Let’s talk about coffee some more:
What if you don’t like the idea of capsules, having to empty out the tiny waste bin of plastic or metal capsules which you may or may not recycle, refilling the water container on a regular basis, the limits to the tastes and flavours of coffee available to you. To be fair the big player in the game – Nestle, has a sustainability programme and does encourage recycling of the aluminium capsules, you can read more here:
https://www.nestle-nespresso.com/nespresso-sustainability
You like the idea of a coffee machine and having super tasty coffee at home. You work hard and you enjoy nice coffee, so you’re in the market for a really good machine. I’m here to recommend the best bean to cup machine available from a price / performance perspective. I think this one will suit almost everyone regardless of how well off you are and it’s also better for the environment.
I get it, Coffee Pod machines don’t appeal to you – all that terrible waste!
So what exactly is a bean to cup machine?
A bean to cup machine freshly grinds your beans so it can make freshly ground coffee on demand. It has a great taste (depending on the beans you buy, but even nice ones can be bought cheaply) and for me the main benefit is it can help make your kitchen smell amazing every morning. Mmmm freshly ground coffee!
With the machine I’m about to recommend the only waste is a hockey puck of squished together used coffee grinds. It literally spits them into an internal bin and they genuinely do look like hockey pucks. Best bit, you can put them on your garden as compost or put them in your bin and not feel bad about it.
So tell me about the De’Longhi Magnifica ESAM 4200 machine.
Well first off what a catchy name, De’Longhi’s marketing department must be working over time to come up with that. Bravo guys!
And now for a tour of the De’Longhi Magnifica ESAM 4200
– I’ll take you around it in a clockwise fashion, like an estate agent for coffee machines. Forget righmove.com, with an addiction to this it’s allnightgroove.com
It’s got a bean hopper on the top left under a protective flap and this is where the beans are directed down into the grinder. The grinder has an adjustable knob to make a finer or coarser grind. This impacts on the flavour so try a few different settings and enjoy being wide eyed and wired for the rest of the day.
In the middle of the machine (on the top) there’s another flap with a hidden plastic spoon that you can scoop pre-ground coffee into. On the machine I bought for my parents I never actually used this so can’t comment on it, grinding your own beans just seems more satisfying and it’s so simple.
Next up there’s a cup warmer on the top right of the machine but if you’ve got a regular height countertop with cupboards over the top and under cabinet lighting, then this might not leave sufficient height for a regular size mug, a little espresso cup would be fine. If you put it on a part of your counter without cupboards over the top you can probably put really tall cups on there with no problems. When I say tall I mean tall like the green giant tall, I don’t mean tall like Starbucks Tall which is actually small. This is why you buy a bean to cup machine, never again do you have to pay for the privilege of getting a cup with “Vagina” scrawled on the side instead of “Virginia” or the whole “Semen” / “Simon” thing (they totally know what they’re doing). Anyway, I’ve got distracted, I never had cause to use the cup warmer because let’s face it your coffee warms up the cup it’s in, so I’m guessing not many people would bother with it. It’s a delightful silver colour, if yours is blue you’ve forgotten to take the protective plastic covering off.
Behind the steam wand/milk frother there’s the water cartridge, this is pretty big so gets quite heavy when filling up under the tap. There’s a small hole to pour water in, but also the top comes off to make filling way easier. When you first set up the machine there’s a water hardness indicator in the manual that you can use to fine tune your settings.
On the front there’s just four buttons and three knobs, together with some indicator lights. It sounds way more complicated than it is, in reality you can make a coffee by pressing the power button and then the cup icon to make you a coffee. If you want to make two cups that’s the two-cup icon. The thing that looks like a cloud is to make the steam wand work. Once the light for the steam comes on you turn the right-hand knob to the left and steam will come out of the wand (for up to 3 minutes). I bought a little milk jug and milk thermometer separately so I could make coffee just like the pro’s do in the local Costa.
Tell me about the coffee / How do I work it?
There’s two big knobs in the middle of the machine, one controls the amount in your cup (left hand knob) and one controls the strength of your coffee (right hand knob). Again, it’s fun to play around with these knobs, true pro’s can probably tweak two knobs at once, but maybe take a “sip and spit” approach, or else you’ll not get any sleep the day you get this delivered.
It’s perfect for making espresso in a morning, and if you like milk in your coffee you can make a cappuccino using the milk wand. The milk wand spits out steam into a jug of milk that you hold underneath it, the steam lasts for 3 minutes before it needs some time to make more steam. It’s best to do this after you’ve made your coffee because otherwise the machine needs time to cool back down to coffee making temperature after using the steam wand.
Handy hint – After you’ve pulled the milk wand out of your jug of freshly frothed milk, shoot one final spray of steam out of the wand to blast out any milk from inside and wipe the outside with a cloth to keep it nice and clean. Most men should already be quite proficient at this procedure.
The bit where the coffee exits the machine and goes into your cup is height adjustable with a thumb and finger indent on either side to make it easy to move up and down.
The machine will clean itself which is great, as it means your coffee always tastes good. There’s some settings in the manual that you can play around with to determine how long the machine stays on before going into stand-by mode. These are actually quite easy to set using the buttons and flashing lights to indicate what you’re doing.
There’s a drip catcher beneath where you put the cup and this is good for catching the self-cleaning drips of water that will inevitably come out of the machine before / after you’ve made a coffee.
The hopper for coffee beans is pretty big, as is the water cartridge, so you can go quite a while before having to refill either.
Conclusion
All things considered, this De’Longhi Magnifica ESAM 4200 machine is great. You can buy well regarded beans from Amazon like the Lavazza Red, you can buy budget beans from Aldi and Lidl which also taste great. You can even go all out and become a mega coffee snob, buy single source beans from specialty websites and start your own book of tasting notes. You can join clubs which send you new beans on a weekly or monthly basis and know which village they came from and whose hands picked them.
The one problem I’ve identified, is you might find people dropping round to your house more often, just because they know you’ll offer them a really good coffee. I guess that could also be considered a plus, but it kind of depends on the person.
As per usual here’s the buying link. Prices vary wildly on amazon over time, the lowest I’ve seen is £235 and the highest is over £300. Either way it’s worth every penny and you won’t regret buying it for a second. It’s the best sub £500 machine, and probably my mum’s favourite present ever.
Will it save me money?
Over the longer term I think this machine has the lowest total cost of ownership, with beans available for £1.79 for 200 grams (Aldi Specially Selected Ethiopian Coffee (which won a consumer taste test). The machine itself (at £300 and if it lasts four years) will cost you the equivalent of 20p a day but the individual price of each cup of coffee from the beans is much lower than using capsules (probably 5p a cup). Overall, it’s probably about the same cost wise as using own brand capsules with a pod machine, but you’re getting a much more enjoyable coffee experience that’s not doing environmental harm.
Anything else?
Accessories wise you can get a milk frothing pitcher:
A thermometer (the thing that holds it onto the milk pitcher moves up and down the spike so it fits I promise)
If you want to take it to the next level check out this book – Creative Coffee Designs for the Home Barista. Get your teenage son/daughter on the case and they’ve got demonstrable skills for that summer job. It’s actually harder than it looks.
Enjoy
Loving your blog! All information is relevant and well-presented. Keep up the good work!!!