I receive many different coffee-related products, machines and gadgets. Some are prototypes some already exist in the market, but unfortunately I don’t post about all of them. The ones I do are because I genuinely think that it will be of benefit to my audience!
Melitta have been sending me their products for a while and I’ve become somewhat of an ambassador, because what I like about this German brand is that it’s really affordable for coffee lovers who are interested in making coffee at home. Their products are generally not over complicated or fancy but the output is consistently good and I think thats really important. I show you a lot of luxury products too (many sold in my web shop) but I want people not to feel intimidated by the sometimes ‘exclusivity’ of the specialty coffee industry.
Good coffee should be available for everyone to enjoy and it doesn’t need to be made on something super expensive of fancy. But there is a time and a place for everything!
I digress….
Melitta sent me this Avanza bean to cup home espresso machine head of it’s release date at the time I filmed this video. But the good news is that now it’s on the market! If you’re looking for something compact, convenient, easy to use and consistent then this may be a really good option for you, especially if you are a small office or studio who might make 2-8 coffees a day. Lets take a look.
The water tank is holds a good amount of water (1-1.5litres) so it means you don’t need to fill it up too much (depending on how much coffee you drink! 😉 ) The water tank is detachable so you can either take it directly to the tap or if you’re like me use filtered or bottled water. Though it’s not very eco-friendly. So another option is to buy a filter cartridge separately from the Melitta website. It will prolong the life of your machine. If you do use a cartridge, they recommend that you only need to descale the machine once a year! London water is really hard, but can differ depending on where your water is sourced from. There’s a litmus hardness paper that comes with the machine so you can see for yourself how hard the water is, and you can set the machine’s water hardness level so that it knows when to tell you to descale the machine.
The hopper holds about 200-250grams of coffee beans which is about the amount that you would buy from a cafe or in a subscription. Unless you drink loads of espresso, you can just keep filling it up as you go.
There are only three grinder settings which keep it simple. I tend to have it on the finest setting possible. There are buttons along the front. The first button is for one cup, the second is for two cups. There are two sprouts where the coffee comes out, where you can put two cups!
There is a dial which is interesting because it controls how much coffee comes out. I’ve tested different spots along the dial and the lowest yields about 30 mls which is perfect for an espresso. If you want a longer coffee, I’d suggest filling a cup with a little hot water and float an espresso on top. (In New Zealand we call this a Long Black, which is a touch less diluted than an Americano coffee!)
There are three different settings for “strength” - going from weakest to strongest. I have mine on the strongest, obviously. It will tell the machine how much to grind.
There are still a few functions within the ‘service’ button that I need to play around with but it makes it easier to do things like change the water hardness settings, filter and cleaning programming , brewing temperature and setting the auto off/on function.
They also have a Cap-pu-ccina-to-re which I can’t pronounce correctly no matter how hard I try, but it’s basically a fun name for the steam wand! It’s quite a cool system because you can just place the tube into any milk vessel (a carton, bottle, jug) whatever the milk comes in and it can be steamed. Then you can just put it straight back into the fridge, no transferring or anything. The milk quality is good. It’s a good temperature, smooth, creamy and the texture is nice and thick.
Three Tips to get the best out of this machine and really any other coffee maker:
(you’ll have to watch the youtube video for the full explanation! ) Sorry!
This machine is quite cool because you can change the temperature of the water. The temperature of the water you are brewing at can change the taste of your coffee, so it’s a good feature to have. I’ve been using the highest setting, which has been producing good espresso brews for me!
The Avanza is intuitive - it tells you when you need to empty the tray and used coffee grinds so that it doesn’t over flow and make a mess and it turns itself off! Right before it turns off it also rinses itself so you don’t have to and gives you piece of mind that every time you use it, that it’s rinsed.
I’ve been a professional in the specialty coffee industry for over a decade now, so when I’m testing products and machines I try to get into the mind of who might be using this, in this case people at home or small or shared offices. My expectations are different from when I’m in the cafe. I look at it’s convenience, ease of use (also is it intuitive to use), and most importantly what is the taste and quality of the coffee like? It’s really important to know that home espresso machines will be different to commercial grade machines, but there are a few out there that can give you a resemblance of a cafe quality style coffee, but at home. Also for the £500 mark, this is pretty reasonable.
You may have seen in a previous blog that Melitta have an app. I started looking around the Avanza section of the app for the first time and it’s really interesting. It has all sorts of information on it. Like tutorials on how to descale and clean your machine and gives you diagnostics on the functions of each feature. It has a great source of information about coffee beans, the perfect grind, water, roasting coffee, harvesting etc. It’s pretty interesting so even if you don’t have a Melitta machine you could still download the app for some light educational coffee reading!
All in all it’s a really simple bean to cup machine that requires very little involvement and a lot of coffee enjoyment!
For more on this machine head over to melitta.co.uk or @melitta_uk (on instagram)
