Your coffee, your way, at the press of a button
Making coffee manually can be a wonderfully meditative process, but if you don’t have the time or inclination to worry about grinding, tamping, and frothing, there’s no need to spend a fortune on takeout – all you need is the right automatic coffee maker in your kitchen.
Automatic coffee makers handle every part of the brewing process for you, and are the best option if you want good quality, fresh coffee with minimal effort. Just take your pick from the menu, and the machine will handle the dosing, grinding, and brewing for you, then steam and dispense milk too if your chosen drink calls for it.
Automatic coffee makers tend to be more expensive than manual machines, and sometimes require more cleaning (particularly if the milk enters any part of the machine), but you’ll still save a lot of time compared to brewing yourself, and you can be assured of perfectly consistent results every time with no experience at all.
Curious? Here are my three top recommendations for effortless brewing. If you can’t see quite what you want, take a look at my complete guides to the best coffee makers and the best espresso machines for more option.Philips LatteGo 5500 Series
This compact automatic machine is my top recommendation if you’re the sole coffee-drinker in your household. Not only is it one of the smallest I’ve tested in recent months (it measures 9.7 x 14.6 x 17 inches, or 24.6 x 37.1 x 43.3cm), it’s also cleverly designed so you don’t have excessive quantities of beans, water, and milk hanging around to spoil.
First, let’s take a look at the water tank. It has a modest capacity of 1.9qt / 1.8 liters, and even less when you’ve fitted the supplied water filter (something that’s not included with many coffee machines in this price bracket), but that’s perfectly fine if you’re only brewing one or two drinks at a time. Fresh water is always best, so there’s no point in having liters of water hanging around in your machine unused.
I also like the fact that the tank slides out of the front, so you can place the machine up against a wall and don’t have to move it out when it’s time for a top-up.
The bean hopper is also small, capable of holding only enough coffee for a few brews at once. It has a rubber seal to prevent air getting in, and a tinted lid to protect your beans from light (both of which will make them degrade faster) but again, it’s best to only keep the beans you’ll need today in the hopper.
