It sure does, and has 17% 1 star reviews - so that’s out. Although the currently unavailable 4 cup automatic pour-over looks very cool. Thanks!
Always avoid products with that many negative reviews, and I suspect the positive reviews are paid shill content. I’ve been offered gifts/rebates from Amazon sellers for removing a negative review. Amazon sellers are often no better than Ebay sleaze these days.
If the review pattern is a “C” shape with many 5s and many 1s, stay far away. If the review pattern follows the diagonal down “/” it’s plausibly a good product. If the pattern is mixed and vertical “|”, the reviews are likely accurate but the product has serious issues.
From a practical standpoint, just get a K-Cup machine for an office. That gives the non-coffee and decaf people something to drink, even if it sucks your connoisseur soul dry.
I have 2 K-Cups already. One on a nice cart in front; it does iced also. The old commercial K-Cup that came with my office, has a 6 oz setting. I want a nice machine for VIP clients. Also for me. And Ross says he likes Espresso, so now I want an Espresso/Drip combo, I think.
@robson I have a nice Cuisinart grinder at home. The Breville had a good burr grinder, I can always pick up a grinder if I need to. Nice direct to the Seattle company. Looking at the Technivorm, it appears to only select between full and half carafe.
You are just turning your office into a country club lounge. Egg beater speakers, fancy coffee maker. Next up you’ll have an elephant foot trashcan. Old leather and dark wood.
Hey, you can’t go wrong with great coffee! It’s “the best part of waking up!”
Plus, if you take a relatively small % of what you would have otherwise spent on audio gear on coffee gear, your taste-buds will thank you.
Now K-cup is the truly the Devil’s spawn
Perhaps the Beats or Skullcandy of coffee. Convenient. The Seattle shop above thinks the super automatic Phillips coffee makers are good for about 6-8 c-notes. But all single serve. Not sure if I should go in that direction.
I’m beginning to think my quest for a machine for $1000 or less that can make both espresso and competent drip coffee into a carafe is hopeless. I’ve spent an hour using ChatGBT-4 which found two or three possibilities including a DeLonghi and a Krups. Both are discontinued.
Closest appears to be the Spinn Pro Coffee and Espresso maker, which has an optional 400ml carafe. I guess that could be two “cups” or one decent mug of coffee… not good.
Raise the price bar to $1500 and we get the Miele, which can do repeated long shots into a 40 oz stainless steel $119 “coffeepot” that is supposed to simulate drip coffee.
ChatGPT-4 wants me to give up and buy two machines. But both the bot and live help at Seattle Coffee Gear (dot com) suggested machines like the Phillips 3200 LatteGo Superautomatic machine (and other similar that can do multiple espresso / latte / cappuccino / americano type brews. I give up the carafe, or find a second grind and brew. I guess I can always use the glorious Faberware if I really need to make coffee for a group. It makes great perked coffee.
Again, I ask for suggestions, (and gentle ridicule from @generic, I deserve it). I can get the damn Keurig off the pretty table in the front of the office with any of these. But my wife visits and she likes the awful flavored K-cups.
LATER EDIT - She is probably right - the front office client snack cart is for clients. They should see familiar stuff. I can always make them espresso… I’m going to pitch the current Keurig I have there, and get a commercial office model Keurig.
I agree on that one.
That sounds like declare victory and go home! Well, she’s probably right though (but not on flavored K-cups )
Heads I win, tails you lose then?
Yes. The current one in the front office has bad karma from a prior admin. I bought it because it can make coffee over ice. Its smallest normal setting is 8 oz.
In what was the server room I have the ancient commercial Keurig that I use when I get too lazy to brew real coffee. That has a 6 oz setting so 2 k-cups for a mug of Java. A new commercial model has 4 oz and strong setting and some programmable tweaks.
Get a Nespresso machine with a different type of pod! A former office had one – it used itsy bitsy aluminum cups. That machine also had a black hole disposal system that sent the empties who knows where every time you opened the top. You will be corporate! Assimilate!
With a pour-over single-serving K-Cup machine you can use as much or as little water as you like.
The first two or three ounces are coffee and the last ounces are tan tinted water.
Since it appears that my ideal coffee machine does not exist in this universe, I decided to explore elsewhere. Dr. Susan Calvin of US Robotics and Mechanical Men recommends the CF-33, which seems to be safe as long as you don’t try to ask for tea:
I feel very positronic about this model, and she even likes headphones.
Then I went to a salvage planet of the Old Republic, and found this siphon model:
Although self-motivated, I understand cleanup is messy and a bit big for the office.
Finally turning to the darker side of coffee:
What else but Darth Coffeepot?
I created the images from prompts using openai’s DALL E.
The Nespresso “Vertuo” models can make reasonable coffee (better than Keurig, albeit with significantly less variety available) and “espresso” (not real espresso - really just small, very strong, coffees). It makes a nice looking “crema” (which isn’t real crema) on both. Easy, quick, the machine is relatively inexpensive, pods are fully recyclable.
I have one of these coming in … but bear in mind while it is a 4-in-1 unit, and completely programmable, it’s a manual affair for moving between weighing, grinding and brewing. Would have been nice if they had put the scale under the grinder, so you could grind-to-weight automatically. A 2nd scale under the brewer would be another nice upgrade.
Since I haven’t gone down the espresso route, yet, and because I wanted a drip-machine for when I was just making decaf for the day … that looked nice and was low-hassle … went with this:
You will, of course, need a grinder to go with that, but it’ll do 8 cups (5oz cups). Quick, too. And looks awesome. Pump driven, no heat-siphon randomness.
Oh, and there’s also the X-Bloom …
OK… pour over rules. Now that we have that out of the way, I did look at this: Gevi… but (you KNEW there was a ‘but’ coming)
With a good quality burr grinder, a simple ceramic or even plastic cone, and some Melita filter papers, and you can achieve the same excellent coffee for 75% less cost. You can move your container around so the water drizzles over the grounds by hand, and you don’t even need a fancy pot with a long spout… just a nice Pyrex glass measuring cup and fresh water just off the boil. Easy peasy. Sometimes simple is better.
I just stumbled onto this thread. I am surprised with all the talk of coffee there is minimal (no?) mention of roasting. I was introduced to roasting over 15 years ago at a coffee shop that showed me with a hot air popcorn popper. I eventually picked one up during a yard sale and started roasting myself. That led me to purchase a “real” coffee roaster and I’ve been roasting ever since. I source beans from Sweet Maria’s and can roast how I like. We tend to favor Ethiopian and I tend toward a Full City roast. i did try lighter roast like so many of the 3rd wave coffee houses around here, but it really wasn’t what my wife enjoyed being second wavers (except starbucks which sucks).
I primarily do pourover and we use the clever dripper pour over so we can let it steep and get enough extraction. I haven’t gone down the rabbit hole of espresso. I did work at the headquarters for Peet’s Coffee for about 5 years and it was great to have access to all the equipment in the breakroom (and they’d bring in a barista on Friday’s). I took the Barista 101 and 102 courses which was fun. Seeing roasting at the roasting plant in Alameda was pretty staggering for a home roaster.
The Gevi won’t be replacing my hand/manual pour-over brewing.
It is mostly to make it easier for my wife to make 2nd and subsequent cups when I’m not around or am “in the zone” on a project. She has a great palate and a strong appreciation for “proper” coffee … and absolutely zero interest in learning/perfecting making pour over coffee herself.
When you decide to move beyond pour-over the Moka pot is an interesting alternative to an espresso machine although while it makes a strong flavourful coffee it doesn’t make an espresso. On the other hand it’s inexpensive, has no plumbing and boiler to malfunction and eats up virtually no kitchen space. I highly recommend The Wired Gourmet Youtube videos on the Moka pot, especially about E&B labs Moka pot which have a special filter design here and here. World champion barista James Hoffman always makes enjoyably watchable videos and has a 4 part series on the Moka beginning here. I use a high end hand grinder by 1zpresso, the J-Max which for small grinds (3 cup Moka or 20g of coffee) I strongly recommend. There are a bunch of excellent YouTube coffee mavens from whom you can learn a lot no matter which technology you decide on including but not limited to the above 2 and Lance Hedrick, Kyle Roswell, Lifestyle Lab and The Coffee Cronicler. There are a bunch of lever espresso machines, simple and inexpensive covering a range of price points. Have a look at the Flair line from Leverpresso, ROK, Cafelot Robot, the high tech 9barrista, the grand daddy Italian design masterpiece La Pavonni and the new High tech Meticulous. Lever machines have significant advantages over boiler-pump based machines though you have to heat the water with kettle or pot and you are the pump.
I genuinely appreciate the pointers, though I’m probably a bit further and/or deeper, into my “journey” than is, perhaps, immediately apparent (I’ll spare everyone from me repeating some earlier posts) … especially given the very short time I’ve been at it.
Trying to hold the line on not going overboard on gear (sticking with a 1Zpresso K-Ultra, Ode 2 w/ SSP MP burrs, EGK Pro setup for now), though I do have most of the pour-over and immersion brewers that I’m aware of at this point.
Plus one for the AeroPress!
To latte.
I’m holding steady at best value entry level espresso with a Gaggia Classic Pro / “New Classic” in brushed steel (since the new range of colours weren’t available) with a Tune Up Kit for Gaggia which includes an IMS Precision Shower Screen with “Nanotech coating”, brass group head and silicone gasket. I also have a naked or bottomless portafilter and triple shot basket.
I still use the general-purpose Breville the Smart Grinder Pro in Cranberry Red conical burr grinder which I purchased long before the semi-automatic machine, as it does a decent job of espresso grinds and a good entry-level espresso grinder such as the Baratza Sette 270 is quite expensive.
As has already been adequately noted, this inclination and behaviour in coffee as in audio and their analogues is far from coincidental, with coffee beans being the music media.
Among the good and reputable folks selling gear and supplies are Whole Latte Love. Their YouTube channel is a coffee university.