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Although performance is obviously more important than appearance, the Sage Barista Pro is one well-thought-out, stylish brushed stainless steel machine that anyone would be proud to have on display (as you’d hope, to justify its price tag). It comes with a wide range of accessories: a milk jug and ‘razor’ tool for levelling coffee in the portafilter, along with four filters for both freshly ground and pre-ground coffee. The tools are stored in a built-in drawer.
The other (perhaps unexpected) piece of kit you need for great coffee is a kitchen scale. “The two key things are water quality and the kitchen scale – one of the most under-appreciated pieces of equipment,” Wilson Jimenez, founder of speciality coffee company Piqant, tells me. “Weighing your coffee will mean you get consistently good coffee – rather than relying on a tablespoon or eyeballing.” The issue with most coffee machines is that you can only make one coffee at a time. Enter: the filter coffee machine. The difference is that you make a jug of coffee rather than a cup and each jug makes 10 cups of coffee, in theory. In practice, it makes more like eight what I’d call proper cups. If you want the best-quality filter coffee, the Melitta Aroma Elegance Therm Deluxe is the machine for you. It’s extremely easy to use, has a removable water reservoir for easy filling and, most importantly, produces excellent coffee with no hassle.Firstly the bambino plus has an option for you to choose the milk temperature and essentially lets you automatically texture the milk. If I was in the market for a pod coffee machine and I had some money to spend, this would absolutely be my first choice. It looks the part, makes excellent-tasting coffee and actually has more adjustability than I thought it would, especially with the many milk settings available. If you love coffee but you're always in a rush, or you're just looking for something that's basically hands-free, you can't go wrong here. It looks and feels a lot more premium than other mid-range espresso machines, with excellent build quality and a brushed stainless steel body. It also has the same PID digital temperature control as the models above, which you won’t find on many (if any) cheaper coffee makers.
The KBG select is a stylish, easy-to-use filter coffee machine. It remains simple in its function, with one button to turn it on and another that allows you to move between a full or half-jug option, the latter of which slows the brewing process to preserve flavour when you don’t need a full pot. For those focused on fine tasting coffee as well as functionality, the Moccamaster brews at a temperature of between 92°C and 96°C to draw the best flavour from your coffee grounds. A milk frother will make your coffee taste better as you’ll have more control over the temperature of the milk so you won’t overheat it which can happen when you heat milk in other methods. It’s reasonably fast, too. For a full ten-cup jug of coffee, you’ll only have to wait a respectable six minutes. Once the 1.25L water tank is empty, the hot water element turns off automatically, while the hot plate remains on for 40 minutes. The hot-plate maintains the coffee at around 80 to 85°C and doesn’t impact the flavour as noticeably as the hot plates on some other filter coffee machines. If you want consistently great coffee without the hassle, the Moccamaster is a sensible and stylish choice. This is helped by a new automatic tamping system. Pull the lever on the left down for a 10kg tamp and it will examine whether there is enough coffee inside the portafilter. If you need more, you can press the screen for ‘a bit more’ until it decides you have the perfect amount. What’s more, once the coffee is brewed, the machine will tell you whether you should increase or decrease the grind size for your next coffee. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{
Most people who have worked in a speciality coffee shop will know that commercial machines take at least 20 minutes to heat up and start operating at a decent level. The coffee is simple to make: simply slide the lever on the pod cylinder to the right to open it, pop a vertuo pod in, close and press the button on top to go. The coffee takes around 30 seconds to heat up before pouring a coffee deliciously rich in crema. All that’s left to do is fill the steel milk jug with your preferred milk, fit it under the steam wand and choose your temperature and level of froth (both have a choice of three). The sleek stainless steel body is inspired by the manual espresso machines used in Grind’s shops and was designed in collaboration with the Swedish coffee brand Sjöstrand. This is, in my humble opinion, the king of home coffee machines. For anyone who has done even cursory research into the world of coffee geekery, it will come as no surprise to see this Sage machine in the top spot on this list. Similarly, Sage is Jimenez’s top brand recommendation. Here’s why.
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