If you secretly (or not so secretly, no judgement here) love a vanilla latte, then boy do I have the coffee machine for you. The Jura J10, which I recently took for a spin at our test centre, is the first machine I’ve ever tried with features geared towards syrup-infused coffee.
Coffee purists might not like it, but there’s no denying the popularity of sweet drinks from chains like Blank Street and Starbucks. If you are a regular caramel latte orderer, investing in one of the best bean to cup coffee machines for your home is a great way of beating the queues and saving cash in the long-run.
The usual at-home set-up for drinks like this is usually a separate bottle of syrup and a pump, but not with the J10 – though you will pay a premium if you want to upgrade, with the machine coming in at an eye-watering £1,795.00 from John Lewis. Here’s what you get for that handsome sum.
The Jura J10 feels more like a machine you’d find in a commercial setting (like an office) than a home coffee bar. But with that industrial-feel you also get a seriously capable hands-free bean to cup machine which has a menu of 42 different drinks in total, from cold brew to the perfect cappuccino.
The machine is exceptionally easy to use, with the LED screen guiding you to change the grind size whenever necessary and reminding you when and how to clean the different elements.
The real draw here though, is the Sweet Foam function, which you can use to infuse your drinks with a syrup of your choice. There’s a small cap which you apply to where the frother sits on the right-hand side. When the milk flows through it, you get the most deliciously sweet coffee. You can tweak the amount of syrup that’s fed into the coffee, too, perfect if you only like a small amount of sugar.
I have to admit I was pretty sold by the syrup dispenser when I tried the J10. There’s a real difference in taste between a coffee with syrup poured in partway through, compared to the sweet foam being infused during the frothing process.
Another bonus of this machine, as we come into the summer is the ability to add that sweet foam to cold brew, which you can whip up in this machine in under 10 minutes. On humid days, it’s a great way to get your caffeine fix while staying cool.
As far as the price of this machine is concerned, while I loved the syrup feature and the ease of use, it’s a serious struggle to justify it as an at-home investment.
Unless you have the big bucks to splash on a do-it-all machine, I’d recommend sticking to the pour-in syrup method for now with a less pricey machine, maybe like the Ninja Luxe Café (£549.99 at Ninja), which is a favourite of mine.
I am hoping, however, that this type of feature might make its way into more affordable machines sometime soon.
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