You’ll have to overlook the grim looking cappuccino or whatever its meant to be in the shot above, and bear with me as this is a machine that’s worth investigating. A couple of weekends ago I was in Peter Jones/John Lewis to test their top of the range bean to cup machines. I was told the Miele free standing bean to cup machines, which John Lewis also offer are in fact Juras in drag, a claim which I need to substantiate, but such practices are common with many goods these days that it wouldn’t surprise me if it were the case
Without wishing to be accused of defamation, it is my personal opinion that whilst very well marketed, and therefore very expensive relative to the quality of the espresso they produce, Jura (Swiss) bean to cup machines produce what the Swiss like to drink, caffe creme, as opposed to ‘proper espresso’. In my opinion the espresso from a Jura bean to cup is under-extracted in my opinion, even after i have optimised the settings, and I think many people have tarred all bean to cup machines with the same same brush.
I have also tried fairly extensively the WMF bean to cup machine of a friend of ours which I think outperforms the Jura significantly in terms of taste, although i find the menus on the WMF machines more difficult to progress through than the jungle
With these experiences in the back of my mind i tried the Delonghi Prima Donna S ECAM26 at Peter Jones. If you go to the peter jones website (www.johnlewis.com) and enter the product code 85508825 their website will take you to the exact machine i am referring to here
While it is easy to criticise bean-to-cup machines for not delivering the same quality of extraction as a lever espresso machine, we are not blind to the fact that the vast majority of the population are looking to make good espresso at home but are busy, and the last thing they need is a(nother) hobby. You just want a ‘good’ espresso
I took with me two packs of our costa rican beans so I was working with a bean that I was familiar with. The first few cups were not pleasant, a little sour and grassy, but this was easily addressed as the brew temperature can quickly and easily be adjusted on this machine. The change in taste was instantaneous and significant. The shot became sweet, with a pleasant nuttiness
Grind setting 4 seemed to work best for these beans and we lifted the dose one notch to ‘strong’, having decided this was the optimum after working through many combinations of different grind and dose. Like many grinders it is important to only move it to a finer setting when it is in operation otherwise you run the risk of the coffee grinds between the burrs binding the burrs together
It takes 2 grind cycles for any changes to the grinder to flow through into your cup, which is an important point to note if you don’t want to end up chasing your tail as you dial in the grinder
The crema was rich, deep, and dense; not a pale, insipid imitation. The brew temperature is easily capable of being adjusted so it is just right for your roast (we only went up one notch on brew temperature, there were several more settings hotter than this should you be running third wave lemon juice, or roasts with a lot of robusta). Whilst it didn’t bring out all the nuances in the roast, I have no hesitation in saying it produced an espresso that 90% of espresso drinkers would be very happy to drink
This model has a brushed stainless steel casing which is what pushes the price up. I believe there is a similar model with a plastic casing, but most of the same features as this model is also available at a considerably lower price point if this was important to you
This model has the ability to make 2 drinks at a time which i think is really important to most people when they have visitors around and don’t want to take half an hour to get the coffee made. If you do a lot of entertaining this is the machine for you
The brew group is height adjustable so you can fit cups of different heights under it with ease
Whilst I didn’t spend a lot of time on the milk texturing capabilities of this machine, it has the latest design solution to this problem. That is, the milk in the receptacle is not heated by the process, only the milk that is drawn out is heated. The advantage of this is the milk container just clips off and can be placed back in the fridge for next time with no milk being wasted
The machine also undertakes a cleaning cycle before and after each cup which i think is an important feature as hygiene is critically important in any machine like this where milk is involved
I found the menus very intuitive and typically provided at least 5 settings, unlike the WMF, Jura, and other machines that typically provide only 3 settings which I find inadequate
The machine is also very compact (23.8×44.1×34.5cm(wxdxh)), which is important to most city dwellers
I almost forgot to mention, this machine has two thermo-blocks. One for the espresso, and a second one for steam generation running at a much higher temperature