Melitta Barista TS Smart SST Fully Automatic Coffee Machine with grinder, F86/0-100, 1450 W, 1.8 liters, Stainless Steel

La macchina è fantastica, materiali premium (sia alla vista che al tatto - è "bella" anche vista da dietro), silenziosa, caffè veramente ottimo (avevo un vecchia delonghi autentica S e *con lo stesso caffè* si sente un salto incredibile), buona la schiuma di latte. La personalizzazione non è solo sulla quantità e ordine di montaggio di caffè-latte ma anche su aspetti importanti come la quantità di caffè, temperatura dell'acqua, aroma (non ho ancora capito cosa cambi). Vengo da una superautomatica delonghi: ero diffidente e l'ho comperata solo perchè avevo la garanzia del reso Amazon. Ora me la tengo stretta. Immagino vorrreste una recensione più completa con tutti i pregi ma preferisco dedicare il tempo a bermi una tazza di caffè. Sui pregi potrei andare avanti per ore. Ve lo riassumo con un " non avrei mai pensato che una macchina del caffè tedesca fosse così top" ma forse può essere più utile se mi soffermo sui difetti: - è per persone che non litigano con la tecnologia, soprattutto il setup delle varie ricette non è idiot-proof. - le impostazioni di default sono tutte da cambiare per noi italiani: giusto per darvi un esempio, l'espresso è impostato a 70ml: una bestemmia da Bolzano (inclusa) in giù. - Il limite minimo è comunque di 25ml sia per caffè che latte: il più piccolo espresso macchiato è riempie al limite una normale tazzina. Per me va bene ma per i più esigenti potrebbe essere troppo. - La app ogni tanto si inceppa e va resettata. Anche se è totalmente inutile far partire il caffè dallo smartphone è comunque utile per la personalizzazione dei programmi e delle ricette. - Il contenitore del latte per quanto bello (in acciaio inox spazzolato) e facilmente lavabile, non fa vedere la qta di latte all'interno. - Il contenitore del caffè è molto isolante (contrariamente alla mia vecchia delonghi) ma è relativamente piccolo. Il meccanismo della doppia miscela ha impatti anche sulle ricette (cosa che personalmente non approvo: se ci metto un caffè decaffeinato, vorrei le stesse ricette) - Ho un po' di paura per la cannettina del latte per quando si romperà (non sembra indistruttibile) e dove troverò il ricambio. - La navigazione nei menù è macchinosa: Melitta dovrebbe mettere due pulsanti per "menù" e "ok", non assieme. - Dalle foto sembra gigante, e confermo che non è piccola. Con le forme arrotondat, una volta posizionata non sembra neanche così grossa. Comunque mi raccomando di valutare bene gli ingombi per capire se ci stà.

SOLDI SPESI 1130 EURO ECCO COSA HO RICEVUTO 1 IMBALLO ROTTO 2 RESIDUI CAFFE MACCINATO INTERNO CORPO (MACCHINA NUOVA !) 3 CAPELLO NERO INTERNO MACCHINA CON 1130 ORA HO CAFFE GUSTO CAPELLATO !!!

UPDATE: Well, I did learn to love this machine but, after only 18 months it has stopped making coffee. Instead of dispensing coffee through the nozzles on the front of the machine… the coffee just goes straight into the drip tray! And, yes, I run the cleaning routines whenever prompted, sometimes even sooner. And that includes taking the brewing unit out and giving it a thorough wash. I called the UK Melitta support line… which just rings indefinitely with nobody answering. I sent them an email, which has not been acknowledged. ORIGINAL REVIEW: Having previously owned (and loved) the Melitta Caffeo Bistro, I though this would be a fancy upgrade. Unfortunately, they’ve added a load of fancy-looking features that work incredibly unreliably. Instead of mechanical buttons, you have a touch interface, that’s horribly unreliable. Sometimes you tap on the -/+ symbol and it does what you expect, most times it does nothing. It’s designed primarily for use with dark roast beans in the left hopper and mild beans in the right. If you want to use the dual hopper for car vs decaf, then you’re going to need to remember to use the bean selector before making any coffee… otherwise the machine will automatically select them based on the recipe. “Cafe Crème”, “Cafe Latte” and “Cafe au Lait” use the right hopper (“Beans 2”) by default, unless you select “Beans 1” beforehand. “Red Eye”, “Black Eye” and “Dead Eye” (seriously… who’s heard of these?) use beans from both hoppers, so these recipes rather depend on the hoppers being filled with dark and medium roast beans rather than a caf/decaf split. Although maybe shots of espresso in a decaf would give the same visual effect? The portions you get from the recipes are rather random and extremely stingy… a standard home coffee mug is typically between 200-300ml. Yet the Americano recipe only dispenses 150ml and the Cappuccino a miserly 130ml! I’ve included a photo of a cappuccino to show (to scale) how absurd that is. Even the latte is only 180ml. The largest recipes are the “Americano Extra Shot” and “Latte Macchiato Trip’e Shot” which are 210ml each. These amounts may be fine for your local overpriced coffee shop, but they’re too small for home use. You can override this and use the slider on the machine to adjust the total amount… but (and this is incredible) you can only do this AFTER starting the recipe but BEFORE the coffee starts dispensing. That’s a 10 second window to make the adjustment. But it gets worse: the machine display does not tell you what the total amount will! Instead it tells you “Coffee 65ml Milk 115ml” and you have 10 seconds to add that up in your head and decide whether that’s suitable for your chosen mug, adjust, repeat. If you want to tinker further with the recipes or create your own, you can do so via the iOS app; however, I found that it does not reliably select the beans you asked for. Instead it seems to select whatever was chosen by the last person to use the physical controls. Also, it does not have the option to adjust the total amount while keeping the coffee to milk ratio consistent. I used the app for a few days, then went back to the standard machine controls. I do find it astonishing that such a computer-based machine does not have any means for the customer to upgrade the firmware. I did ask Melitta support and they told me if there is a firmware issue, it has to go back to the manufacturer to be updated. Let’s finish with some positive saving graces though, as you’ll be wondering why I gave it 4 stars. The coffee this machine makes (from the recipes, using good quality beans) is delicious. I was particularly impressed at the 3-layered Latte Macchiato… make that in a glass for the full effect! The flat white and cappuccino are especially tasty. I source my beans from CoffeeLink, who also do really good decaf beans. If you know for sure that the total will fit in your mug, then you can simply choose “2x” to make double the amount (which is actually intended for making two tiny coffees side-by-side). I use that setting all the time. The milk container that comes with the stainless steel model (which I got) is a proper flask that keeps the milk fresh and cold for ages. I definitely recommend you purchase the milk “lance” (it’s about £10) if you only intend to make a single milky coffee, as it’s quicker and easier to clean than the flask and no milk is wasted. You simply stick that in your milk bottle/carton. It should really be bundled with such an expensive machine though, shouldn’t it? So, overall, I’m happy with the machine, despite all the shortcomings above.

It is difficult to write a considered and fair review of this coffee maker when my experience is clouded by poor service. The Melitta Barista TS is billed as a premium product, but it doesn't come with a premium after sales service! After less than 6 weeks we had an alert to say descaling was necessary - something that shouldn't be needed for a year if using their water filters. Ringing the Melitta "hotline" doesn't get you technical experts, the best they can do is gat someone to call you back at some unspecified time. Getting an engineer to visit "can take weeks...your best bet is to arrange a collectionand get it back to us". All very good, but the collection and delivery can't be specified to a time slot. With a separate delivery and collection of a loan machine (if available and can't promise what model) this could be four days of your life wasted! They admitted there should be no way the warning should come up in that time. Added to this we had two occasions of water leaking out; another message that could only be removed by a reset (thus wiping your own brews) and our final cappuccino's were a frothing failure! We decided to take the option to return it to Amazon. Had I written this yesterday I would have been full of praise for how Amazon stepped up and too responsibility whereas Melitta hid behind Terms & Conditions. The man I spoke to listened and checked and kept me informed and was polite. He arranged a replacement to be delivered next day, which it was. As we were using the replacement's packing for the return, I had to ring to arrange collection. There seemed to be a little confusion but the agent quickly sorted it out and promised a pick up today. I stayed in for 12 hours but nobody came! When I rang Amazon they were apologetic and inferred that Hermes did what they liked and Amazon could not arrange a delivery slot. I was told I could book a courier myself and they would pay. I suggested they do it for me which I was told they would, but a while later I got an email saying they couldn't! All this has left a sour taste, so it is difficult to stop it marring a review, That said, when you pay the best part of a grand for a coffe maker you expect something better. We did love the machine. It does make remarkably good coffee and the milk frothing was far better than I ever expected. Five weeks is not enough time to explore more than the bare minimum of options this machine provides. It is pretty easy to get the hang of, with one-touch buttons for the most popular options, which you can adjust on the fly. You can also create your own brews and save them as well as customising the main button settings. The dual bean hoppers are great; with no clogging or stragglers - though, at the end, we did get an erroneous error mesage as mentioned. It is all a bit plastic, but it seems well made. The water tank, for example, slots it beautifully. It looks smart and stylish and doesn't take up too much space. There are quite a few minor negatives: getting such reliably good coffee isn't quite as easy as they would have you believe! The first is that the instruction manual is not as reassuring as it should be. It's just small things like not fully describing a process. If used in conjunction with the app and YouTube videos the user manual sort of suffices. The second negative is that cleaning is far fiddlier than you might guess and remarkably expensive using Melitta's branded products. Cleaning the brewing unit is the fiddliest and probably needs doing twice as often as they say. The first time is quite scary because it all moves about and you wish you had looked at it more carefully when you took it out. There is no picture of how to reposition the parts correctly. The milk jets are hard to work out the first few times. The one bit that is poorly designed is the waste tray. Be warned you need to position this machine near a sink and have steady hands to ensure this large flat tray doesn't spill. It also needs doing very often with all the rinsing it does. Also, this tray has discoloured in one area near to the brewing unit in just a few weeks, which makes me wonder about its longevity. All the minor negatives aside, if it hadn't been for the lack of service, we would habe been scoring this machine 4 or even 5 stars. It really does make good coffee. Some reviews have reported drinks not hot enough, but we found the temperature to be fine, perhaps with the exception of the latte. It is possible to tweak the temperature but we haven't bothered. The amount of control you have over recipes is phenominal and I cannot believe that anyone would be disappointed in the quality of the drinks. So it is sad that I am feeling somewhat negative at the moment. We will see if the quality of the coffee can take away the sour taste. At the moment the replacement machine does not seem to brew quite as nicely and is slightly noisier - but that might be in our minds

First coffee machine I have purchased. The coffee it produces tastes great. I have owned this machine for two years and make a minimum of one coffee a day. I feel it has way too many features for me as I only use it for latte’s and cappuccino’s It does use a lot of water which is not necessarily a bad thing as this means it flushes well before and after use ( hygienic). It is big so be aware the sacrifice to kitchen worktop area. Now the cleaning of the machine I feel is one of the biggest issues with this machine. The grinder has so many nooks and crannies I had to purchase a pack of cleaning brushes as there is a lot of hard to reach areas. The consumables ( cleaning tabs etc) I find reasonably priced. I have given up on the app as it is a terrible piece of software. Do not buy if you think the app will be helpful as it won’t be. Overall it creates a great coffee but I will try and find a smaller product if I need to replace it in the future.