 96˚C after which the espresso is automatically extracted straight into the cup using between 9 and 12 bars of pressure. And that’s all there is to it.

It’s even easier – and far less messier – if you simply use a Nespresso pod. Just push it into the Nespresso-sized capsule adaptor, screw into place and perform the same function as above (the Nespresso method uses up to 20 bars of pressure). The beauty of this method is that there is very little mess involved and hardly any cleaning required.

Do I have any reservations to report. If anything, the rubber-flapped access to the USB-C port could be easier to manipulate because as it stands I need to use a guitar plectrum or tip of a sharp knife to release the firm waterproof closure flap. But this is small fry stuff that in no way impacts the extremely positive experience of using this machine.

Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker review: performance

The Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker review in one word: sensational! 

For my first test I used my favourite freshly-ground coffee beans – Spiller & Tait Signature Blend – and added a scoop’s worth into the single shot basket. For this test I used bottled water at room temperature – just as it would be in a hotel room or tent – and filled the boiler to the 50ml mark. From start to finish it took 3 minutes and 5 seconds to extraction which I consider very good given this thing is battery powered. Depending on your altitude, using this room-temperature method should eek out between four and six cups’ worth of coffee from the battery before it needs a recharge.

I then performed the same test using pre-boiled water from my InSinkErator 4n1 Touch boiling water tap (about 95˚C) and it completed the task in an amazing 34 seconds. According to Brevoy, this pre-boiled method should yield about 300 cups from the unit’s airplane-safe 9000mAh battery. I’m not sure it would stretch that far but almost certainly thereabouts – and that’s a phenomenal statistic in my book.

The key thing I should mention is that both methods yielded extractions that were as hot as most full-sized espresso machines I’ve used. So you’re definitely not getting insipidly warm espresso out of this thing – you’re getting the full monty at proper lip-tingling temperature. You also get a decent cup’s worth of coffee out of the single-shot basket but if you hanker for more, use the double shot basket instead which will fill a typical espresso cup to the brim. However, I would suggest that, if camping, a best portable power station would prove extremely handy for charging the Brevoy on the go. It takes over 90 minutes to charge the battery from empty.

At this juncture I should mention that there’s quite a lot of mess involved when cleaning up afterwards, especially when emptying the spent coffee grounds which, for me, were too sodden to expel in one lump. If you want a tidier time, I would experiment with some Nespresso capsules because this method is almost completely mess free. Simply press a pod into the supplied capsule adaptor and follow the same principals. I was surprised by how much crema my favourite Cafepod Supercharger capsule produced. However, I should add that no capsule can match freshly-ground beans for full bodied texture and deep, rich palate-smacking flavour.

To sum up, I have to say that this machine has impressed me much more than anticipated. The coffee it extracts is as good as that produced by the Sage Bambino Plus table-top model and it’s not far off the De’Longhi La Specialista Opera I recently reviewed.

Brevoy Portable Espresso Maker review: verdict

If you’re a real coffee aficionado and want a convenient, versatile and fairly lightweight portable espresso maker that performs the entire task of whipping up a premium coffee no matter where you are, this is the model for you. It’s the perfect travel companion for hotel use, camping, orienteering or spending a night over with people who don’t know what a real coffee is. Top marks.