Having a bean to cup coffee machine in our home is the closest most of us will ever come to having our own personal barista.
Bean to cup coffee machines use fresh, whole coffee beans, which are housed inside the coffeemaker in a hopper. The beans are ground on demand, producing anywhere from six to 15 grams of ground coffee, which moves into the machine’s internal brewing chamber.
Once the beans are in the grinder, a wide selection of coffee-based drinks, including just a regular cup of Joe, can be made, depending on the machine’s range of settings. Most any bean to cup coffee maker can brew any of the basic coffee specialty drinks; top models allow coffee lovers to custom-create a staggering variety of beverages.
When the freshly brewed beverage is in cup, the used grounds are ejected into a tray, which must be cleaned and emptied as required.
Brands of bean to cup coffee machines include Gaggia, Saeco, Bosch, DeLonghi, Siemens and Jura. These coffeemakers are designed mainly for home use. However, they’re becoming increasingly popular with workers in small offices, especially those in non-traditional office settings.
But these automatic coffee brewers are not for everyone.
Critics of the grind and brew concept claim the machines fall short in performance, producing an inferior tasting cup of coffee. Commonly, they point to the brewers’ automatic design as problematic and the integrated blade grinder as inferior.
Indeed, the grinder is arguably the most important of all coffee maker accessories. And the grinders inside these machines are blade instead of burr. Critics of grind-and-brew claim the blades pulverize the coffee beans, allowing for bitterness to overcome the brew.
Most of the bean to cup coffee machines are automatic, designed for convenience and ease of use. But critics argue that manually pulling shots is the only way to ensure results that are consistently excellent. As proof, they point to the top coffee shops, where the brew comes exclusively from manual machines.
But the bean to cup coffee machine for home use has grown into a big business. The number of companies producing the machines continues to grow. While many of the new entries into the market, with all manner of bells and whistles, are tempting, it’s usually best to go with an established brand and model, which has been on the market long enough to have the kinks worked out.
If you yearn for a morning cup of coffee brewed from freshly ground beans as soon as you wake up, then you should at least investigate the bean to cup coffee machines.