Is that synonymous with bad coffee?
Do you know this too? You go to a restaurant or a café and want to have a delicious espresso after your lunch? Or you want to drink a milky coffee or a cappuccino and end up massively disappointed. The coffee tastes rancid, bitter, almost unpalatable and you regret not waiting until you got home to brew your espresso yourself.
Many say that this is mainly because restaurants use fully automatic coffee machines. And these simply don't match the perfection of a portafilter machine. But is that true? Must a fully automatic coffee machine produce bad coffee? To the 16 warning signs for bad coffee in cafés and restaurants many of you have sent us a 17th warning sign, namely the fully automatic coffee machine. But we are convinced that the fully automatic coffee machine in gastronomy has its raison d'être and that many people don't quite exploit its potential.
Misconceptions about fully automatic coffee machines
We believe that the fully automatic coffee machine is misunderstood, both by cafés, roasteries and even by the manufacturers of the machines themselves. It starts with the fact that fully automatic coffee machines don't actually work fully automatically!
Of course, the fully automatic machine takes over grinding, distributing, tamping, locking and brewing with the push of a button. But there are many aspects that don't work automatically.
Normally, coffee machines are named according to the type of brewing. For example, in a portafilter machine, coffee flows through a portafilter that must be filled with coffee. Accordingly, the fully automatic machine is a so-called piston coffee machine. A piston that has been filled with ground coffee is moved into a brew group where it is compressed and infused with hot water.
But the danger of this misnaming of the coffee machine is especially that the name "fully automatic" suggests that no one needs to worry about anything. Buy an automatic machine, throw in whatever beans, press a button and you can already offer coffee drinks on your menu. But it's not that simple! The purchase of a machine is not the end of work for the restaurateur, but actually the beginning.
What needs to be done with a fully automatic coffee machine?
A fully automatic coffee machine must be set up. It must be precisely defined what drink ratio of coffee to beverage should be brewed into the cup. This drink ratio must be based on a selection of beans. Which beans does the machine run well with? Which ones taste best with which beans and in which brewing recipe? And last but not least, in addition to regular and thorough cleaning, daily quality control of each coffee drink must be carried out.
The settings should ideally be done together with a trained service technician. Service technicians, however, usually work more on the technical side of the machine and are rarely extensively trained in coffee sensory analysis.
Another level that the restaurateur must tackle: sitting down with roasters and roasteries and selecting beans for his fully automatic coffee machine. Good roasteries can support him in the selection, as they know their coffees well and also know which ones work well for brewing in a piston machine.
Here's also a small appeal to the roasteries. There are restaurant businesses that have reasonably chosen to use a fully automatic coffee machine. And we roasteries should support these businesses! Many roasteries have rather neglected or not paid attention at all to roasting beans for fully automatic machines. This is why the selection of coffees for fully automatic machines is also very limited. That's a shame and it's worth changing that!
Criticism of fully automatic coffee machine manufacturers
A fully automatic coffee machine suitable for gastronomy costs several thousand euros. But when you look at the budgets of the manufacturers, some large manufacturers are also based in Switzerland, we have doubts. Marketing expenses exceed the costs of further machine development by many times over.
Our experiences with fully automatic coffee machines reflect this policy of some manufacturers. There are many innovations in terms of appearance. Touch displays, color LEDs and so on, to make the machines look more beautiful and futuristic. But it seems as though many companies are not too interested in really engaging with the food chemistry aspects of brewing processes. In comparison, the home barista sector has catapulted itself to a completely different quality level in the same period.
Even if it's often disappointing when you see, for example, gross errors in manufacturers' brochures, there are exceptions. Companies that are really interested in further developing fully automatic coffee machines. And these exceptions give us confidence that things can change and we are on the way to better coffee in gastronomy.
The ideal world of the fully automatic coffee machine from our perspective
For us, an ideal world would look like this: An interested restaurateur sits down after purchasing a fully automatic coffee machine with a (sensory) trained service technician and a local roaster and together they consider what their coffee should taste like. How strong should the espresso taste through the milk, how strong should an acidity or bitterness be? Together this trio works out quality protocols for EVERY drink. This can easily take two days. Following this, the team is trained and introduced to the respective drinks. Daily, based on a test protocol, the quality of each product (extraction time, temperature, taste, consistency) is checked, preferably by a really well-trained person or the restaurateur themselves.
In such an establishment, cappuccino and espresso from a fully automatic machine can certainly hold their own against an espresso from a portafilter machine. And thus, from our perspective, the fully automatic coffee machine really has its raison d'être, as staff need to be trained far less than on a portafilter machine. And remember, a poorly pulled espresso from a really beautiful portafilter machine still tastes terrible. Better to have an espresso from a well-adjusted and constantly checked fully automatic machine.
Conclusion: The fully automatic coffee machine in gastronomy
If we automatically equate a fully automatic coffee machine with bad coffee, we're taking the easy way out. You can make drinkable and even good coffee with almost any coffee machine if you pay attention to some parameters. Often it comes down to whether the head restaurateur is interested in the coffee tasting really good and quality being maintained consistently.
An idea for your next coffee from the fully automatic machine: Instead of avoiding the coffee with a glance at the machine and fleeing the restaurant, you might perhaps politely ask the staff about it. Ask where the beans come from, whether they work with local roasteries and so on. Good restaurateurs recognize what their customers value and we should show them what we value: Good coffee!
We've decided to visit an establishment and use our old inspection protocol to check through the coffee drinks and work out a path to good coffee together with you. If you're a restaurateur, you can apply HERE. We'd like to make an exemplary video from our visit that can help other establishments. We look forward to it!
