What do you love about coffee? Is it the caffeine boost in the morning, the creamy sweetness of a cappuccino or latte, the bucket of filter coffee you can sip on all day, or the quick kick of a good espresso? Or is it the zen-like ritual of it all, the measuring of beans and the precision of the perfect extraction? Good thing it’s much better for you than science previously realized.
If the marketing hype is to be believed, you can have it all, thanks to the best in fully automatic coffee machines. These compact countertop cafés promise to deliver a vast menu of drinks at the touch of a button, all with no barista prowess needed. But are the brews actually any good?
WIRED tests a lot of coffee machines—productivity would grind to a halt if we stopped. But for this group blind test, we wanted to see what coffee professionals thought of the drinks produced by the “best” in fully automatic machines, without being influenced by any fancy design or brand awareness. We’re not judging the machine’s usability here, the app’s interface (there’s always an app), or how easy it is to clean. We only want to know about the Joe.
By the end of our experiment, it was clear that while money can buy you endless choice and push-button convenience, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee barista-grade, café-quality coffee at home.
Our Experts
Adam Cozens is the cofounder of Perky Blenders, a UK specialty coffee brand from coffee-shop-dense, hipster-populated East London. He was joined in WIRED’s test café by his business manager and coffee aficionado Calum Hunt. Launching in 2015 from a three-wheeled coffee cart, they now have multiple cafés and more than 100 retail partners across the UK.
For this test, they chose their Forest Blend beans, noted for their dark chocolate, molasses, and walnut notes, creamy body, low acidity, and a sweet, lingering finish. Crucially, Cozens and Hunt know implicitly how the Forest Blend beans should taste, and they are ideally positioned to decide which of our machines produces the best coffee with the most accurate flavor profile from the beans provided.
The Test
Each of the machines we chose is a fully automatic bean-to-cup behemoth capable of producing upwards of 50 types of coffee drinks at the push of a button; everything from espresso and cortado to iced lattes with syrup or a simple long black.
WIRED chose the latte—America’s most popular steamed-milk coffee order—and a classic espresso to blind taste test. The latte allows us to test the milk-heating, frothing, and steaming mechanisms, while the espresso reveals any weaknesses in extraction and coffee flavor. Per Cozens’ instructions, we used organic whole milk.
Our experts were blindfolded and then presented with one latte and one espresso from each machine. Labelled A, B, C, and D, the machines were visible to the testers, but they had no idea which coffee came from which. They then assessed each drink on looks, milk-steaming quality, crema (the golden aromatic foam on top of espresso), temperature, extraction, and flavor. The coffees were then ranked in order from best to worst.
To reiterate, this is not a test of the machine’s usability, desirability, or features. Each design can have every aspect of every recipe tweaked, but we’re not convinced the average buyer will want to dive deep into the settings. These are sophisticated push-button machines designed to take the faff and fiddle out of making good coffee at home—anything for an easy life.
The Coffee Machines
Machine “A”
One of only a few machines capable of making espresso-based drinks and classic drip coffee, the TK-02, from NYC-based Terra Kaffe, is a gorgeous-looking piece of kitchen kit with premium components, a delightful glass milk carafe, a super-cool monochrome touchscreen, extensive personalization, and full app control.
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