Jalen Sigh Tech

Verdict

While its price isn’t for the faint-hearted, KitchenAid’s KF8 Fully Automatic Espresso Machine delivers something different from other bean-to-cup coffee machines.

Named profiles, each with saved drink combinations, auto ground coffee recognition, and the ability to froth non-dairy milks are a level of functionality that few can offer. Switching between drinks isn’t always an entirely smooth process – for example, there’s only one container supplied, so for other milks, you have to pop the tube directly in a carton – but overall, the KF8 is the closest to providing coffee shop versatility that we’ve found.

Introduction

As coffee habits have changed in cafes, it was inevitable that at-home bean-to-cup machines would need to catch up.

KitchenAid’s KF8 Fully Automatic Espresso Machine is equipped to be as flexible as they come: not just with a hopper that can be ejected to swap out beans for different flavours and an intuitive ground coffee chute, but also the ability to froth plant-based milks.

This means that you can whip up an oat milk decaf latte as easily as a standard cappuccino, and there’s no need to pop out for your speciality favourites.

Design and Features

• Easy and deep milk system cleaning
• Can save favourites to six profiles
• 16 standard drinks

As you’d expect from KitchenAid, the KF8 is sleek: curved corners blend with a metal-clad exterior and a choice of matt colour (including black, white and deep green Juniper).

Unsurprisingly, it’s also weighty at more than 12kg. Yet while it’s fairly deep on the worktop at almost 47cm, the coffee machine manages to squeeze in a generous 2.2-litre water tank with a carry handle (although if you add a filter, capacity is reduced slightly).

A long 114.3cm cable provides plenty of options as to where it can live in your kitchen, while a pair of wheels underneath at the back allow you to move it around more easily on a worktop.

On top, there’s a 270g hopper for coffee beans, which can be lifted out to empty, refill or change the variety of beans. That’s a useful trick, although you do need to find somewhere to store the beans you’ve removed.

The De’Longhi Rivelia, with its multiple hoppers is neater to change, while the Melitta Caffeo Barista TS Smart has a split hopper that can take two different types of beans at once.

There’s also a chute for ground coffee, which, when the lid is raised, automatically registers that you’re switching to it and will bypass the grinder.

However, the 12.7cm / 5-inch colour touchscreen makes using the machine effortless. You can swipe and tap your way through the drinks, toggle each setting in terms of drink volume, coffee temperature and strength, and milk type (dairy or plant-based), and save your favourites to a named profile.

Milk is frothed or warmed using a connected 790ml container via a hose, or you can pop the hose directly into a bottle or carton. Afterwards, there’s either a quick cleaning mode for the milk tube, or a deeper cycle. However, the drip tray, grounds container and milk container lid are not dishwasher safe, so there’s still some handwashing involved to keep it pristine.

Performance

• Quieter grinding
• Makes consistent crema
• More maintenance than similar machines

If you’ve owned a bean-to-cup machine, you’ll probably be familiar with the high-pitched whine of a burr grinder. This noise is something that the KF8 has largely done away with.

Its conical stainless-steel burr grinder makes a noise akin to a smooth whirring sound, which on a bleary-eyed morning is more welcome. There are a host of other pings and dings, such as when it’s finished brewing, but these can be switched off or made quieter, meaning that you don’t have to wake the whole household up when you fancy a late-night latte.

It’s clear that much thought has gone into the usability of the machine: even without a manual, it’s easy to navigate the touchscreen.

There are just four buttons surrounding it that are equally obvious to someone new to using it: one selects the profiles, another the drinks menu, and the others are start and stop. Plus, there’s a physical on/off button, with a standby that can be set from 8 minutes to 8 hours (default is 30 minutes) – for those who don’t want to wait for their coffee.

I can see why this might come in handy – the KF8 isn’t the fastest when heating up from scratch, and can take up to 40 seconds to get ready. On average, I found it took around 30 seconds after the first heat-up of the day. Brewing in general can take a little longer than some bean-to-cup machines although its fully automatic all-in-one abilities for making milk-based drinks means you can choose your drink and walk away.

Drinks flow from a single dispenser, which lights up at the top, but cleverly, underneath as well, so the cup is illuminated. The dispenser raises up to 13.7cm, so a short travel cup can be tucked below. Milk and coffee flow from separate double spouts within this, while hot water is dispensed from a single separate spout, meaning that there’s no mingling of liquids.

This preservation of taste extends to trying out different beans: not only is it simple to remove and empty the hopper, there’s a purge function so any remaining coffee won’t mix with a new batch. I also liked that raising the lid of the ground coffee chute prompted the machine to recognise that I was using ground.

As you’d expect from a machine this expensive, the KF8 brews excellent, faultless coffee that’s consistently good. When making espresso or coffee, it always produced a noticeable crema with an intoxicating aroma, and was good at bringing out the different flavour notes of beans without bitterness.

The same was true when making cappuccino: each time the milk was smoothly foamed with no mess. Clean-up was as simple as running a quick rinse programme for the tube, and the container of milk detached to be stored in the fridge. There is, however, a deeper milk cleaning programme that has to be carried out less frequently, so there’s more maintenance than some machines.

Perhaps the only niggle I found is that it’s not possible to save two different specs of drink to one profile. For example, if you enjoy plant-based milk from time to time, but usually have dairy in your latte, you’ll need to create a second profile for yourself or brew the latte from the main menu and toggle the milk option. Given that one of the points of difference of the KF8 is its ability to froth plant-based milk, you’d also hope for a second container, but there’s only one.

Latest deals