Top-tier coffee machines even master the flat white

The new super-automatic coffee machines promise everything a coffee drinker desires – even a superior flat white

In recent years, the coffee trade has moved dramatically towards the automation of coffee brewing, and now it has gone much farther – we are now in the world of ‘super-automatic' espresso coffee.

It is not so long ago that barista-made coffee was considered the optimum for coffee service, and push-button machines were looked down upon. Now, nine UK coffee chains use super-autos, one leading coffee and bakery chain has 2,000 machines, and one of the biggest coffee brands has 10,000 serve-yourself machines operating in various transit areas… all of them, it is claimed, supplying barista-quality coffee.

In all, according to the Allegra coffee research house, the premium auto coffee sector has doubled in the past five years, and consumers now expect the quality of push-button beverages to be of equal standard to that served in coffee houses.

Get steamed up

In the modern coffee trade, it is the quality of milk preparation that can make a great drink, and the automation of milk frothing and steaming has made great strides in recent times. Not surprisingly, all super-auto machine brands claim their milk system to be the best across the expected variety of cappuccinos, lattes and so on.

Some even claim to be able to do the flat white. This drink requires a ‘texturing' of milk, which has long been held to be a real test of a barista's manual skill, and if this can really be done by a machine, then the standard of super-autos is certainly something for the hospitality trade to respect.

So the question is: how good are these machines? Are they making real flat whites, or simply double-strength lattes?

A quick poll among suppliers of manual espresso machines has produced, not surprisingly,some scepticism. One supplier, summing up the general feeling, said: "Although milk foaming and texturing in bean-to-cup machines, particularly the top-end ones, is improving all the time, an automatic frother cannot produce the same dense texture as a well-trained human – you get a ‘sort-of flat white', which many people may enjoy, but it's not the very best experience." And, he added: "A machine cannot pour a latte art design on top..."

"Our machine can make a flat white," responds James Nicholson, managing director at Franke. "We can do it because we can control the flow and speed of the milk, we can control the heat, and we can control the milk foam, all at different stages of the drink production."

Franke's A300 is a multi-award winner, which it says is an extremely compact fully-auto machine, brewing at a standard normally seen in larger and high-volume machines. "Space should never get in the way of taste," says the company. "The A300 is ideal for smaller restaurants and coffee lounges where space is limited. It features our outstanding Foam-Master, giving an unlimited choice of foam consistencies, which is unique in this sector – milk foam the way a barista would make it is unique in this machine size."

The A300 has won awards in America and Germany, and won last year's prize for best item of beverage equipment in The Caterer's Supplier Awards, with judges noting its automatic EasyClean automatic descaling system.

Down days

Cleaning is particularly important on super-autos, which the coffee trade knows can be more sensitive than traditional espresso machines, because of their complexity. Brita, which has been very active on its trade research recently, has come up with a statistic that suggests the average hospitality business had to cope with equipment breakdowns on 84 days of the average year; all operators agreed that this had an effect on business, and four out of five conceded that they should be doing more cleaning and maintenance to protect machines.

It is ‘absolutely possible' for a fully automatic machine to make a good flat white, agrees Alba Urriza of Coffeetek, arguing that while the barista or beverage manager is responsible for determining the texture and density of the milk foam they require, once they have set their instructions, automation then continues producing the milk to a more consistent standard than a human would.

Similar claims come from Crem, which says "nothing beats our world-class fresh-milk foaming system… which automatically delivers a variety of different milk textures, flat, wet and dry."

Eversys goes into a little more detail with its Everfoam, featured in the Shotmaster machine, which was named "best all-round fully-auto" at this year's London Coffee Festival.

Milk needs are variable, says Eversys, so its machine allows for either traditional manual foaming or an automatic process where the barista sets their required amount of air for the required ‘thickness' of foam; notably, the machine will then brew and pour its espresso while separately preparing its milk in a different container.

"The barista then puts the two together and they can focus on their latte art, not on the frothing – they get greater consistency, quality and speed, and no waste."

The Evershot is described as "a beast of a machine", potentially producing 700 drinks an hour. This remarkable figure seems theoretically possible, as the machine uses more than one built-in bean hopper, more than one milk system, and has space to allow two baristas at the machine at once.

It actually is possible, says marketing director Kamal Bengougam: The operators would need to replenish the beans, and the output would depend on whether milk was required, but the machine will dispense coffee at the required rate. "We did it in full automated mode, and it can be achieved."

Capsule collection

The move for quality automated milk has spread as far as the capsule coffee sector, with Lavazza now creating its Classy Custom Milk system. The brand has long argued that capsules are the easiest way to serve quality espresso coffee in small quantities, such as in a small bar or breakfast room. The latest development of the system means that once the capsule is popped into the machine, the user only has to select which drink they want, and the machine prepares the appropriate kind of milk. There is an over-ride by which the user can specify a hotter expresso or more froth on the milk.

Meanwhile, two brands have put their machines under the counter. At Scanomat, managing director Simon Bracken says his Top Brewer is installed under the counter, and is ‘the most minimalist super-automatic machine on the planet'.

In this format, all that appears above the worktop is the pouring spout. The out of sight brewing section of the machine features a dual-milk fridge, allowing for a non-dairy option, and two bean hoppers and grinders, to allow for a choice of coffees.

Scanomat says its milk system, "the world's smallest milk foamer", will provide the correct pressure to froth fresh milk to the right standard for lattes, cappuccinos and, indeed, flat whites.

In from the cold

Marco Beverage Systems of Dublin has been a champion of under-the-counter systems for some time, having begun by inventing the Uber, the ‘boiler' which would produce hot water to a remarkably precise temperature. Its latest out-of-sight item is the Pour'd, which is based on the modern trend for cold-brewed coffee. It is, says Marco, an automatic cold-brew dispense system unlike anything seen before.

Researching the cold coffee market, Marco found that the while consumers were asking for the drink, it caused the trade practical problems. All operators want to avoid having to mix their own cold brew, which is a job usually done overnight – it takes around 10 hours for a coffee lounge to make a batch, it is a messy and wasteful exercise, and it takes up a lot of back-of-house space.

In response, several coffee roasters have come up with the new idea of offering pre-brewed cold coffee in concentrate form. These concentrates are very stable liquids, and will last for a fair amount of time in a café store.

"Pour'd automatically dilutes a coffee concentrate with either hot or cold water," explains Marco's head of marketing, Gemma Keirnan.

"The font can connect to mains water, to a bag-in-box or other container of coffee concentrate, and to a hot water boiler. The user sets their preferred dilution ratio and the machine automatically pulls the right shot of concentrate, and the right amount of hot or cold water.

"The result is the correct drinking-strength beverage, with no waste of coffee or space."

Branded beverages

In the world of automated coffee, UCC has introduced what it calls "the most customisable automated bean-to-cup coffee machine on the market". In the hospitality sector, this means placing a high-quality self-serve machine in a situation such as an out-of-hours lobby coffee service, with branding either for the venue or for a recognisable coffee brand – Caffè Nero is one such identity.

The UCC To Go machine is based on a Thermoplan Black and White, from a recognised fully-auto specialist from Switzerland. This, says UCC, offers "the smartest super-automatic espresso extraction ever developed – it is self-calibrating, measures core variables and micro-adjusts for consistency, and the Thermofoam system constantly monitors milk texture and temperature."