Are bean to coffee machines worth it?

[damekindness]

I’m a big coffee fan - we currently have a bog standard cheapo filter coffee machine. I’ve been looking at bean to coffee machines and wondering if they’re reliable, whether the set up and use is complicated and any recommendations. I don’t want to spend several hundred quid to find they’re a bit ‘meh’

I’m not super bothered about fancy milk frother thingys - ideally I want to bung a big mug underneath, press a button and walk away with a delicious coffee.

Delonghi lover here. Small footprint, milk thingy goes in the fridge. Eight years and the only time I stop for a Costa drive through I curse myself for not having been more organised. I saved the cost of the machine very quickly by taking a travel mug of coffee from home.

I have the little Lakeland one and it is cracking. Dead easy to use and much less expensive than a lot of other makes. Their customer service is great too. There's a really old coffee merchants nearby and I enjoy choosing the beans.

We have this one. It's fab!

I actually tell my deLonghi Magnifica that I love it every morning. Someone was chucking it out on Facebook as they were upgrading to something even more stupendous. I just had to replace the steam knob which I got for about £7.99 from the spare parts people on Amazon. It steams milk brilliantly. Grinds brilliantly. No mess. No hassle. If it broke down today and I couldn’t fix it I would track down another with ferocity and urgency.

I have the same Sage coffee machine as @MrsVinceVegaand it’s fantastic. It seemed an expensive buy at the time but we’ve had it for 6 years and have saved so much by not buying take away coffees. Once you find a good coffee roaster for your beans you’ll be set for life 😆

I’ve got a Jura bean to cup. Cost about £800 which is a lot but we had a cheaper bean to cup that lasted a fair bit but was hard to get parts for when it needed them. Jura parts are easier to replace if and when that time comes. And it makes perfect coffee. I never have coffee out cos it’s crap compared with the Jura

We have a Melitta Purista and it’s wonderful. Quite slimline, so doesn’t take up too much space on the counter, and the coffee is so delicious. It’s made such a change to my mornings, and, like others, I often feel disappointed when I buy coffee in cafes and it’s not as nice as mine at home.

I’ve got a DeLonghi Magnifica which is a thing of beauty. I love it as much as my cat, and a little more than my DH.
if the house was burning down I would try and save it.

I have a bean to cup, a DeLonghi magnifica. It's a different machine to fully automatic, which does milk as well. It makes lovely coffee, but you can't use dark roasts as they can clog the machine.

I froth my own milk, because the auto milk carafes just aren't hot enough.

We bought Dh a Delonghi Magnifica which comes with a separate milk carafe to make latte/cappuccinos because he loves coffee.

We paid £350 at the time and it is used every day. In the last 10 years we have had it we have replaced one O ring in it simply by following a video on YouTube and it has made 17,274 coffees to date.

It makes little grounds pucks and dispenses them into a container within the machine, you simply empty them into the bin when the machine tells you to empty them. The milk carafe cleans itself by running hot water through the dispenser and we then just put it back into the fridge.

Every now and then it tells you to descale it which again is a simple process and no doubt YouTube has videos on how to do this if you want to see it.

Previously we have used both a French Press and a moka pot on the stove. Both requires cleaning the grounds out. The Delonghi allows you to set the amount of water for each coffee (short, two short coffees, long and two long coffees, we never make two together, both spouts decant into one cup) same with the amount of milk the cappuccino decants. You can also add more milk ad-hoc style.

Shop around for prices, watch YouTube videos of any coffee machine you like the look of. I highly recommend Delonghi.

For all the Magnifica groupies (👋) I find the DeLonghi online help pages are brilliant. This is the URL for my [quite elderly but still fab] model but it’s well worth finding your own.

https://support.delonghi.com/en/magnifica-esam4200/Lights-are-flashing-or-steadily-on-3fe6

eta There are also brilliant YouTube videos by deLonghi with a very earnest chap showing you how to descale.

Is this an ad thread?

@funnelstunnels Well as the OP certainly not initiated by me! But I am very grateful for all those posters who’ve shared their experiences - the temptation to get one is much increased