While Rocket Espresso does make top-quality commercial espresso machines, the Milan-based brand is perhaps best-known for its stunningly-designed premium home espresso machines. Rocket manufactures an impressive range of top-quality machines fit for every kind of home espresso enthusiast, from the emerging to the seasoned home barista. For those looking to really take their home espresso setup to the next level, Rocket has designed something specifically meant to “exceed the needs of even the most demanding home barista”: meet the Rocket Bicocca.

The Bicocca is truly a luxury home espresso machine, and you can tell just by looking at it. The machine sports a purposefully minimalist aesthetic, with elegant black accents and striking side panels. The front of the machine has been designed with ease of use and workflow in mind, and the steam wand and hot water tap are spaced thoughtfully in relation to the Bicocca’s unique cylindrical grouphead.

The grouphead is where the Bicocca’s premium status really becomes obvious. It is fitted with an intuitive touchscreen interface, with which you can easily monitor everything from brew time to boiler pressure, as well as set custom parameters on brewing variables, like temperature. The interface is also textless, keeping with the overall minimalist design ethos of the Bicocca, and the UI can be set to one of three colours depending on user preference.

It’s worth noting that while Rocket positions the Bicocca as a domestic machine, it's definitely a good option for a low-volume commercial setup too. This is thanks to the aforementioned interface, which offers a barista impressive levels of control over, and information about, their brewing. For example, the Bicocca is able to manually and automatically register set times and doses for pre-infusion, shot-time, pump shut-off time, and even backflushing. This allows the barista behind the machine to do it all, from brewing to cleaning, with fine-tuned consistency and the push of a few buttons.

The display also monitors and can show you the total number of coffees dispensed by your machine and its total usage time from its first startup, so that you can easily tell when your Bicocca needs a service. It also shows you in litres and percentages how much water your machine’s filter can still use for coffee production before it needs to be replaced. These features take the Bicocca from being just a fantastic premium home espresso machine and make it a single-group automatic machine perfect for low-volume commercial setups too.

The Bicocca’s shiny exterior accurately reflects the quality of its internals. Under the hood you’ll find a pair of stainless steel boilers, one for brewing (0.5L) and the other for steam (1.5L), which are connected via a powerful but quiet rotary pump either to a 1.8L tank or straight to your pipes. The boilers are also insulated, which cuts down on the Bicocca’s energy consumption and allows for better temperature stability, so that you can pull great shots and steam milk with greater consistency.

With a quality set of internals, an intuitive high-tech touchscreen interface, and a striking but elegant minimalist aesthetic, the Bicocca is another welcome addition to Rocket’s line of truly premium single-group machines, designed to meet and overshoot the demands of even the most particular espresso connoisseur.

Rocket Bicocca Espresso Machine features

• Intuitive all-in-one touchscreen interface
• Rotary pump
• Water tank or plumb-in options
• Water tank reserve sensor
• Separate steam and hot water wands
• New grouphead design
• Insulated dual stainless steel boiler

Rocket Bicocca Espresso Machine specifications

• Brew boiler capacity: 0.5L
• Steam boiler capacity: 1.5L
• Boiler material: stainless steel
• Water tank capacity: 1.8L
• Power: 1600W
• Dimensions: 409 x 465 x 400mm (width x depth x height)
• Weight: 35kg