Set up a fully automatic coffee machine

More and more people have a beautiful, and especially handy, fully automatic coffee machine in their kitchen. A fully automatic coffee machine is an espresso machine with an integrated coffee grinder, so you don't have to grind the coffee separately. The advantage of this is that it stays cleaner in your kitchen, it saves a lot of time and yet your coffee is freshly ground for you per coffee moment!

Setting a machine and/or grinder for a specific coffee is not only important for semi-automatic machines (piston machines) or pour-on methods ( Chemex , V60 , etc.), but also for fully automatic machines. In this blog we explain what you can pay attention to when setting up your fully automatic coffee machine!

A new coffee in your coffee machine

If you have bought a new coffee, it is probably important to adjust the settings of your fully automatic coffee machine, because every coffee comes out best in a different way.

It differs a bit per model of fully automatic coffee machine, but there are often more options than you might expect. So grab the user manual! With the more luxurious models you can usually set just a little more than with the cheaper models. Logical of course... In this blog we discuss the grinding degree, water temperature, volume and strength.

degree of grind

We've talked about grinding your coffee before in this blog . The grind size of your coffee says a lot about the final taste of your coffee. No matter how special your coffee bean is, the final coffee can still turn out bad if, for example, the grinding degree is not optimal. The ideal grind size depends on the coffee and comes down to trial and error. If you start at a certain (average) grinding degree, and then taste the coffee, you can continue from there:

- if your coffee tastes too watery or too sour: the grinding degree may be a bit finer.

- if your coffee tastes too bitter or concentrated: the grinding degree can be a bit coarser.

Water temperature

Not all fully automatic coffee machines have an adjustable option for this, but if you do have it at your disposal: play with it! In general, you don't want too high a water temperature for your coffee anyway. Water around the boiling point is therefore usually much too high. Somewhere between 92 and 96 degrees is often the most ideal. Also important here - taste and adjust:

- if your coffee tastes too bitter (and your grind is good): try setting your water temperature a little lower.

Volume

The amount of final coffee is largely determined by the amount of water that you let flow through the ground coffee. You can choose two options. Or you choose your volume based on your crockery, or based on the recommended volume (the guideline) per type of coffee. If you choose option 1 you avoid a 'Hague cup of coffee', and if you choose option 2 you generally have the most ideal ratio of coffee and water.

Guideline volume per type of coffee:

Type Coffee	Volume (ml)
Ristretto	15
Espresso	30
Doppio	60
Americano (regular coffee = espresso shot + hot water)	150

Read more about different espresso-based coffee recipes here .

Courage

Of course, the strength of the coffee again depends entirely on personal taste. According to the espresso guideline (and all drinks based on espresso, such as: cappuccino, americano, latte, doppio, etc.) you use about 8-9 grams of coffee per espresso shot. Most fully automatic coffee machines will probably not show the amount of coffee beans per coffee in weight, but play with this. It should not be too watery, but certainly not too concentrated!

Ultimately, all of the above is just a guideline to get you thinking in the right direction. There is no right or wrong, there is only taste... ;-) Have fun!