Forbes Lifestyle ForbesLife This New Upscale Coffee Machine May Well Transform Your Mornings Scott Kramer Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I cover
golf, luxury technology, and the intersection of the two. Following Sep 28, 2023, 08:30am EDT | Share to
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Twitter Share to Linkedin The perfect coffee machine? De'Longhi As if I needed any more caffeine. But I’m on a personal quest to find the single-best coffee maker for our kitchen. For months, I’ve been using an inexpensive espresso machine for my morning quota of double-shots. They taste fantastic. Problem is, my wife prefers a good ol’ cup of Joe. So for her, I have been combining two double-shots into a cup, along with her soy creamer. She loves it, but it’s more effort than I want to exert at 6am. So I just began trying out the new and sleek De’Longhi Eletta Explore just hitting store shelves now. I’ve tried a lot of coffee machines for this column, and this was far and away the easiest setup ever. Following instructions, all I did was rinse out the water reservoir, fill it back up with filtered water, unload a bag of coffee beans into the machine’s built-in grinder, and it was good to go. Like the upscale machines you might find in a swanky office or in a car dealer lounge, this is guided by a visual LCD screen showing you more than 50 pre-set coffees that you can further customize. And in a rare twist, it even offers double-shots, allowing me to easily specify intensity, size and temperature – truly the best interface I’ve ever seen for my needs. While I dial up the intensity for my drinks, my wife likes her coffee only slightly strong. Thus I programmed our drinks into the machine, with each of us having our own profile. It was amazingly simple to do. And by the way, I can manually adjust the grind size by simply turning a dial so that the espresso uses a finer grind than the coffee. And it makes my mornings now super easy, so I can spend more time waking up to emails and Wordle. But the Eletta Explore is so much more capable than how I use it. It can make cold brew coffee in just under three minutes, using a special extraction process. By the way, that proprietary technology uses precisely measured water flow and pressure rates, along with specific extraction temperatures to create the cold brew. The machine can also make frothy hot or cold milk, to add to your drinks. Its LatteCrema Cool System delivers velvety milk cold foam at an ideal temperature for iced drinks, while the LatteCrema Hot System texturizes milk or your favorite milk alternatives to perfection. There’s included and dedicated froth canisters for each type. And De’Longhi’s Bean Adapt Technology intelligently guides you to optimize your brewing experience based on the beans you use. Like most of the latest coffee makers, this can connect to your Wi-Fi and then to a companion phone app – allowing you to essentially order your coffee from bed, for example, so that when you make your way into the kitchen your freshly brewed cup is awaiting. I can’t even begin to brag about how this has eased my mornings already. Plus, it looks great on our countertop without taking up a huge footprint like other machines I’ve tried out. The menu is intuitive, as well. Cleanup is also a breeze -- primarily because there is none. After about every eight drinks or so, I just pull open the used coffee grounds door and empty it – into my garden to help the plants grow. The machine sells for $2,000. MORE FOR YOU The Best Dehumidifiers For Basements To Thwart Dampness And Mold The Best Space Heaters To Cozy Up Your Space This Winter Husqvarna s Latest Mowing Innovation Is To Mow Less Follow me on LinkedIn . Scott Kramer Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions