Flair Coffee Machine

The Flair coffee machine

Coffee has always been part of life on board, but finding a good way to make an espresso without turning the boat into a power plant wasn't so simple.

In 2024, on the Tanzer, we started with a Nespresso and a small inverter. A bad combination: the Nespresso draws a lot of power at startup and our setup was clearly not made for that. We then invested in a Breville and a more powerful inverter. It worked better, but it still wasn't ideal on board.

In 2025, since we didn't yet have solar panels and access to the inverter was limited, we looked for a completely mechanical solution that would still allow us to make a real espresso. That's how we discovered the Flair.

The Flair is a manual espresso machine: no electricity, no capsules and practically nothing on board except coffee, water and our two arms. The pressure required for extraction is created manually using a lever. So we grind the coffee, heat the water, dose, extract... in short, we take part in the process!

And we loved it.

So much so that in 2026, even with enough electrical autonomy to run practically any coffee machine, we chose to keep only the Flair on board. To our taste, it produces a better espresso than the Nespresso, while above all allowing us to choose our coffee.

It has also become a small part of the pleasure of the trip: discovering local coffees along our route, trying them with the Flair and seeing how they turn out as espressos. Because a boat can cross borders, but there is no reason coffee should always stay the same!

This article is not sponsored. It is simply our experience and opinion after using the Flair on board.