Diamond espresso machines
Commercial Aroma series by Diamond Europe · Brussels, Belgium
When you search for a diamond espresso machine, two very different things show up. One is Diamond Brew, a Chicago-based startup that sells freeze-dried coffee crystals that dissolve in cold water without a machine. The company was recently featured in Wired and is currently riding a wave of TikTok popularity. The other is Diamond Europe, a Belgian company that has been quietly supplying cafes, caterers, and hospitality businesses for decades with professional commercial espresso equipment. The name is about the only thing they have in common. In the professional coffee world, though, a “diamond espresso machine” means one of these heavy, copper-boilered, group-headed machines that sit behind café counters.
Diamond Europe’s main product line is its Aroma series, which is made up of volumetric commercial espresso machines that are designed to consistently produce a lot of coffee. The Aroma/1E is a single-group machine with a copper boiler, one portafilter head, and a footprint that’s good for smaller cafés or catering businesses that don’t need to make forty shots an hour. Prices start at around $3,890, which puts it firmly in the professional level without going as high as Synesso or La Marzocco. For places where both throughput and consistency are important, the Aroma/2ED goes up to two groups and adds a display panel and volumetric controls. For about $5,300, it’s made for the kind of café where the morning rush doesn’t really end until 10 o’clock.
Understanding how these machines work is important because it shows a belief that has been around for a long time in commercial coffee: dependability over flash. The design for the E61 group head goes back to 1961 and was named after a solar eclipse that year. It is made of 3.6 kilograms of brass and is thermally stabilized before each shot. It’s the kind of part that café technicians can recognize across brands because it hasn’t changed much in design over the last 60 years. The copper boiler and a heat exchanger for each group keep the temperature of the brew stable without using as much energy as systems that heat up and cool down all the time. These aren’t very exciting new ideas. In the coffee business, they’re like a well-kept cast iron pan: people trust them because they always work.
It is hard not to notice how little Diamond Europe spends on marketing in the conversation with customers. Home espresso forums and YouTube videos that show machines being opened don’t have these machines. They can be found in catalogs for kitchen equipment, in the back-of-house spreadsheets of restaurant groups that are reviewing their coffee programs, and with catering supply companies in Melbourne and Brussels. The business’s website is simple and does what it needs to do. There are no pictures of baristas enjoying their free time in the sun. It sounds like it was written for people who already know what a volumetric pump is and don’t need to be persuaded about how great espresso is.
Part of the reason the machines are respected in business circles is that they are very quiet. When it comes to looks, Diamond isn’t going up against the Italian brands like Faemas and La Cimbali, which have been building their reputation in the café world for generations. It’s competing on price and usefulness, especially in places like Australia and continental Europe where buying commercial kitchens is based on usefulness. A machine that can be quickly diagnosed, parts that can be reliably found, and service without having to wait three weeks is very valuable to a business owner.
This is well shown by the Aroma/3ED-N, a three-group machine that is being phased out in favor of a newer model. It has been replaced by a machine that makes Americanos better and costs less. This shows that Diamond is aware of how café menus have changed, with long blacks and Americanos now selling as well as regular espresso in many markets. The machines are still getting used to the fact that the category is still changing.
