Jura E8

The Jura E8 is a brand new bean to cup machine designed for domestic kitchens, built to give cafe-standard results without the ritual of a manual machine. Swiss engineering sits behind a colour TFT display and a one-touch interface that anyone in the house can use confidently, and the menu runs to seventeen speciality drinks, flat white and latte macchiato included.

What happens inside

Short drinks are handled by the Pulse Extraction Process, which pushes water through the grounds in pulses to extend contact time and draw more aroma from a ristretto or an espresso. Ahead of that, the Professional Aroma Grinder mills beans precisely and quickly, protecting the oils that carry flavour. Water quality is looked after by the Intelligent Water System, which recognises a CLARIS Smart cartridge and adjusts its maintenance prompts to match.

The bracket it sits in

Enough coffee to justify a proper machine, nowhere near enough to need a commercial one: that is the bracket. Small studios, consulting rooms and one or two-person offices land in it as squarely as a family kitchen does, and it suits anyone who always offers a visitor a proper drink. The seventeen drinks matter more than they sound, because a machine that can produce the specific coffee each person actually wants is the one still plugged in after the novelty wears off. Strength, volume and temperature can be saved to suit each drink, so the first coffee of the day matches the last. Where several people are drinking all day, every day, look at a commercial bean to cup machine built for that duty cycle instead.

Foam, and whether you need it

Fine foam technology produces a fine-textured, stable foam for cappuccino and latte macchiato rather than the loose bubbles of a basic frother, and it is the reason a cappuccino from this machine tastes like one instead of like coffee with hot milk. What it asks of you is chilled milk to hand and the discipline to run the milk cleaning routine, which the machine prompts for. If nobody in the house drinks milk coffees, that entire half of the specification is spare capacity and there are simpler machines. If milk coffees are the default and foam matters more than froth, it is the part you will use most.

Where it lives

It is quiet enough to use early without waking the house, and compact enough to leave out on the worktop permanently. Give it a socket it can stay plugged into and clearance above for topping up beans and water, and think about how you will reach the drip tray and grounds container without shifting the machine each time. A position by the sink makes the routine jobs quicker; a position at the far end of the worktop makes them a chore.

Cartridges, cleaning and beans

Living with the E8 is deliberately undemanding, and it arrives with a two-year warranty behind it. Filtration through the CLARIS Smart system reduces scale build-up, and the machine prompts its own rinsing and cleaning programmes rather than leaving you to guess. Keep replacement cartridges in the cupboard so a prompt never turns into a delay. Beans deserve the same attention as the machine, and our guide to picking beans for a bean to cup machine explains why an oily dark roast that suits a manual espresso machine can misbehave in an automatic grinder.

Or the shorter menu

If espresso quality appeals but learning to tamp does not, this is the machine that removes the learning without removing the result. If a shorter drinks menu would cover everything you order, the Jura E6 is the simpler machine from the same range, and the sensible thing to compare against before you buy.