Café Specialty Drip Coffee Maker | 10-Cup Insulated Thermal Carafe | WiFi Enabled Voice-to-Brew Technology | Smart Home Kitchen Essentials | SCA Certified, Barista-Quality Brew…

So after reading some reviews here I was hesitant to buy this machine due to some reviews saying how messy it was. We’ll let’s just get this out of the way. I have yet to see a mess from this machine and have posted photos showing how good the coffee bed actually looks. In the photo, that is 69g of fresh roasted beans ground right before brewing using a Fellow Ode grinder. Not even close to a mess!

Now getting into the actual review. My have to haves for this machine were a timer for auto brewing for the weekdays, SCA approved and a thermal carafe. I have owned other SCA approved machines in the past like the Breville Precision Brewer, the Bonivita 8 cup and the latest was an SCA approved Ninja Machine. If the Ratio 6 had a timer that would have been in the running this time around. Unfortunately it does not and this machine checked all my boxes so I decided to give a it a try and so glad I did!

Without touching on all it’s options yet, the one thing the machine needed to do in order to make it a keeper was make a great cup of coffee! If it couldn’t do that, then it wouldn’t matter how high tech this thing was and all the fancy stuff it could do, it was going back. Well I am happy to say, this machine makes one delicious cup of coffee! My first reaction to my first brewed sip was WOW, this cup is smooth! It was super smooth, sweet and delicious! An 8 cup pot finished brewing in just about 5 minutes which is pretty fast.

The thermal carafe definitely kept the coffee hot for an hour after brewing and was even drinkable 2 hours later. Some reviews mentioned they were upset there was no hot plate. No thermal carafe machine comes with a hot plate! That is the reason for going with the thermal carafe. So your coffee doesn’t cook and continue to change in flavor. If you want a hot plate, you need to buy the glass carafe. That goes for any coffee machine. If you want your coffee to stay the hottest in the thermal carafe, run hot water in the carafe so when you brew your coffee, you won’t be brewing into a cold carafe which will cool the coffee down quicker. Also, the more coffee left in the carafe the longer it will stay hotter for. If you only have one cup left in the carafe, it will cool down quicker then if you have say 4 cups sitting in there.

The machine allows you to choose the gold standard setting which sets everything to the SCA approved cup of coffee and no settings can be changed when set to this but for those who like to tinker, the machine also allows you to set the exact temperature of the water from 185° to 205°. You can also change the brew strength between 3 settings, light, medium and bold. I am not sure what this setting actually adjusts as it’s separate from the temperature setting. I haven’t brewed on anything besides the gold setting so far but I am definitely going to test the other stuff out but the Gold Setting brews a great cup.

The wifi option is such a bonus on this thing! It makes setting everything up super easy. Being able to set a schedule for weekdays means I don’t need to program the machine every night. If something changes, can just go into the app and change what I need. Have grinds and water in the machine but don’t want to brew yet, can just start the brew from my phone when I am ready. It’s great. Also hooked up to Google Home with no problem. Like I said though, if the machine didn’t brew a great cup of coffee none of this other stuff would have mattered!

Bottom line, yes the machine is expensive but if you are reading this review around the time it’s posted, it’s $100 off right now putting it much closer in price and even better then some of it’s competitors! And it make a great cup of Joe!

*8 Month Update – Machine is still working great! Have not had any issues and still producing a great cup of coffee. I basically have kept it on the Gold setting and found there is really no need to play with the temp and strength as the Gold Cup produces a great cup. I have been using an 18:1 coffee to water ratio based on the ounces listed on the water reservoir. Fresh roasted whole beans and weighed out. During the week I prep the night before and have a schedule setup in the app for weekdays. In the morning the coffee still comes out great even with grinding the night before. I have yet to experience any mess with grinds overflowing as others talk about and have made pots using up to 74 grams of coffe. Still recommend this machine.

This comes up in your search results from the UK but it is not clear it’s a US product with a US electrical setup. Maybe I should have guessed from the 110v but to be honest I didn’t actually remember what UK voltage was, I had to look it up.

Anyway, after blowing up two adapters, I finally found out I need a £99 step down transformer, which is huge and expensive, in order to power the thing.

It makes great coffee, it does. However you have to prop the water and coffee areas open every day to dry them out, otherwise it’s going to make dank coffee really soon.

I had raised my coffee-making ability to an 8/10 using thermal carafes, descaling, using filtered water and really good, fresh beans. This machine takes it to 10/10. Is it worth the hassle to get the upgrade? With a UK plug yes, but for me I wish I hadn’t bothered.

Excellent design is tough to come by. Even more rare is when you get high aesthetic and high function in the same package. The Cafe machine comes frustratingly close!

This was the machine our household settled on after way too much research. I looked at the OXO, the Moccamaster, the Ratio (sheesh, $$$$), and the Breville Precision Brew.

I really do wish Breville offered its coffee maker in anything other than the frankly ugly brushed stainless and matte plastic, unlike quite a few of their espresso machines that come in a number of finishes. As far as I can tell, the GE Cafe is one of few on the market that offers a higher quality finish that isn’t brushed stainless.

The Pros:

– Aesthetic. Up there with the Ratio 8 as far as looks. (Although I will note that the Matte Black is really a matte charcoal. )

– Default setting makes great coffee. No, really. As someone who was previously making a French Press every day, this machine makes great coffee.

– The carafe pours nicely. I wish I could say that loads of coffee makers pour neatly, but they simply don’t and this is actually quite a nice thing.

– It comes with a permanent gold filter. Some folks prefer the ‘cleaner’ taste of a paper filter, but I quite enjoy the fuller body coffee you can get with a gold filter.

– You can adjust the brew temp.

– You can create a brew schedule and whip out your phone to activate brewing whenever you like.

– The physical interface is pretty dang easy to use.

Cons:

– The permanent filter shape is angular and quite customized. I’m concerned about what happens if/when I’d like to replace it! Also, unlike the Breville Precision you are limited to a cone style brew rather than basket. Basket filters produce different flavors from cone shaped. This particular part of the machine feels a touch over engineered.

– You can’t remove the water tank. This is pretty silly for a machine of this caliber.

– You can’t control the flow rate/brew rate. You can’t control the bloom length. I realize that these are features that a lot of folks don’t necessarily care to use, but this is a missed opportunity to turn the Cafe machine into a coffee nerd’s dream. These could easily be features only adjustable via the app rather than in the manual interface.

– Sometimes on a full pot brew, the grounds splash up. Sad day.