However, the unforgivable sin of this machine is the lack of dishwasher compatibility. It comes with a real pile of parts, but none of them are dishwasher safe. Of course, a thermal jug can’t fit in there, but being able to throw the filter basket, any of the metal filters, and the shower head into the dee-dub would surely go a long way toward quelling resentment.
Looking at the numbers
With the tests going up and down, I was happy to take the Coffee to the lab in Olimpia coffee roasters in Seattle, where I was eager to hear from co-owner and award-winning barista Sam Schroeder. Sam noted that combination coffee makers are simple, but unfortunately, if one or the other breaks (the grinder or the coffee maker), the entire machine is unusable.
He immediately looked up the ratio, first weighing the amount of water he went through in a cycle without coffee, followed by the amount of dry beans he produced for the same cycle, and determining it was a ratio of 1 to 16 beans to water. relationship. That was perfect, actually, exactly what it says to use on the bag. Little Buddy Beans we were brewing.
Using a spectrometer and a coffee lover’s app, Sam verified that he met his goal with a total dissolved solids score of 1.4, meaning he had the right concentration, and the extraction percentage was 19.26, which which means the coffee was balanced. More importantly, it was delicious. Many homebrewers fail to heat the water enough or allow the grounds to come into contact with the water for too long or too little time. Here you can press a button and it works fine.
Unfortunately, things started to go downhill quickly. For the second batch, she ground 88 grams of coffee instead of 85, an inevitable flaw with a grinder like this that works by the amount of time the burrs spin, not the weight of the beans it grinds. With batch three, she ran out of beans in the middle of the brew cycle and continued as if nothing was wrong. We lost a lot of coffee and had to start again, a big disappointment. When I consulted with a company representative about this, they told me that it should stop automatically, but that they had realized that it was not sensitive enough and that they were going to update the software and hopefully that would fix it.
We also tried single-cup brewing, which didn’t really work well. The basket is peculiarly small and has only a metal mesh filter; Using a paper filter isn’t really an option. The little filter basket isn’t even mentioned in some of the literature, making us wonder if it was added at the last minute. The first drink went wrong. Later attempts were better, but Sam noted that it doesn’t compare to the quality of the full bottle. To put it bluntly, Sam said, “This is not a single-cup coffee maker. I’m not sure it can be good.”
We were all still impressed with the Coffee’s full and even half-full carafe brewing capabilities. We enjoyed playing with the temperature, a rare skill in a coffee machine and a coffee nerd’s delight, and found that while there were only six grind settings, they were plenty for a drip machine. We also discovered that his style is what you might call “divisive.” No one could go so far as to call the Cafe “nice.” That, combined with its size, reminded me of something you might see on a countertop in Hell McMansion. (If you’ve never visited that website, you’re welcome.)
If you like coffee, don’t mind doing some initial tweaking, and want the one-button ability to have a grinder built into your coffee machine, this could work well. It offers fun features to take advantage of, but the app could use some improvement. Asking a few questions after brewing the coffee (if the coffee is too strong, weak, acidic, or bitter) and then making or suggesting changes for the next batch would be incredibly helpful. (Coming soon Midea barista beer (It’s supposed to do something like that.) I actually felt pretty good about it, until I remembered the lack of dishwasher-safe parts and the lack of a landing pad to store them. So it’s a six.