Why did we post this, apart from the feel good bonhomie of a customer complimenting us on a roast? Because Luke feels exactly the same way as I do about bean to cup. There is nothing that is logically inconsistent about pursuing the ultimate espresso at home on a lever machine, yet at work when you haven’t got time to fiddle-fart around with grinders and mess, but still want a respectable coffee, to use to a bean-to-cup machine. For the work scenario, and for home if people do a lot of entertaining and just need to roll out 12 coffees in a hurry, I’ll defend bean to cup machines to the hilt.
Im in the process of giving a DeLonghi a thorough kicking at home here at the moment so I can sell it with confidence. It has exceeded my expectations. Its very well made, and for what it is, it makes excellent espresso. If you deploy a few extra measures, like timing the extraction then adjusting the grinder, and running the rinse cycle before your shot when the machine has been sitting idle (this nicely warms up all the internals), and choosing a roast with plenty of body you will get really good results. Texturing milk to a respectable standard manually is very easy, although i don’t think much of the auto-frother – the results are pretty nasty. the exception to that is the flagship model which is still under an exclusivity deal with Harrods, and the auto frother on that machine is exponentially better than on all the other models. I expect this improvement will trickle down to all other models in time.