This is the Series 1 Espresso Machine from the team at Fellow, it’s one of the most highly-capable machines in its class, and the biggest problem Fellow has had is keeping enough of them in stock.
The Series 1 is well and truly a 21st century coffee maker, it comes with an (optional) iOS and Android app which allows users create, edit, and share espresso profiles – so they can reliably recreate their favorite coffees at home.
This is the Series 1 Espresso Machine from the team at Fellow, it’s one of the most highly-capable machines in its price class, and the biggest problem Fellow has is keeping enough of them in stock.
History Speedrun: Fellow
Fellow was founded in 2013 by Jake Miller, who fell in love with coffee while working at a coffeeshop in Minnesota before studying at Stanford. It was during his time at Stanford that Miller began designing a brewer capable of delivering his preferred coffee flavor profile while improving on existing methods.
The result was the Duo Coffee Steeper, a dual-chamber device combining elements of French press and pour-over brewing. Miller put the Duo on Kickstarter in late 2013, setting a goal of $50,000 USD and ultimately raising $193,402 USD from 2,712 backers.
Fulfilling those orders proved far harder than expected – by Miller’s own account the process cost roughly $300,000 USD, leaving the young company underwater from the start.
The product that put Fellow on the map was the Stagg pour-over kettle, created in 2014, followed by the Stagg EKG electric kettle two years later. The EKG became widely regarded as the gold standard among electric pour-over kettles (yes there is such a thing), it was adopted by champion baristas and serious home brewers alike.
A third crowdfunding campaign in December of 2019 introduced the Ode Brew Grinder – over the years the company’s product range expanded further to include travel mugs, French presses, storage canisters, glassware, and other accessories.
Between 2021 and 2022 Fellow raised significant money through two rounds of funding, pulling in over $30 million USD in total and launching them into the big leagues. Fellow remains headquartered in San Francisco and it operates retail locations in the Mission District and on Abbot Kinney Blvd in Venice, Los Angeles.
The Series 1 is well and truly a 21st century coffee maker, it comes with an (optional) iOS and Android app which allows users create, edit, and share espresso profiles – so they can reliably recreate their favorite coffees at home.
The Fellow Series 1 Espresso Machine
The Espresso Series 1 is Fellow’s first espresso machine, and by far its most ambitious product to date. In a way it represents the San Francisco company’s move from kettles, grinders, and drip brewers into the highly-demanding world of home espresso machines.
The machine uses a 58mm commercial-style portafilter, produces up to nine bars of extraction pressure, and holds a 2 liter removable water tank. It weighs 21.7 lbs and measures 17.24″ × 12.4″ × 10.98″, keeping the footprint relatively compact for a machine of this capability.
At the heart of the Series 1 is what Fellow calls its patented “Boosted Boiler” architecture, a system of three independent heating elements – a flow-through heater, a boiler, and a grouphead heater – that work together to bring the machine to brewing temperature in under two minutes and maintain excellent thermal stability throughout use.
The brass-core grouphead is independently heated and incorporates a water dispersion block for even extraction. Fellow also includes programmable pressure profiling with controlled pre-infusion, a feature typically found on machines costing considerably more, and the company estimates the Series 1 can deliver roughly 80 to 90% of the customization capability of the Decent espresso machine at a mere fraction of its MSRP.
The machine is designed to be approachable for beginners while plenty of capability for experienced home coffee experts. On-screen guided recipes walk new users through classic espresso drinks step by step, while built-in shot analysis detects when an extraction runs too fast or too slow and suggests grind adjustments.
A companion app (offered on both iOS and Android) allows users to create, edit, and share espresso profiles, and Fellow pushes roast-matched profiles for beans sold through its Fellow Drops coffee subscription.
For milk drinks, a temperature-sensing steam wand automatically stops at a target milk temperature, purges itself after use, and can be customized for different milk types. For those who want full manual control, a manual mode provides direct access to pressure, temperature, and flow variables via the color LCD screen and rotary dial.
The Espresso Series 1 is Fellow’s first espresso machine, and by far its most ambitious product to date. In a way it represents the San Francisco company’s move from kettles, grinders, and drip brewers into the highly-demanding world of home espresso machines.
The Series 1 ships with a bottomless portafilter, tamper, 10oz steaming pitcher, single-wall and pressurized double-shot baskets, a shot splitter, backflush disc, descaler, and a $25 Fellow Drops coffee credit.
There machine is now available to order on Huckberry here, it comes in both Black and Malted Chocolate (dark brown), with pricing starting at $1,500 USD.
Images courtesy of Huckberry
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
