Brewing espresso at home is an art and a science. Using a scale for home espresso is essential for consistency and precision, which leads to a better understanding of your own preferences! But of course, if you’re reading a blog about the Acaia Lunar scales, surely you’re already acquainted with the need for a scale in your espresso workflow. IF you’re on the fence about using a scale at all in your espresso, please read THIS BLOG by our Head of Coffee, Phil, to convince you why it’s one of the best investments you’ll make into your home espresso set-up!
Review: The Acaia Lunar Scales - Highly durable and jam-packed full of features
The Acaia Lunar scales are the pinnacle of scales for home use. These are cafe-grade scales and do everything you need and more. Some might say they are over the top, but nothing is too good for your home espresso bar, right?
Solid cafe-grade scales that are perfect for home
The perfect-sized scales for your home espresso bar, the Acaia Lunar scales are solidly built and sized to use for espresso. Made from anodised aluminium, they are super strong and built to take what a commercial espresso bar can throw at it. Although they have a small footprint, they are flexible enough for any tasks that you might need them for.
Scales that never fail
The Acaia Lunars are super tough and water resistant to guard against any rogue coffee splashing you may encounter. The heat pad helps to protect against any excess heat and flips over to help balance your portafilter if needed.
It can be a tight squeeze if you need to fit multiple cups on them when you’re manually extracting. But if you’re using just one cup to measure extraction weight (or volumetric calibration), then these are perfect for that because of how thin they are.
Accuracy and responsiveness
The Acaia Lunars are super accurate and have a very quick response time. With a 0.1 or 0.01 accuracy, depending on the mode, they will help you fine tune your brew recipe with great detail. And although it’s small, you can still use it to weigh up to 2kg!
More features than you can poke a stick at
Compact in size but massive in features. The Acaia Lunars come with an app from which you can control everything: from taring and managing the timer to customising your settings and updating the firmware.
Using the app is great when using scales of this size as the weight display can sometimes be obstructed by what you are weighing. Using your phone to read the display and tare when needed gives you the flexibility to use whatever sized coffee doser you want, or perfect if you’re using it for baking too.
Other features include a tare save function, which saves weight information that you may need later to establish your brew ratio. Auto start and stop modes save you from messing around with the timer while you are busy making coffee. Flow rate indicator is always visible on the display to help you keep track of how quickly the water/coffee is pouring (most useful for filter coffee use).
Read more about other essential equipment for your home coffee setup.
Final thoughts
The Acaia Lunar Scales are very good scales for the coffee enthusiast. Having cafe-grade scales at home is a bit of a flex but worth it if you’re looking to impress. And because of the quality and features they bring, they also come with a hefty price tag. Retailing around $400, you’d want to have some extra cash or be very eager to impress to invest in these scales. I use a set of these at home but I’ve had them for almost 10 years, well before other decent coffee scale options were available. Also they are just so nice to look at…
P&R’s score:
- Price/Value - 6/10
- Form Factor - 9 /10
- Features - 9/10
- Overall - 8/10
