As part of my triumvirate of domestic evil (the other two being diesel and a wood burner) I have a coffee pod machine, in my defence the machine and pods are free. Even so, the pods aren’t recyclable and I drink a lot of espresso.

In the £150 to £500 bracket is it still a Delonghi machine for bean to cup? It’s for 5am coffee made and consumed whilst trying to do 5/6 other things in a short space of time so a stove top isn’t going to happen.

It’s really primarily for espressos. We have a frother already.

For diesel evil bonus points we also have an Audi.

A friend has the Sage by Heston Blumental. Despite the name, it makes good espresso…

But does he have the £350 one or the £2k one?

I think so although it’ll never look as cool as a Jura or break down as much!

Happy with my Delonghi. Makes a decent brew and really depends on the quality of the beans rather than the machine. The Sage jobby is very spendy. Unless you’re a proper coffee snob I’d try a Delonghi first. You really don’t need to spend that much to get a decent espresso.

Although my Perfecta 5600 was above your price range, admittedly it has delivered daily service for the last 7 years. I just descale it when it tells me to & give it a good clean at the same time and that’s it. It just keeps working.
I could probably have got away with a simpler/cheaper version as I never really use the milk jug/frother bit as it’s a faff to keep clean but the coffee bit is ace.

My Delonghi is entering its third year of service. I drink A LOT of coffee. Had it serviced once and I clean it regularly which isn’t much of a chore. Descale it when the light comes on.

Good beans means good coffee. There are better machines/approaches out there but for the £200 I paid, it’s been a brilliant way to get repeatably great coffee with zero faff.

Quick one for those with bean to cup. How do you keep your beans from going stale? With a grinder I’ll empty the beans back into a sealed bag after grinding what I need. Is that easy to do with a bean to cup or do you just leave the beans in the hopper?

I got a gaggia brera for Christmas it’s very good imho

I have a Krups, it’s really easy to dial in new coffee beans. This was a right pain with a traditional expresso machine where there were so many variables it took hours to get it right. Something I would recommend you looking for in the reviews.
The hopper on mine holds a 250g bag of beans but I add enough for 3 days and keep the rest in an airtight bag in the fridge.

Does anyone have a Melitta? The Caffeo Solo sounds great according to the reviews.

I just keep besns in the fridge & pop a scoop per cup into the machine before I press the button.

Quick one for those with bean to cup. How do you keep your beans from going stale? With a grinder I’ll empty the beans back into a sealed bag after grinding what I need. Is that easy to do with a bean to cup or do you just leave the beans in the hopper?

I’ve been there and now realise it’s OTT anal nonsense. I top up my grinder every day with approximately what I’ll need for the next 24hrs. If there is a bit left at the end of the day I don’t wet the bed but, get this, leave it there and use it the next day. I use a La pavoni hand pump machine which is incredibly sensitive to the state of the coffee and it really makes no odds. If you think you can taste the difference between beans that have been in a hopper for 24hrs and those that have lived in an air tight container you also can probably train yourself to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden and like the look of the emperors new clothes. Sure, leaving them there for days on end is not healthy but 24hrs is not going to make any real odds.

With the delonghi bean to cup in the office we adopt a similar method – only a small internal hopper which needs filling two or three times a day (only 3 of us use it but we all have a bit of a caffine problem!). What’s left at the end of the day stays there until the morning.

I keep beans in the freezer and top up the hopper as necessary. It varies, but i’ll empty the hopper every week, so the beans don’t hang around for much more than a week. Can’t say I notice any deterioration in the flavour or quality of the coffee over that time. Still get a nice thick crema and rich flavour from week old beans as I do from fresh ones.

I’m just topping up the internal hopper on mine as needed and rest gets left in the bag in the cupboard .

Although it was a Christmas present I got it a few weeks early and me and the Mrs are going through 1kg every 7/8 days. This is gonna be an expensive buy 😕

What he said.
We have a Saeco Royale in the winery & the hopper is topped up several times a day. Certainly doesn’t affect freshness if you’re starting with good beans.

If you’re near Brighton we have a Magnifica that my wife bought for work but only used for a couple of weeks as it took up too much space in the kitchen there (we have another at home so it’s now spare).

https://www.beantocupcoffeemachines.net/reviews/delonghi/magnifica-esam4200/

Looking for £150 for it.

My annoyance with my Delonghi thing is that hopper is not quite big enough to take a full pack of beans and get the lid shut… Why would they design it like that?

My folks have a Delonghi which is used a lot (they even took it on holiday with them…) and they’ve had it for a 5 or 6 years I think.
It’s done well so far and they’ve only had to call someone out to fix for something minor, It now needs a proper service / parts replacement.
The coffee isn’t as good as from my Sage (the one with the grinder, not the bean to cup) but it’s good enough.

Take up wwaswas offer if you can however when my delonghi 4200 died I bought a Melitta Coffee Bistro and it is awesome. I was pleased with the Delonghi but the Melitta just seems betterer:-), prefer the coffee, nicer crema, frother works well and feels like a nice piece of kit.
[/url]https://www.beantocupcoffeemachines.net/reviews/melitta/caffeo-bistro/

As above. It’s not artisanal quality ….but it doesn’t pretend to be.

It’s a propper espresso which is what I want …. Not Moka or a French press and it does that . Pay attention to the grind setting though makes a massive difference on the delonghi and as you probably know ….is not the same setting for all beans.

Only gripe is that I self cleans every time it goes on and off….which is a good thing in some ways but it fair gets through the water …. I’d plumb it in if I could !

We have a delonghi cafe corso in both offices. They get hammered (no ones allowed to froth though) and both are into 3rd year of use. A little noisy. I was initially sceptical as I thought they’d break with the workload but happy to be proved wrong. Kenco beans taste terrible in it, local roasters beans taste great although double the price.

We have a Krups, twas about £250 iirc. I also have a 4k commercial bean to cup machine in my shop which I lease. The little Krups machine makes a far superior cup of coffee out of the two.

Chatting to the guys that come out to repair/service the commercial machine they say it’s down to the way the beans are compressed and the force of water passed through the puc of coffee. The Krups machine makes a small 50p sized puc which keeps its shape in the hopper – the commercial machine dumps loose coffee rather than a formed puc.

Apparently the manufacturer of the commercial machine has a prototype machine that makes much better coffee delivering through a compacted puc, but because it uses 3x the amount of ground coffee per serving they didn’t put it into production.

I’ve got a melitta caffeo barista ts- it’s great at making coffee but we’re now on first name terms with the warranty repair centre… it’s just out of its two year warranty now, we’ve had it back 4 times. Next time it breaks that’ll be it. It replaced a delonghi which was ok until the milk steamer packed up.

If you’re near Brighton

Fife, is Brighton near Carlisle? 😀

+1 for delonghi. mine has been (whisper) faultless. tells me when to clean, descale etc. makes great espresso. ready to go in about 20 seconds

Right, there’s a fair few machines to look at from this thread. Appreciate the constructions.

At the cheaper end of the scale does this look ok De’Longhi ESAM2800.SB Bean to Cup Coffee Machine – Black https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00LB8FHJ4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ai7sAb0NSGFFG

Wazzy You’ve got a message about that machine!

pie monster

Thats pretty much what I’ve got although thats the facelift version. Had it nearly 5 yrs I guess. got it serviced the other day as they were doing a deal for £50 or thereabouts. they sent it back with a ticket to say that it had made something like 5000 coffees, it may have been significantly more than that. Whatever, it has easily paid for itself and been trouble free.

go for it.

Had my Magnifica for 6 years never skipped a beat and it gets heavy usage. If it broke today i’d be ordering another tomorrow.

Nespresso pods can be recycled and don’t go off if you leave them in the hopper for a few days…

Moved from a Delonghi B2C machine to Sage Creatista last year and it’s awesome. Bit pointless if you don’t like milky coffee though.

It’s not Nespresso that we have.

It’s mumble mumble not someone I’d want to mumble as I hope mumble will still supply us with coffee.

And mumble make the best (fairly) commonly available coffee I know of.

Trust me, we’ve looked for recyclable pods, they don’t exist, even 3rd party options. I know they’re looking at it (and biodegradable) but it’s years away.

Nespresso pods can be recycled

So what percentage of pods do you think get sent back to the oh so ethical Nestle for recycling given that they won’t be if they are lobbed in the recycling locally? Irrespective it’s a shed load of unnecessary energy and material consumption to generate the packaging even if it can be recycled.

Either way there’s no way i could justify my coffee consuption (1kg of beans every 8-10 days – thats 200 standard pods or one handy bag poured into a Kliner jar) if i paid pod prices and have yet to be given a Nespresso coffee I enjoyed. 2 pods a drink helps but that makes the maths even less acceptable.

1kg of beans every 10 days is a serious coffee habit…

Perhaps not so bad if you work from home

I do a kg in 7/8 days

I had an espresso for years but the last couple it didn’t get much use.

Just before Christmas I bought the Sage Barista express I think it’s called. I decided not to go full auto as I wanted more control over the outcome.

I’ve had some mediocre coffees out of it where I’ve been learning but not many. Each bag I’ve tried required a different grind and firmness of tamp to get the espresso just right. I’ve been full on geek taking notes and can honestly say I’ve made the best coffee I’ve ever had with it.

Within two weeks of having it, I can honestly say I’m getting great, consistent results and would highly recommend it.

I’ve had a selection of beans from here as it’s relatively local and the service is excellent.

https://www.coffeebeanshop.co.uk/

1kg of beans every 10 days is a serious coffee habit…

Perhaps not so bad if you work from home

I do work from home about half the time but the ‘office’ consumption is in addition. Agreed, I probably need to cut it down a little.

We’ve got a De’Longhi Magnifica ESAM 4200 – really good for the money! No fuss coffee on demand.

Bought this Krups machine from this supplier – link – if it stopped working I’d buy exactly the same again – the kettle has become virtually redundant since it arrived 18 months ago.

pfff kettle and asda instant gold job done