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Writer's pictureCoffee Beans and Blends

A quick overview of Manual coffee machines

Updated: Dec 17, 2020

To fully enjoy your choice of freshly roasted coffee beans, which we will recommend and help you to choose, also requires a method of extracting the awesome flavors of those beans and blends.

Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases made through links on this page.

While there are a variety of methods and devices to extract coffee from the beans, most serious coffee drinkers look for a method that produces a consistent flavor, caters for individual drinking preferences, is easy to use and does not require a lot of maintenance / cleaning.

In my other posts ( From bean to cup, From bean to cup on a budget and Just show me the best Bean-to-cup machine! ) I have researched and recommended what appear to be the most popular and well recommended Bean-to-Cup machines at low medium and high price-points.

In addition to those all-in-one machines which store, grind, extract and can also blend-with-milk, that coffee we all love so much, there is an even greater range of machines available for those who want a more hands-on coffee making experience.


While it is not the focus of this site to go into the finer nuances of the many coffee machines out there, some examples are:

  • Manual espresso machines

Pros: * Best-tasting coffee; * Flexibility of how the coffee is extracted

Cons: * Time-consuming; * Messy; * Most require a separate grinder (unless you buy pre-ground coffee 😒)


Some well-reviewed options to consider if you are interested in fully manual extraction are:











or the more up-market Breville Dual Boiler Espresso Machine offering much greater control over the manual coffee extraction






NOTE:

Unless you plan to use pre-ground coffee, You will need a separate conical burr bean grinder for grinding the coffee for these manual extractors. I personally recommend the highly acclaimed (almost 1,400 out of over 1,600 reviews gave it the full 5 out of 5 starts rating!) Breville BCG820BSS the Smart Grinder







Also see the other brief coffee machine overviews for:

Pros: Quick, consistent results; mess-free

Cons: Coffee is not freshly ground; Coffee pods can be expensive; Pods restrict yo to pre-defined blends; Little or no control over how the coffee is extracted. (one method for all)


  • Filter coffee machines

Pros: Cheap, quick, easy, good to make enough coffee for several people at once,

Cons: Almost nil versatility apart from the choice of coffee to use; coffee left brewing in the carafe looses most of its vitality, disposing of the used filters can be messy.

 

NOTE: this web site is NOT focused on reviewing coffee machines, I've just added these posts to offer some researched guidance on what machines you can use to enjoy the benefits of what the rest of the site is about ... coffee beans and blending


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