Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)For a little information about me, I'm not a connoisseur of coffee. I like sweet coffee's (Carmel lattes) and never drink my coffee black. I like a nice sweet coffee in the morning as something smooth in the morning to get the day started, and occasionally at night when it's cold and if we are just relaxing I like to have a nice warm something or other. My wife will drink her coffee black and with almost no sweetener, she's a cappuccino person.
We've gone to Starbucks on and off for years and recently a little coffee house opened up down the street. We have been going there every morning for the last month. We always get small coffees and at $6 a visit it was a shocker when we realized we had spent about $120 in a month on coffee... that's when we started looking around.
Luckily a friend of mine had gotten the Jura-Capresso Z5 last year and couldn't stop talking about it, so I started my search there. After a lot of research on the web, and seeing the $1k difference between this machine and the Z5 which essentially only adds the One-touch cappuccino we decided to go with this machine.
So far we've had the machine a few days and within the first few hours I was making sweet/frothy/creamy drinks that were on par with any coffee shop I had ever been to. It's really easy.
The pre-sets are pretty good if you aren't too picky, but I'm *really* picky about my coffee even though I'm not a fancy burista or anything. The S9 comes with the frothXpress attachment so if you are into just hitting buttons and drinking coffee with no effort, you can totally do that. But I use the default manual frothing attachment and like to froth my coffee a certain way and my wife likes it another way.
We also use the hot water spout to make tea at night sometimes.
I'll admit that looking at this for $2500 then looking at some of the other machines that *seem* to have the same attachments for $400 is hard to swallow. The real magic of this machine is a combination of all the automation (push a button, drink coffee) as well as the fine-tuned control over everything and lastly over how exactly the items are heated, pressed and filtered. If you are curious, search for the S9 review on CoffeeGeek, the guy knows more about coffee than an entire country. He reviewed this machine after having it for over a year and loaning it out to people and restaurants. He got into the detail of how much pressure is used to brew the coffee (apparently very important) and also how hot and how fast the milk is heated (which is important I guess as well so you don't kill the naturally sweet proteins in the milk)... it's a ton of detail but at the end of the entire thing he gave the S9 his rank of favorite super automatic and I agree.
If you go to Starbucks or a local coffee shop that is run by relatively normal/educated people and you are someone that doesn't mind spending some time or take pride in making a good drink, I don't think you would have any problem recreating that quality of drink with this machine, it's fantastically easy.
If you are lazy and just want drinks handed to you so you can drink them and have a fairly wide range of acceptable tastes for your coffee, you can probably just spend the $2500 at Starbucks and let someone else do it.
Overall the machine is fantastic. The finish is plated plastic which I thought was cheap feeling, but it looks fine because it's sort of brushed and not super shiney. That only bothered me for about 5mins, then I just forgot about it and drank the coffee.
Another thing I like is that the machine is really intelligent about keeping itself clean. It tells you when it needs to rinse and does it once or twice a day, keeping everything in tip top shape. It also monitors the levels of everything in the machine (grounds, beans, water, filter, etc.) and tells you exactly what to do on the screen. Also, I didn't mention this in much detail, but you can control and adjust the values of everything in the setup menu. How strong you want your coffee or espresso to be, how much water is in it, how much steam in the milk, the temperature, how finely ground the beans are, how hard your water is and just about everything else that can effect coffee.
The only cleanup after making coffee to speak of are the parts that touch the milk. For me that's just the wand that steams the milk. I just pop it off, rinse it and let it air dry for the next time. So that is something to consider if you think that you can just get this machine and push a button every morning and never need to think about it again. There are little things you need to do (like empty the grounds and the drip tray) every other day if you are making around 4-6 coffees a day. If it's just you or you are only making around 2 coffees a day, you can probably let it go 4-6 days between just rinsing it out, maybe 30 seconds worth of work.
So my take-away advice for anyone reading this is:
A) If you like coffee from anywhere (Starbucks, McDonalds, your house, etc.) this is totally overkill. Just stick to a normal brewing coffee maker and call it a day. This is like not being able to tell the difference between a Honda Civic and a Lexus GS400... if you can't tell the difference, then save all that money and get the Civic. Some people just can't tell.
B) If you like good coffee, and get frustrated when you get the same coffee every single morning from a store like Starbucks and some mornings it's good, and other mornings it's not and you are paying good money for it (like I was) and you feel cheated on the mornings it stinks, then you'll love this machine. It will give you the chance to perfect your cup of coffee and make it whenever you want with perfect accuracy. It's also handy to make simple things like hot chocolate and tea with, so it has more functions than just the espresso or cappuccino.
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Product Description:
In a class of its own!Grind, tamp, brew and clean in under 60 seconds-with a push of a button.Make perfect espressos, cappuccinos, lattes and crema coffee..every time.The Impressa S9 Avantgarde is one of the fastest and most versatile Automatic Coffee and Espresso Centers on the market today.With its 96-ounce capacity, two stainless steel lined thermoblock heating systems, a traditional frother and the automatic frothXpress Plus system it produces coffees, espressos and unlimited amounts of hot frothed and steamed milk for cappuccinos and lattes with no down time.Four pre-set beverage buttons and a unique "a la carte" button give you endless possibilities of creating your own coffee fantasies.A separate hot water spout for tea, a separate ground coffee funnel and a stainless steel warming tray on top make this a complete hot beverage center.With its UL listing for household and commercial use the S9 Avantgarde is the right machine for home, office and any small restaurant.
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