De’Longhi Eletta Cappuccino ECAM 45.760.W Bean to Cup Starter Bundle + Starbucks Pike Place Roast Medium Roast Whole Bean Coffee, 200 g (Pack of 6)

These machines are quite needy, like a high maintenance wife (or should I say partner of either gender or none), you love them, and want to keep them, but they are a bit of a pain in the neck:

1. The water tank will need filling up regularly, at least once a day, (if you have a family all using it 3 or 4 times a day) – it holds about a litre I would say at a guess, but if you think that you will get a litre of coffee from that you would be very mistaken. When you switch on the machine it warms up by flushing warm water through the machine, and when you switch it off it does the same. So that uses a lot of water.

2. Don’t expect it to make Starbucks or Costa size lattes etc. my machine doesn’t and I doubt any other one does either. Mine dispenses small, Italian sized, lattes/cappuccinos, by default. Now it is true that this machine allows you to vary the amount of milk that gets dispensed and the amount of coffee too. So the first thing that I did was program the cappuccino button to give me a big mug full. The problem with that is that the amount of coffee grains is the same it just runs more boiling water through them so that by the end it’s quite weak. So it sort of works, but i didn’t think it was great. It might be ok if you like fairly weak coffee, but if you are an extra shot type of person it probably won’t do. At the moment i find it easier to just put two small cappucinos into one mug as it tastes better but obviously takes a bit longer to sort out.

3. The milk container is pretty good, but you obviously have to store it in the fridge between making drinks. Also after you have finished making your drink, or drinks, you have to set the dial on the milk dispenser to “clean”, which flushes hot water through the milk container pipes – this uses even more water in the tank (see 1 above). You also need to clean the milk container manually every day or two.

4. specific to this machine, other people have mentioned that the metal drip tray cover scratches – and it does. if that is going to freak you out this might not be the machine for you. True you could buy glass mugs with a smooth bottom, but most of those can’t be put in the dishwasher. Also putting the milk container on and pushing the water tank in place also marks the drip tray cover and there is nothing you can do about that. Somebody said that it’s made of plastic with silver paint, but to me it looks, feels and sounds like solid metal so I don’t think it will ever look too bad – even with the scratches.

5. All the water from rinses and cleaning the milk container tubes has to go somewhere. By default it will got into the drip tray. The drip tray isn’t that big so if you allowed that to happen you would be emptying the drip tray a lot. I put a plastic tray over the trip tray to catch the water because it’s easier to empty this rather than keep pulling the drip tray out and emptying it.

6. The used coffee grounds go into an area behind the drip tray – you will need to empty this every few days depending on use.

7. The manual recommends you give the internal gubbins a full clean fairly regularly – I haven’t tried that yet. You have to descale the inside too – I have’t done that either yet, and they recommend a water filter is fitted and replaced at regular intervals. I don’t know how much the descaling fluid and filters cost

So in conclusion, I love the coffee and don’t regret buying this machine, but it is needy. It bleeps when it wants more water, it bleeps for you to empty the drip tray, it bleeps when the coffee grounds need emptying, it bleeps when it wants more coffee beans – so it does a lot of bleeping! If you want a machine that you just switch on and forget, while it dispenses cup after cup of coffee with no input from you then this (or I suspect any other) bean to cup machine is not for you.

The taste: for french roast whole beans (starbucks)
To be honest I haven’t tinker the other settings but temperature I set is Level 1 out of 4. For the whole bean coffee at grinding coarse level at 7 out of 7 (most coarse). The 2 cup extra mild, extra long coffee setting has a bitter after taste (most diluted I guess). (ALL coffee-only settings have a bitter after taste characteristics). To reduce the bitter after taste, I stop the process before 70% by tapping any button/touch pad or removing the cup and or add milk later.

The Bad:
Too sensitive touch panel that I frequently cancel the intended drinks.
I have a second hand Jü2@, a Swiss made B2C and since I already clean inside of it, I am fairly familiar with some of the materials.
For me the 1st thing I notice is that the plastic from the brew group of Jü2@ is made from POM. While I haven’t notice any indication of what kind of plastic that was use in the De’longHi Eletta, the bad for me is that the moldings of the plastic is not that good as the swiss brand looks like, and I do not know the plastic that was use in it but i hope its food safe, heat stable, my main concern is that I hope it doesn’t leach any plastic chemicals to the coffee. This is my only limit and my view.

FYI
The Swiss brand I use doesn’t have that bitter after taste, I do not know but my theory is that the italians and the swiss have different taste for coffee. Maybe? But I am confident that there are differences in the process of the both machines, for example De’longhi process grinds the coffee then, extracts the coffee all the way to the cup for a certain time, and done, compared to Jü2@, it grinds the coffee, extracts the coffee for a certain time, diverts the final water to another valve to its catch basin.
This Jü2@ unit is capresso E7 is set to strong aroma, grinding coarse level at 4 of 6. High Temperature. The coffee cup and aroma is Espresso Strong. I hope that someone notice it too or maybe my olfactory and gustatory memory is at fault.

Lets go back to Eletta, its a great buy for us, the design appears well constructed and functions very smoothly, cleaning and maintenance is a breeze. Hoping that it will last like the Jü2@ at 17 years or almost 20,000 cups. Just remove the cup before 70% for a swiss coffee taste if you prefer.

Again 5-star for me our 1st new machine. I rate flawless despite