The grinder in question here is a burr conical grinder – these are the best grinders, much better than the metal blade ones which ‘chop’ the beans. A burr grinder will crush the beans, meaning you get a more even grind. It is also adjustable so you can select a different grind size for different drinks and for different types of bean. This can be fun to experiment with. Now onto the drinks themselves. Right at the start of our introduction we mentioned that the goal of this machine was to make great drinks at the touch of a button – so what drinks? The fully automated system can make a cappuccino, caffe latte, single or double espresso, ristretto, a long coffee or latte macchiato all with one touch – or an americano or flat white with a little more effort. It’s not just the cleaning programmes that affects how easy a machine is to maintain though. The brewing unit should be easy to remove and clean.

While all the models on this list can produce coffee from beans, the Oracle is truly automatic. It grinds, tamps and doses the coffee – and can also automatically texture the milk. Considering milk texture is one of the most difficult parts of making a high-quality cappuccino, this is a welcome feature.

Questions & Answers

The coffee is brewed using a 15-bar pump. The optimum amount o f pressure that you need to brew coffee is around 9-bars, so it’s reassuring to have that extra little bit. You can set it for a ‘pre infusion’ where the water is introduced to the coffee and then the pressure is slowly built up – giving more time for infusion. The idea behind this is that you extract more flavour out of the coffee and into your drink.

The E970 Caffeo CI is more expensive than the E953-102, but comes with a range of features to justify the extra cost. These include a memory system for storing up to four coffee presets, a two-chamber bean container and a one-touch system. For programming your own milk frother settings it is really simple and you just need to follow the easy to use instructions.

Key Features Of The Eletta ECAM44.660.B and ECAM45.760.W

The De’Longhi Eletta is a bean to cup machine, and priced towards the upper-mid range for a machine like this. But does it warrant the money? Let’s take a look.