The advantage of a fully automatic machine is obvious: it’s quick and you always have a consistent quality once the right settings have been found. We will help you with this article.
But you have to get to this point first, because every fully automatic machine works differently. Here we share 7 tips to help you set up your bean-to-cup machine to get the most out of your machine. We have tested our coffee beans for fully automatic machines intensively with a wide variety of machine settings, here are the results.
All Tips At A Glance:
- The Right Bean For Your Fully Automatic Machine
- Use The Correct Grind Size
- Right Dosage And Intensity
- Amount Of Water Per Drink
- Clean Your Fully Automatic Machine Properly
- Milk Used
- Filtered Water
1. The Right Bean For Your Fully Automatic Machine
In addition, with many fully automatic machines you can only use one type of bean, since the device only has one bean container. The challenge here is to prepare an espresso and a café crème from the same coffee bean.
Choosing the right coffee bean is crucial for the quality and taste of your coffee drink . In order to choose the right beans, you should note the following: When preparing with the fully automatic coffee machine, coffee is brewed with a short extraction time and you cannot adjust the degree of grinding as finely as with a coffee or espresso grinder .
2. Use The Correct Grind Size
The right degree of grinding is just as essential for the fully automatic machine as it is for other preparation methods. Often you will find a kind of controller on the fully automatic machine with the indication of a large and small bean, with which you can change the degree of grinding.
In order to find the perfect degree of grinding for your fully automatic machine, it is best to use the throughput time of an espresso as a guide. How long does the fully automatic machine need to brew an espresso with a volume of around 30 – 35 ml? In our tests with various fully automatic machines, we found that the brewing time of a perfect espresso differs significantly per machine. On average, you’re doing pretty well with a turnaround time of about 10 seconds. To do this, we had to fine-tune the factory settings of the grinding degree on all machines that we tested.
3. Choose The Right Dosage And Intensity
When preparing coffee and espresso, there are rules of thumb for optimal extraction. These are not very helpful when preparing with the fully automatic coffee machine, as you can only very rarely see the number of grams of coffee and influence it in a non-transparent manner. To set the amount of coffee, there is often only the choice of the taste “strong/strong” or “weak/mild” in the settings. Since the setting options vary depending on the machine, we do not want to give you a recipe at this point, but recommend that you try different settings depending on the drink you have selected. We provide for e.g. B. a café crème, set the intensity to a medium setting (3 out of 5 beans). When preparing espresso, we like a strong taste and therefore set a high intensity (5 out of 5 beans).
4. Amount Of Water Per Drink
With my espresso machine, you have the option of precisely defining the amount of water. If this is the case, we recommend 35 ml of water for preparing an espresso or cappuccino and 110 ml for a café crème. The coffee outlet temperature is 83 °C – 86 °C. 90 – 95 °C are reached inside the machine during brewing. If your coffee maker offers the option to change the water temperature, set it to 95 °C. At this temperature, the best possible extraction of the aromas from the coffee bean takes place.
If you want a large cup of coffee, we don’t recommend just adding more water to your drink. This means that you dilute or over-extract your drink and dissolve many bitter substances. We actually want to avoid that! So our tip: Pour two drinks into one cup or lengthen your drink afterwards with hot water (like an Americano) to get a larger coffee drink.
5. Clean Your Fully Automatic Machine Properly
Cleaning your coffee maker is the least fun of tasks, but probably the most important for taste and hygiene. Most coffee machines make it easy for you and automatically guide you through the cleaning program.
Try to avoid keeping fresh water in the water tank for too long. Change it out regularly. The interior of the machine is usually cleaned automatically using a cleaning tablet and the corresponding care program. Residues such as coffee oils settle inside the machine, which become rancid in combination with oxygen and, in the worst case, lead to mold inside the machine. If not cleaned, the taste will transfer to your coffee. It is particularly important to clean the parts that have come into contact with milk. Your machine supplier will often supply you with a cleaning solution for milk hoses.
Tip: Do not push the drip tray all the way back in after manual cleaning. Instead, leave this and the compartment for the cleaning tablets on top of the machine slightly open so that air can circulate through the machine.
6. Milk Used
When using milk in the fully automatic machine, we recommend using homogenized milk with a high fat content. Also make sure that the milk used is well chilled and does not get too warm. Many machines do not heat milk to a target temperature, but heat by target time. If the milk used is too warm, this will negatively affect the foam quality and taste.
7. Filtered Water
Some machines have a built-in water filter on their water tank. If your machine does not have this, we recommend that you only use filtered water. Coffee consists of 99% water. It is therefore obvious what a great influence the water used has on the taste of your coffee.
