Owning the Dalla Corte Mina

The Dalla Corte Mina is emblematic of Dalla Corte’s commitment to superb espresso and everything they have ventured to accomplish. With the arrival of the Mina, things have changed here at the office. There’s a kind of frenetic pace, a sort of impatience caused by our excitement to share this machine with our customers. This, of course, may be due in part to all of the coffee it’s made for us, but the Mina really is something else and we like it a lot. With it’s flow profiling system and incredible ingenuity, we’re positive you’ll agree.

The key to understanding what the Mina has to offer is at its heart: the DFR (Digital Flow Regulator) and a custom made Flow Meter. This is the first flow meter designed for an espresso machine and it is so accurate that it can measure up to 80 pulses per second. Now, when approaching the Mina, perhaps the first thing you’ll notice is the yoke above the brew group. The yoke works with the DFR and Flow Meter. You can use the yoke in both the manual and automatic mode and, when brewing coffee by using the control knob on the right, you will brew in the automatic mode only. This manual lever allows you to adjust flow rate in five stages during your extraction between 0 and 12 grams/second. Each stage of flow rate is represented by a series of lights on the right side of the machine as a visual aid. By adjusting flow rate, you’re granted a new level of control over your extraction, essentially creating a unique extraction profile. With the Mina, Dalla Corte’s mission was to offer control over your espresso’s balance, acidity, sweetness—even it’s aftertaste and texture. After testing it, we think Dalla Corte has achieved that mission in spades.

Another key strength of the Mina comes from the Dalla Corte Mina App which lets you control flow automatically. When connected to the Dalla Corte Mina App, you can save your favorite profiles, and select which you would prefer your Mina to perform. From here, you can create new profiles or edit existing ones by adjusting flow rate in grams/second and time at each step in seconds for each of the five steps in your flow profile. With that in mind, we’re proud to say our results from the Mina have been the most consistent we’ve ever experienced.

On the App, you can find a shot timer, group temperature, and steam boiler temperature, as well as a litany of parameters you can freely adjust. Another intriguing feature of the App is its ability to upload flow profiles to any Mina. With multiple Minas, you can create specialized brewing stations, with each machine tuned to get the perfect cup out of a particular coffee. And, with the Mina’s NSF certification, it stands to be a powerful addition to any cafe. You can even manage the entire group with a single smart device. We’ve tested this ourselves, and we’re happy to say that the experience is transformative. The way we look at exploring coffee has never been more open.