This is my first mini review so please bear with me here.
Im sure there are many of you out there similar to myself, I like to call myself an enthusiast who really likes to enjoy nice coffee not just in a café but also at home. Guess thats how I started down this path of another expensive but enjoyable journey, actually no difference for my love in photography
Ive always loved coffee especially white coffee and trying to achieve this in the home has been a long and frustrating journey. Likely many of you here, the Nespresso is a great starter machine for us all at home but its not without its downsides. Im now a happy owner of a HX machine and able to get consistence good coffee each morning, which led me to writing my first every review. Ive always done a lot of research before making any purchases and find these great forum which a knowledge space hence want to add my contribution to this great community too.
I believe Ive made the same mistake as many other newbies here, taking the plunge straight into a high end machine believing this will instantly provide me with café quality drinks but how wrong was is. To give you some background I had a limited budget and spent it all on a Rocket HX machine and left only 15% of my budget for a Grinder. My shiny machine looked amazing and staring at this was just like artwork. I picked up a entry level Bezzera grinder used on Carousell from another coffee fanatic to start me on my journey. It was a great looking setup indeed. After a around two months of terrible coffee (yes, much worse than Nespresso capsules) I started to get some decent cups of coffee and even some latte art. But this was still hit and miss, I tried so much with playing with the grind settings, tamp pressure, different brand fresh beans. I started talking to many friends, coffee shops, roasters and online and got alots of good advice to tinker around, which resulted to some improvement.
I eventually felt that potentially my grinder maybe holding me back a little and started really read into grinder and what models to set on. Then I realize most people have really highlighted the importance of a good grinder but it was just so hard to see how much different it could really make. I mean a grinder simply is grinding your beans to smaller parts right, does the grind really make that much difference I asked myself? Anyway I decided to take the plunge and get a decent grinder to see how much difference it would prove, my problem with all the research is that they pointed me to very high end grinders with the likes of Mazzer Jollys, Compak F10s, Madcap M7K, Eureka 75E etc, I guess you will all have seen these high end names. The problem here is really two folds from my perspective, price and space. I have no doubt they are tremendous machines capable/used by many coffee shops but at this is for my home use where I do have space limitations and likely to never produce more than 5 or so cups a day even with visitors.
Some more digging actually led me to the Mazzer mini, I thought this was a great looking machine, relatively compact and had very decent reviews. My only problem with this is that it seems to have been around unchanged for quite a number of years which could be good and bad. More digging on seatlecoffee channel actually brought up a machine called Eureka Atom. Im not very familiar with this brand and kind of passed it off at first glance which looked too gimmicky for a traditionalist look. Slowly I started to change my mind after ready and watching more reviews. This machine really looked like the 21st century machine that was totally different from most grinders available. Colour LCD display, modern design, LED lighting where all features not really common on any other machine. Being unfamiliar with Eureka, more research showed this actually to be one of the largest manufactures of grinder who white labelled their machines to many high end brands and have some fantastic reviews and heritage.
Luckily I had a friend with a Mazzer that I was able to try and I did really like it but seeing the YouTube review of the atom really made me want to see it before taking the plunge. It seems Eureka was not a very common brand in Singapore but Carousell pointed me to a great sell who not only sells them but has them in stock for immediate collection. I went to collect the Atom and the sell actually was using one himself and was able to explain and show me the machine in action.
Turning on the machine and seeing the colour LCD shine with the EUREKA logo really brings a smile to your face. You know youre in for something a little special.5 buttons below the LCD screen really controls the unit and really sets this machine apart from the rest of what Ive really seen in the market.
Once the screen loads up, you be present with a split screen showing you single shot and double shot with the preset timings. These are fully programmable to your specific requirements and you can change them in increments of 1/10th second. The centre button simply allows those wanting to manually control the grind rather than single/double shot.
The grind size control is a simple aluminium knob you can turn easily with a thumb and finder. There is marking points from 1-10 but this is a stepless machines so depending on how little you turn, you can make very finite adjustments and this is really important Ive found with even 250g bag of beans. Im sure all of you reading will know, typical home users make 1 or couple of drinks a day only. As the weeks go along, your beans start to lose the freshness and will require very small adjustments towards that finer setting as you go through the bag. The adjustments know feels very classy to turn, weighty but not hard in anyway to turn. This is very different to the Mazzer which I tried, where you need to turn the entire mechanism ring requiring both hands to make the change.
All setup and finally turning this machine on was a real occasion, for those of you who have low end, mid-range or any grinding machine will know grinders are typically extremely loud. Let me tell you, Eureka is really not kidding when they said they worked at lengths in making this one of the quietest machines on the market. I dont have a sound measuring device but ill be very confident is saying its makes half the noise of typical machines. The motor sounds powerful but very smooth and high pitched sounding so never sounding noisy or waking up the neigbours. Seeing this machine for the first time reminds me of my first encounter with bose noise cancelling headphones, your head is telling you, its only another pair of headphones and then when you turn on the noise cancelling feature everything is so quiet all of sudden. You instantly fall in love with the machine.
I guess onto the important thing which is the grind, I know this will have started sounding bias already but all these previous factors mentioned really makes you feel this was something special. Imagine if you were buying a car to go fast, of course you can get any car with a big engine but people pay so many times for brands like Bentley, Aston Martins, and Lambos simply because of all those extra delicacies/fine details added in the journey to reaching your ultimate goal. It may sound unfair to compare this with my old entry level grinder but having used this machine, I felt really understand what reviews are referring to when they talk about fluffy coffee. To give you an idea, using the same amount of beans 19g my basket look a little more full but the real difference really came when I was tamping. It just felt so different, like there the usual little bit of resistance about 2mm in but the final 1-2mm felt a little springy. Hard to describe but for those moving up to a higher end machine will totally notice.
I guess you will all be wanting to hear about the taste? This is something actually extremely difficult to measure or show but did I notice a difference in taste? Most definitely, I felt my favourate beans brought out an slight extra sweetness and zing at the end which I never really tasted before. Could this have been a result of all the above feel good factors in the process of making the end cup cause me to taste difference? I honestly cant say but I feel Im most definitely enjoying this more.
I would say one of the most important factors with this machine I believe is actually the consistence I know get from my coffee each more. Once I have my machine dialled in, then I can make micro adjustments slightly with the precise control knob each morning. Just turning it ever so slightly towards the firmer setting as my bag of beans become less fresh throughout the week.
Is this the perfect machine that I can recommend to everyone? Most definitely not especially if you want to change settings between drip and espresso each day. Even though it has numbers on the controller knob, the setting very precise and tiny adjustments will have impact depending on the beans and freshness. This means its not easy to switch between grind sizes for drip and espresso. I honestly havent heard a machine that can successfully do this and would most love to hear anyone knowing one which can do this switching job perfectly. I believe many high end machines will give you very similar or coffee and improvements but none of them I feel gives me the convinces of what I have experienced with this Eureka Atom so far.
Again I want to state that I bought all of these machines with my own money and not sponsored in anyway. I just wanted to share my experience to all those coffee lovers out here that hopefully can save them in the longer run. Invest in a good grinder as it will last for a very very long time and a great investment to helping you achieve that great cup at home.
I hope you all enjoy my first write up, thank you again for reading.
Im sure there are many of you out there similar to myself, I like to call myself an enthusiast who really likes to enjoy nice coffee not just in a café but also at home. Guess thats how I started down this path of another expensive but enjoyable journey, actually no difference for my love in photography
Ive always loved coffee especially white coffee and trying to achieve this in the home has been a long and frustrating journey. Likely many of you here, the Nespresso is a great starter machine for us all at home but its not without its downsides. Im now a happy owner of a HX machine and able to get consistence good coffee each morning, which led me to writing my first every review. Ive always done a lot of research before making any purchases and find these great forum which a knowledge space hence want to add my contribution to this great community too.
I believe Ive made the same mistake as many other newbies here, taking the plunge straight into a high end machine believing this will instantly provide me with café quality drinks but how wrong was is. To give you some background I had a limited budget and spent it all on a Rocket HX machine and left only 15% of my budget for a Grinder. My shiny machine looked amazing and staring at this was just like artwork. I picked up a entry level Bezzera grinder used on Carousell from another coffee fanatic to start me on my journey. It was a great looking setup indeed. After a around two months of terrible coffee (yes, much worse than Nespresso capsules) I started to get some decent cups of coffee and even some latte art. But this was still hit and miss, I tried so much with playing with the grind settings, tamp pressure, different brand fresh beans. I started talking to many friends, coffee shops, roasters and online and got alots of good advice to tinker around, which resulted to some improvement.
I eventually felt that potentially my grinder maybe holding me back a little and started really read into grinder and what models to set on. Then I realize most people have really highlighted the importance of a good grinder but it was just so hard to see how much different it could really make. I mean a grinder simply is grinding your beans to smaller parts right, does the grind really make that much difference I asked myself? Anyway I decided to take the plunge and get a decent grinder to see how much difference it would prove, my problem with all the research is that they pointed me to very high end grinders with the likes of Mazzer Jollys, Compak F10s, Madcap M7K, Eureka 75E etc, I guess you will all have seen these high end names. The problem here is really two folds from my perspective, price and space. I have no doubt they are tremendous machines capable/used by many coffee shops but at this is for my home use where I do have space limitations and likely to never produce more than 5 or so cups a day even with visitors.
Some more digging actually led me to the Mazzer mini, I thought this was a great looking machine, relatively compact and had very decent reviews. My only problem with this is that it seems to have been around unchanged for quite a number of years which could be good and bad. More digging on seatlecoffee channel actually brought up a machine called Eureka Atom. Im not very familiar with this brand and kind of passed it off at first glance which looked too gimmicky for a traditionalist look. Slowly I started to change my mind after ready and watching more reviews. This machine really looked like the 21st century machine that was totally different from most grinders available. Colour LCD display, modern design, LED lighting where all features not really common on any other machine. Being unfamiliar with Eureka, more research showed this actually to be one of the largest manufactures of grinder who white labelled their machines to many high end brands and have some fantastic reviews and heritage.
Luckily I had a friend with a Mazzer that I was able to try and I did really like it but seeing the YouTube review of the atom really made me want to see it before taking the plunge. It seems Eureka was not a very common brand in Singapore but Carousell pointed me to a great sell who not only sells them but has them in stock for immediate collection. I went to collect the Atom and the sell actually was using one himself and was able to explain and show me the machine in action.
Turning on the machine and seeing the colour LCD shine with the EUREKA logo really brings a smile to your face. You know youre in for something a little special.5 buttons below the LCD screen really controls the unit and really sets this machine apart from the rest of what Ive really seen in the market.
Once the screen loads up, you be present with a split screen showing you single shot and double shot with the preset timings. These are fully programmable to your specific requirements and you can change them in increments of 1/10th second. The centre button simply allows those wanting to manually control the grind rather than single/double shot.
The grind size control is a simple aluminium knob you can turn easily with a thumb and finder. There is marking points from 1-10 but this is a stepless machines so depending on how little you turn, you can make very finite adjustments and this is really important Ive found with even 250g bag of beans. Im sure all of you reading will know, typical home users make 1 or couple of drinks a day only. As the weeks go along, your beans start to lose the freshness and will require very small adjustments towards that finer setting as you go through the bag. The adjustments know feels very classy to turn, weighty but not hard in anyway to turn. This is very different to the Mazzer which I tried, where you need to turn the entire mechanism ring requiring both hands to make the change.
All setup and finally turning this machine on was a real occasion, for those of you who have low end, mid-range or any grinding machine will know grinders are typically extremely loud. Let me tell you, Eureka is really not kidding when they said they worked at lengths in making this one of the quietest machines on the market. I dont have a sound measuring device but ill be very confident is saying its makes half the noise of typical machines. The motor sounds powerful but very smooth and high pitched sounding so never sounding noisy or waking up the neigbours. Seeing this machine for the first time reminds me of my first encounter with bose noise cancelling headphones, your head is telling you, its only another pair of headphones and then when you turn on the noise cancelling feature everything is so quiet all of sudden. You instantly fall in love with the machine.
I guess onto the important thing which is the grind, I know this will have started sounding bias already but all these previous factors mentioned really makes you feel this was something special. Imagine if you were buying a car to go fast, of course you can get any car with a big engine but people pay so many times for brands like Bentley, Aston Martins, and Lambos simply because of all those extra delicacies/fine details added in the journey to reaching your ultimate goal. It may sound unfair to compare this with my old entry level grinder but having used this machine, I felt really understand what reviews are referring to when they talk about fluffy coffee. To give you an idea, using the same amount of beans 19g my basket look a little more full but the real difference really came when I was tamping. It just felt so different, like there the usual little bit of resistance about 2mm in but the final 1-2mm felt a little springy. Hard to describe but for those moving up to a higher end machine will totally notice.
I guess you will all be wanting to hear about the taste? This is something actually extremely difficult to measure or show but did I notice a difference in taste? Most definitely, I felt my favourate beans brought out an slight extra sweetness and zing at the end which I never really tasted before. Could this have been a result of all the above feel good factors in the process of making the end cup cause me to taste difference? I honestly cant say but I feel Im most definitely enjoying this more.
I would say one of the most important factors with this machine I believe is actually the consistence I know get from my coffee each more. Once I have my machine dialled in, then I can make micro adjustments slightly with the precise control knob each morning. Just turning it ever so slightly towards the firmer setting as my bag of beans become less fresh throughout the week.
Is this the perfect machine that I can recommend to everyone? Most definitely not especially if you want to change settings between drip and espresso each day. Even though it has numbers on the controller knob, the setting very precise and tiny adjustments will have impact depending on the beans and freshness. This means its not easy to switch between grind sizes for drip and espresso. I honestly havent heard a machine that can successfully do this and would most love to hear anyone knowing one which can do this switching job perfectly. I believe many high end machines will give you very similar or coffee and improvements but none of them I feel gives me the convinces of what I have experienced with this Eureka Atom so far.
Again I want to state that I bought all of these machines with my own money and not sponsored in anyway. I just wanted to share my experience to all those coffee lovers out here that hopefully can save them in the longer run. Invest in a good grinder as it will last for a very very long time and a great investment to helping you achieve that great cup at home.
I hope you all enjoy my first write up, thank you again for reading.
