The Eureka Costanza Espresso Machine Review

You’ve heard of espresso machine manufacturers making grinders: Profitec does it; ECM does it; Gaggia does it; Bezzera does it. But have you ever heard of a grinder manufacturer making an espresso machine?

Well, you have now. 

Just this year, Eureka released their very first espresso machine: the Costanza. Designed to pair perfectly with their Mignon grinders, the Costanza is a simple yet powerful heat-exchanger that has some handy features to make your life as a home barista easier. It also happens to be one of the most compact prosumers I’ve ever seen. 

Right from the get-go, I was a fan. Costanza is an Italian word meaning “tenacity” or “steadfastness,” and this machine delivers some impressive performance while maintaining one of the lowest profiles I've seen on a prosumer machine.

But is it steadfast? Is it tenacious? To find out, I brought one back to my workbench in the studio and used it as my daily driver for a week. 

The Costanza: An Overview

At first glance, the Costanza looks like a traditional E61 group machine…and yet there’s something about it that catches my eye and demands my attention. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but I find my gaze lingers on the Costanza more than it has on other machines…perhaps it’s the clean lines, unspoiled by complex beveling or overly-flashy detailing. Maybe it’s the low profile—at just 13” tall, the Costanza is one of the most compact prosumers available, and there’s something sort of visually fascinating about a prosumer-grade machine that’s so small…like looking at a miniature horse. This thing is supposed to be bigger…but it’s not!

At any rate, I really like the way the Costanza looks, a feeling that is compounded by the versatility of its aesthetics. It’s got six different side panel options (plus a version that comes with a non-swappable polished stainless steel housing): white, black and red for metallic; and walnut, oak, and olive for wood. So, you can dress your Costanza up to suit the style of your kitchen…or your Mignon grinder (which, remember, is sort of the whole idea). 

The wood options use the exact same veneers as the Mignon Design series and Eureka’s wood accessories, and the metallic options perfectly match those colors available on other Mignon grinders. But the aesthetic connection between Costanza and Mignon goes beyond color matching: they both have the same, cubic, almost nostalgic shape. I’ve got the walnut panels on the one I’m using, and it reminds me of the wood-paneled Caravan my parents drove when I was a kid in the best way possible. Anyways, the Costanza and the Mignon are a match made in heaven: few other grinder & machine pairings offer this level of aesthetic consistency. So, if stylistic accord is paramount for your kitchen, you’d be hard-pressed to find this level of it anywhere else. 

External Features

All right, let’s set aesthetics aside and do a run-down of the Costanza’s external features: on top, you’ll find access to the water reservoir and a generous cup warming area. On the front face, you’ve got quarter-turn knobs for steam and hot water operation. Despite being an unabashed joystick man, I actually quite enjoy these knobs: they’ve got a pleasant, rubbery feel to them, and they’re remarkably easy to turn. Both the steam and hot water wands are no-burn, too, which is a nice touch for sure. 

On the bottom-right of the Costanza is a dual gauge that reads out steam and extraction pressures. On the left is the PID menu screen, which allows you to do all sorts of fun things which I’ll discuss in an upcoming section. The main power button is just below this screen. 

The drip tray is quite large for such a compact machine. It holds 1 liter of liquid, so you won’t need to empty it all that often; and, it slides right out, no lifting or tilting required. So, if you maybe go a little too long without emptying it, you’ll still be able to do so without splashing water all over the place. The size of the drip tray gives you a spacious working area with plenty of room for cups and scales—you can even set your pitcher on it to froth hands-free. 

The whole thing sits on a solid metal frame, which is in turn supported by four square legs that match the aesthetic of the rubber on the quarter-turn knobs, the stock portafilter and brew lever handles, and, of course, the black base of a Mignon. 

Internal Features & PID Menu

For an E61 group machine, the Costanza heats up quite quickly—just 10 to 15 minutes from cold until it’s brew-ready. There are two versions of the Costanza: one with a vibration pump, and one with a rotary pump. The Costanza I’ve been using all week has a rotary pump, and I’ve got to say, it’s much quieter and more pleasant to hear than any vibration-pump machine I’ve ever used. 

The PID menu gives you control over all the Costanza’s features, but the most exciting stuff happens in the settings sub-menu. 

The Costanza’s brew temperature can be set to one of three levels: warm (194°F), hot (199.4°F), and very hot (204.8°F). The warm setting is really best-suited for brewing only the darkest of roasts, while the hot setting is ideal for medium roasts, and very hot is best for light roasts. Each of these settings also changes the amount of steam power you can expect. At warm, the internal boiler pressure is 0.75 bar; on hot, it’s right at 1 bar; and at very hot, it rises to 1.5 bar. I’ll talk more about how each of these pressures translates to steaming performance in just a bit. 

Other programming options include a weekly time-of-day schedule, which sets the machine to turn on and off at specified times each day of the week; an eco-mode, which turns the machine off after a set period of inactivity (anywhere between 0 and 90 minutes); and an automatic descaling program you can run. This last feature is a particularly nice one, as we generally don’t recommend descaling heat-exchangers or dual-boilers at home. This means, when it eventually comes time to descale your machine, you’ll be able to do it yourself, rather than sending it in for service. 

Quick side note on descaling: if you’re putting tap water directly into your espresso machine, ultimately, scale will build up and you’ll need to descale your machine. But, if you only fill your reservoir with properly-filtered water, you’ll need to do this much less…maybe even not at all. For us, “properly-filtered water” means using BWT products.

The PID menu also allows you to change the display language, toggle the screensaver, view or reset the shot counter, set the maintenance schedule, and check any ongoing alarms. .

Using the Costanza

 

As I write this, I’ve been brewing on the Costanza for a good week now. I have just one complaint (which I’ll get to in a bit); overall, the machine has really impressed me. It’s simple—it does what you want, when you want it; heats up quickly, turns on and off automatically, and (most importantly) pulls some pretty delicious shots of espresso. With nothing more than a pleasant hum, the rotary pump delivers consistent pressures during an extraction, I was able to do a light pre-infusion with internal pressure just by lifting the brew lever half-way. If pre-infusion is something that particularly excites you, and you’d like to have a bit more versatility with how and for how long you do it, the Costanza is available with a flow control device installed. 

The Costanza follows a well-established tradition of PID heat-exchangers that opt for preset temperature settings rather than giving users degree-by-degree control (cf. the Profited Pro 400/JUMP and the ECM Mechanika VI/Slim PID). This means you still get some brewing versatility without being bogged down by too many proverbial knobs to turn when setting up your extraction. Because of this I think the Costanza shines best on the countertop of someone who is likely to stick with a one or two coffees consistently. Especially if that person is a milk-based-drink enjoyer. 

Now, I just happen to be a milk-based-drink enjoyer who knows what he wants in his morning coffee and I can confidently say that, after having used the Costanza to froth up a cappuccino in the morning for a week now, I never felt like I needed to go into the menu to adjust settings, and the machine performed as well as I could have possibly hoped. 

One thing that really stands out about the Costanza is its steam power—it’s absolutely bananas. Even without bumping the boiler temperature up to “very hot,” the four-hole tip delivers a burst of steam in the pitcher that, frankly, astonished me. If I’d been blindfolded, I would have sworn I was using a commercial machine rather than one of the most compact heat-exchangers in existence. 

For me, someone used to the pleasant but persistent plodding of the BZ13’s two-hole tip, this level of power took some getting used to. But, after an attempt or two I had it mostly figured out and was frothing up pillowy cappuccinos in practically no time. I asked my colleague John (a former professional barista and cafe manager) to give steaming a shot—he’s a much more accomplished latte artist than I am—and he, too, was “genuinely surprised” at how much power the Costanza put out. (Of course, he delivered a perfect rosetta on his first try.)

Final Thoughts

The Costanza is not only attractive and stylistically versatile, it’s built well and performs on par with other machines in its class—and, when it comes to steaming, it totally leaves them in the dust. Plus, it heats up quickly for an E61-group machine, and offers a suite of helpful features that make your life as a home barista easy. 

It’s a perfect option for the kind person who knows what kind of drinks they like and wants a reliable and powerful machine to perform consistently. If you’re brewing up the same Crema Wave cappuccino every morning, the Costanza is going to perform more than admirably, and look great doing it—especially if you’ve already got yourself a Mignon grinder.