#superauto — Public Fediverse posts

The xBloom Studio: Competition-Level Pour Over on Autopilot

I almost titled this post “The Super Auto of the Pour Over World,” but that felt like a bit of a dig, and the xBloom Studio doesn’t deserve being based like that. Don’t get me wrong: super automatics are impressive machines. They’ll make you a perfectly decent, drinkable espresso every morning without complaint unless you pressed the single button too hard. But there’s a ceiling, and no amount of money spent gets you past it. That’s just a fact with bean to cup espresso machines.

The xBloom Studio has no such ceiling. It produces competition-worthy pour over, the kind of cup that makes you stop, mid-sip, and reflect on your life choices.

If anything, it’s the super auto that super automatics wish they could be.

The xBloom Studio, in Sage Green, after initial setup on the counter. Reservoir (small!), Omni Dripper installed, pod holder in gold on the side.

What Exactly is the xBloom Studio?

The xBloom Studio is a $600, fully automated, single cup pour over brewer that handles the entire process from whole bean to finished cup. It weighs, it grinds, it blooms, it pours, with a level of repeatability and precision that a human hand simply cannot match at seven in the morning. You load your beans, select your preset, and walk away. That’s the workflow, if you want it to be.

Packed into a pleasingly compact (but tall) countertop footprint is a 48mm conical burr grinder with 80 grind settings, a variable temperature kettle, a precision scale accurate to a tenth of a gram, and a kinematic vibrating pouring arm that executes your brew recipe with mechanical precision. Our test unit is the new Sage Green with gold accents model, and it is a proper looker. This is a machine you leave on the counter because you want people to notice it. Heck, this could be a machine you design your kitchen around, or at least your coffee nook.

Here’s the xBloom set up with an external reservoir (a 27 cup Brita water filter system) with a minor hack to the Brita to “plumb in” the Studio machine. We also use a coffee cellar with pre-measured doses of coffee.

Three tactile, knurled front knobs handle control, governing the grinder, brewer, and scale respectively. No touchscreen, just a bank of LED dots the Studio uses with a refined layout. The companion app is where you build and transmit custom brew profiles to the machine via Bluetooth, but once your presets are loaded, the app steps back and the knobs take over.

A major firmware update some time back brought the much-lauded “auto mode” to the machine, giving you a bank of 3 programmable presets for true one-touch operation of hyper-customized recipes. Once these are programmed in, you won’t need your phone on hand to craft competition-level coffee.

The three knurled metal control dials on the xBloom Studio – they rotate and press. Grinder component on the left, the pour spout on the right. The scale is one of the new things on the Studio machine, and it is very accurate and useful. The grind settings listed under the reservoir flap. Ignore the espresso settings. The sliding door on top where you pour in your whole bean coffee. The back of the machine showing the power plug, reservoir, and where you can plumb the machine in.

Beyond all the pour over magic happening inside, the Studio moonlights as an on demand variable temperature kettle (up to 203F or “BP” for boiling point), a standalone precision scale, and a capable grinder handling up to 30g for brew methods like Chemex, AeroPress, and siphon. Tea drinkers are looked after too, with an optional filter holder supporting steep times up to six minutes and multi temperature control in a single cycle. (we might be getting one to include in our full review; if so, it will be the first time we review anything tea-based on CoffeeGeek!)

One caveat worth flagging now: despite the manufacturer’s claims, the grinder cannot go fine enough for espresso. Tested and confirmed. But it does a pleasing grind for most other brew methods, with a maximum grinder-only capacity of around 30g. 

The Studio was built around xBloom’s own xPod ecosystem, pre-dosed specialty coffee from top tier roasters, each paired with a custom NFC recipe card. But it works equally well with whatever beans you bring to it, and we’ll dig into all of that properly in a later section.

The xBloom Studio retails at $599 USD, or $799-$849 CAD depending on your distributor. Amazon USA occasionally drops it to $549 with a coupon, so it’s worth watching.

Using the xBloom Studio: The Workflow

If you set up your three Auto Mode presets and never open the phone app again, you will still be making comp-level pour over every single morning. That’s the point. Load your beans, tap your preset, walk away. The machine handles the grind, the bloom, the pour sequence, and the shutoff. Three presets live directly in hardware memory, selectable from the front knobs, categorized by default for light, medium, and dark roasts out of the box (after a firmware update), but fully customizable to whatever you want them to be. It is truly the closest thing to a super auto workflow that filter coffee has ever had.

The Preset mode, with A, B, and C selected. You can still do some minor adjustments or just press the corresponding dial, and press the “play” symbol that shows up next.

Step off Auto Mode and into Pro Mode, and the machine opens up considerably without ever needing your phone. Using the three front knobs you can independently set your 80-click grind settings, your target water temperature, your water volume, your coffee dose, and your pour pattern, choosing between static centre, circular, or spiral pours. The Studio is a capable standalone brewer by any measure. The one thing you cannot program solely via the machine are stages or steps in the brewing process, you do need the app for that.

The pro mode display, showing controls for grinder settings, water, and using the scale.

The companion app is where the xBloom Studio stops being impressive and starts being a bit ridiculous, in the best way. Here you can build multi-step brew recipes with individual temperature settings, pour patterns, and pause times for each step. Flow rate is adjustable between 3.0 and 3.5ml per second, which is one of several advanced features the physical knobs on the front of the machine cannot touch. Once built, recipes transmit to the machine via Bluetooth and can be saved as presets. The rabbit hole here is deep, and the xBloom community has gone enthusiastically down it.

The app, in use; even when using pods with the NFC cards, the app gives you a live view of the active brew.

If all of that sounds like more than you signed up for, the xPod workflow exists for exactly that reason. Drop a pod into the included metal xPod ring holder, tap the NFC recipe card against the machine sensor, and the Studio reads the roaster’s own dialled-in recipe and gets to work. No grinder settings, no temperature decisions, no pour patterns to think about. The roaster did that work for you, and these are not corner-cutting roasters. More on that shortly.

xBloom xPods, with the included NFC card, which you just tap the top of the machine with to get the preset recipe.

Three rapid presses of the centre knob toggle the machine between Auto and Pro Mode, which is also how you access the hot water function. In Pro Mode, the Studio dispenses water at any temperature up to 203F, plus boiling point on demand, useful for French press, siphon, a Nextlevel Pulsar brew, or just a proper cup of tea without the optional filter holder. Bear in mind you will lose around 10-15°F between the water pour spout and your cup.

And while you are in there, the grinder is fully available as a standalone unit for your Chemex, AeroPress, siphon, or any other brew method outside of espresso.

Basically if you don’t do espresso, the xBloom Studio will quietly, and elegantly, replace every other device that lived on your counter for brewing coffee and tea.

A Bit about the xPods

Here’s where xBloom could have gone full corporate yet didn’t. The machine was conceived from the start as both a brewer and a supply chain, with the xPod ecosystem as the revenue engine. A less scrupulous company would have locked the hardware down tight, maybe even engineered a proprietary filter design just to keep you buying their filter papers.

xBloom went the other direction. You can use any coffee you want, and the Omni Dripper 2 filter holder is specifically engineered to easily use the widely available Kalita Wave 155 filters. This is worth recognizing, and applauding.

The xPod side of things is worth your attention regardless, and not just as a convenience play. xBloom partnered with many top tier American roasters to stock their lineup, and each pod ships with an NFC recipe card dialled in specifically for that coffee by the people who roasted it. It’s an excellent, seasonal exploration service for finding roasters and flavour profiles you might not have stumbled across otherwise. Their seasonal sampler boxes are little bundles of daily discovery joy.

8 pack of xPods from xBloom; it also includes an NFC card for you to tap the machine with.

And if you want to support what they’re doing while using your own sourced coffee, their own filter papers are worth picking up too. They’re not significantly more expensive than Kalita Wave 155s, are specifically engineered for the Studio’s modus, and buying them acknowledges that xBloom left some easy money on the table.

Concluding Thoughts, for Now

The xBloom Studio is a rare thing: a structurally pleasing piece of coffee hardware that delivers on its ambition without asking you to compromise on the things that actually matter. It is precise, it is flexible, it is beautiful on a counter, and it produces the kind of pour over that makes you reconsider every shortcut you have ever taken with your morning coffee.

At $599 USD on Amazon ($799 to $899 CAD depending on where you land it), it is not an impulse buy. But it is a considered one. xPods run $17 to $28 USD for an eight-pack depending on the roaster and the rarity of the beans, and the seasonal offerings are worth budgeting for. Keep an eye on Amazon USA as well, where the machine occasionally drops to $549 with a coupon.

We are just getting started with the xBloom Studio here. The full review is coming, and it is going to be thorough. We will be testing grind quality, grind speed, water temperatures, repeatability, and more advanced territory like plumb-in options, descaling, and grinder cleaning. In fact, three weeks from this publication date we have one of our focus groups scheduled here in Victoria, and the Studio is going to be the primary star of that hands-on testing by some serious coffee nerds.

If this introduction left you curious, the full review is going to leave you with a decision to make. In the meantime, if you have any questions about the xBloom Studio, or own one and want to share your thoughts, our comments section is at your service below. Please feel free to jump in.

#automatic #pourOver #pourover #superAuto #xbloom #xbloomStudio

There’s a type of machine we stopped covering and reviewing on CoffeeGeek back in 2006: super automatics. You know, the “press one button, the machine grinds coffee, brews the shot, ejects the puck, steams the milk, etc etc” all without additional interaction. Today, they’re called Bean to Cup machines.

Most of it, I admit, has to do with snobbery elitist stuff we coffee geeks are sometimes accused of. These machines in the past couldn’t come within a mile of the quality you would get from a hand-made shot on a traditional espresso machine and grinder.

Another part of my resistance to covering these machines has to do with the expense and longevity of super automatics. Back when we stopped reviewing bean to cup machines, they were in the $1,200 to $2,500 range, and had relatively short life spans mainly because the thermoblocks they all used were really bad. They would cake up quick from water scale, and the rubber gaskets would dissolve away in 3-4 years. Repairing them at the time could cost as much as $500 or more. 

Since then, bean to cup machines have come a long way. Where they used to use only 7 to 9 grams of coffee for a shot, there are models now that can use up to 18g. Where they used to only have one temperature setting, now some have PIDs and precise temperature controls. Bean to cup machines used to have horrible, off the shelf thermoblocks; today they have highly customized ones designed specifically for long term use in super automatic machines, and many machines today come with dual thermoblocks, one for brewing and one for steam. They’ve also gotten a lot smarter and more intuitive on building the milk based drinks. There’s even WiFi enabled machines, complete with apps on your smartphone for further fine tuning. And a few have even evolved to doing a bunch of cold brew coffees, right out of the box.

I get a lot of questions about bean to cup machines, on social media, on Instagram, and via our own contact forms. There is definitely a big market segment out there them, and a lot of people want to know if the super automatic of 2024 is a) way better than the first and second generation models of the 2000-2010 era, and b) if they can just make a good drink without any fuss.

I figured the time had come to give a new super automatic, a new bean to cup machine, a fair shake at the CoffeeGeek Review process. 

I contacted James Smith, owner of 1st in Coffee and one of our longest continuous supporters on CoffeeGeek, asking him about super automatics. Smith was a natural choice to ask; he’s been selling super automatics for nearly 25 years now, and knows the market inside and out. He’s also one of the main go-tos for the company many consider the industry leader in this machine department: Jura.

I asked Smith what machine he considered the best combination of three things:

• drink quality
• innovative features
• best overall investment return / bang for the buck.

There was no hesitation in his reply. He said the Jura Z10 Bean to Cup machine is the model that is setting the new standard in bean to cup machines. He also pointed out it introduced a whole new category to super automatics: the ability to do cold brew, right in the machine. 

The Jura Z10, in Aluminum White, set up in the kitchen, ready to rock and roll.

After some back and forth, Smith arranged for us to get a Jura Z10 in the lovely Aluminum White variant, to feature and review on CoffeeGeek. All with the express understanding that I will not pull any punches in our review process.

I’ve had the machine up and running for several weeks, and I have some initial thoughts. This isn’t a full First Look (that is coming); this is more of a “I had no clue these machines could do these things” kind of post, to share with you my own wonder and amazement at some of this machine’s features.

This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Super Automatic

I can make this statement with a bit of authority because back in 2005, I bought my father a Saeco super automatic espresso machine as a Christmas gift. It ended up being a serious money pit for him (and by proxy, me). Part of the problem was user error – he simply would never clean the machine or clean the milk system – but also it just didn’t brew a very good cup of coffee or shot of espresso. And I tried very hard to fine tune it on one of my visits back east to my Dad’s home, to no avail.

So yeah: with a bit of authority, I can say super automatics have come a long, long way since then. My first coffee through the Jura Z10, using the default, factory settings (and trust me, you can modify every single drink recipe built into the machine), it produced an acceptable double shot of espresso. I knew the Z10’s max capacity for ground coffee per shot was 16g, but I was letting it use its factory set 14g setting for a 50ml shot. 

I say acceptable, because I’ve had better shots – way better shots – from traditional machines, but also way worse shots at many cafes I’ve visited. 

Then, I played around with the settings a bit. Made the grind finer. Upped the dose to a full 16g. Tuned the temperature up (I was using a fairly light roasted coffee).  Dialed down the shot volume to 35ml. And then pressed a button to get a brewed shot. 

Just my second shot pull ever with the Jura Z10 Super Automatic. Shot development is excellent, visually.

This time it was, like, really good. Not fantastic, not the best shot I had that week, but definitely an enjoyable, full crema, full body, balanced shot of espresso. In only the 2nd or 3rd shot I ever pulled on the Z10, it was already the best bean to cup shot of espresso I had ever had.

Here’s a shot pull made after about 20 other drinks were built, testing out the machine. What’s notable is how repeatable and consistent this shot is, even though I was putting the machine through a lot of different drink built paces in between.

Next up were some simple drink builds. I wanted to see how the Jura Z10 handled americanos. The stock recipe built into the Z10 produced a pretty big drink, but I like americanos with a ratio of 2 parts hot water to one part espresso. Pressing and holding the americano image on the touch screen let me dive into the recipe and modify (and save) it to my own preferences. 40ml espresso, 80ml water. 16g dose, finest grinder setting. Saved, let’s go.

Again, an enjoyable, tasty drink. Again, this machine will never achieve the taste quality you can get with a $1,000 espresso machine (Lelit Victoria, for example), and a $500 grinder (Turin DF64) and your barista hands, but as God is my witness, the Americano I got from the Z10 was a full point higher in quality than the one I had the day before from one of Victoria’s supposed “top” cafes. 

I also couldn’t help thinking, the Z10 gives you a lot more recipe options and controls than a machine like the Breville Oracle Touch, or Breville Barista Touch Impress. For instance, the volumes of beverages are more fine-tunable on the Z10 from Jura. One of my biggest gripes with the Barista Touch Impress is, in the Americano recipe, even if you select the smallest volume of water to be used, it pumps out 130ml of hot water. That’s almost double the volume I want for a 5oz / 150ml americano. On the Z10, you can set the ml amount for water in 5ml segments, all the way down to 30ml or less.

Milk Drinks on the Jura Z10

The Z10 has a gazillion options for milk. Even more if you use Jura’s J.O.E. app on Android or iOS. And even more if you use Jura’s bluetooth connected countertop milk refrigeration device. 

The Jura Z10, automatically making a cappuccino

The machine is so advanced, it even has two different “engines” for heating milk. One just actively heats up milk without creating any foam or froth. The other exclusively makes froth. And both systems can have their own set temperatures. If you want the liquid milk to be 65C, but want the foam to be 45C or less, you have those options. 

Literally my only disappointment with the machine so far is I cannot figure out a way to have it make a misto for me; it’s not a drink in the recipe setup (that I could find), and I also couldn’t figure out if you could make a 100% custom drink or not (it may be possible. The Misto is basically an americano with some frothed milk on top. 

The frothed milk quality is fair to good. It isn’t microfoam calibre, but the Z10 produces a dense bubble foam, closer to microfoam than it is to the big airy bubbles you get from pannarello frothers. The foam is a bit stiff, enough to barely create a mound; but honestly, every drink I’ve made with milk froth so far on the machine shows a nice level foam in the cup that is very dense in the bubble structure. Temperatures are fully adjustable, so there’s no complaints there.

After customizing the recipe, I was getting nice traditional 5oz (150ml) cappuccinos with lots of foam from the Jura Z10

Cold Drinks on the Z10

This is where the Jura Z10 completely stands out. There may be new bean to cup machines playing catchup with Jura and introducing this feature in 2024, but Jura is the first: this machine does a variety of cold brew beverages. And it does it in a very unique way. 

Many of the built in drink recipes, from espresso to cortado, from cappuccino to long coffee, can be made cold simply by pressing the top 4-square menu item on the touch screen, and selecting the snowflake icon. 

The menu system allows you to fully customize every drink recipe in the machine and even set “brew cold” as standard for specific drinks.

The machine goes into a very advanced mode for this. FIrst, It will still preifnuse the coffee from the brew-thermoblock, for a few seconds’ draw and saturation of the puck. This aids in getting better overall extractions. Next, it bypasses the thermoblock entirely, and draws water direct from the external tank, brewing the rest of the drink with this unheated water. It does so at slower pulse mode too, pulsing the pump to brew the shot in about 60-90 seconds depending on the drink you are making.

The Z10 does other things too when you’re in cold drink mode. It will automatically adjust the grinder to a coarser setting, because extraction through finer grinds with cold water is more difficult; by going coarser, it aids in the overall extraction rate, delivering a richer cup. It does all this and more, just with a few touches on the full colour touch panel.

It even makes adjustments for the milk side on drinks you’re brewing as cold brew. The milk still needs to be heated to create foam, but the machine adjusts to the lowest temperature setting for this purpose, It also lowers the milk heating temperatures. A lot of brains packed into this thing.

Brew one of the cold brew recipes into a glass with ice, and within 2 minutes, you’re enjoying cold brew espresso, cortados, cappuccinos, long coffees and lattes. Pretty fantastic.

Wrap Up

I really didn’t expect to be impressed with the Jura Z10. I have a heavy bias against super automatics in general, through a lot of testing and experience. Problem is, all that experience happened well over 15 years ago. 

I am impressed by the Jura Z10. 

It’s not cheap: $4,000 is a helluva lot to pay for an espresso machine. But this isn’t just an espresso machine. It’s an automated, robot barista that can make you just about any hot beverage drink you can imagine. And it also can make just about every cold-brew drink you can think of too. All with a single touch of a display screen. Or via the app.

Almost everything about this machine screams quality too. The full colour display screen is bright, easy to read, and very fast to use. The aluminum front panel is stunningly gorgeous; the white painted side panels just add to the sleek look. Everything from the side mounted water reservoir, to the glass bean hopper lid, to the drip tray design, to the lighting system is all peak quality. 

I also love the attention to detail on the machine. For instance, the butterfly design of the front pour spouts, allowing you to brew easily into one tiny cup, or spread apart to easily fill two cappuccino cups. Heck, even the “barista lights” change from bright daylight white to pleasing, candle-light like brown when the machine is actively brewing espresso.

The machine is also a lot smaller than I thought it would be. It’s not that much bigger than a Profitec GO machine, but the sleek minimalist design of the entire Z10 also makes you think it is smaller than it really is.

The Jura Z10 next to a Profitec Go. Both are similar sizes in width; the Z10 is deeper by about 10cm.

I’m working on our formal First Look right now; look for it soon on CoffeeGeek. But if you’re in the market for a top of the line bean to cup machine, one with every possible feature you could imagine, the Jura Z10 is one to consider. 1st in Coffee is the primary vendor of the brand in the USA with many satisfied customers; you can’t go wrong buying one from them. They also have the occasional refurbs of this machine for substantial savings.

https://coffeegeek.com/blog/new-products/the-jura-z10-eighth-generation-of-bean-to-cup-machines/

#beanToCup #Jura #JuraZ10 #superAuto #SuperAutomatic #Z10