Melitta Latte Select Coffee Machine Review
Early starts when hosting for family and friends can be challenging when it comes to coffee making. Even with the advanced mechanism of pod based machines you still need to change coffee types and milk pods over. However, the Melitta Latte Select coffee machine announces the seemingly blissful simplicity of one touch operation from bean to cup, including all the milk preparation. We’ve been utilising this model at the studio to see if it has what it takes to produce both authentic milk drinks and, importantly, espresso excellence?
Design
It’s quite a nice looking piece of coffee hardware, with a brushed silver front and drip tray. It has a boxier aesthetic than some, which we think looks complementary on a worktop. It’s strangely smaller in one dimension and larger in the other than other coffee machines we’ve tried in the same category (like the Siemens EQ.3) measuring in at H 345mm x W 255mm x D 475mm. What we mean by this is that it’s roughly the same width, but is shorter, which is useful if you have lower cupboards or want to position it in an area with confined height. However, it’s around 7.5cm deeper, which on a standard worktop doesn’t leave much room in front of it. It does have wheels to make it easier to slide out and thus give full access to all sides, and this is ideal if your 1.8l water tank is underneath a shelf. Speaking of the tank, it’s tinted to avoid algae and has a carry handle to make transportation easier. The entire brewing unit can be accessed via a sliding
door on the right where the unit can then be removed, via a simple lever mechanism, and cleaned. The Melitta Latte Select will notify via its screen when it requires to be cleaned and descaled.
Most pleasingly, we haven’t needed to do any maintenance yet, other than empty the drip tray/coffee grounds container (the machine tells you when to) and Melitta states that the Pro Aqua Filter actually pushes the descaling cycles to just once per year if you’re dispensing on average 6 drinks per day. So with our kind of usage, averaging around 3 drinks per day, that would be once every 2 years. This is very much appreciated, as there’s nothing worse than when machines, like the Siemens model previously mentioned, literally lock up early one morning because they have to complete a cleaning cycle, which occurs roughly every 4-6 weeks.
We’ve tested and reviewed a lot of coffee machines, including bean to cup. However, somewhat unusually, the Melitta Latte Select is the first one we’ve tried with a top mounted dual bean hopper and this has been a bit of a revelation. With two differing roasts being able to be loaded, this is particularly nifty and means we can even have a decaffeinated filled hopper for later in the day enjoyment. What’s more, if you run out of beans or someone gifts you ground coffee, this Latte Select coffee machine can actually utilise that too through the inclusion of a separate shoot for the grounds.
Controls
Navigating the Melitta Late Select is done via a touch sensitive surface with printed symbols which illustrate the commands on a TFT colour display using a rotating dial. The touch surface represents 6 variant drinks, bean strength, 2x button for crafting two beverages at once (including milk based) and the added perk of a 'my recipe' function. This useful inclusion of programmable settings allows for personalised coffee brewing, catering for the diverse preferences of coffee enthusiasts, making it perfect for those that crave a creamier latte, hotter milk, or desire a longer espresso pull in their cappuccino.
These variations are set at the onset of extraction, by using a dial to change milk and coffee qualities. More impressively, users can override the default machine recipes entirely throughout the menu and even create personalised named recipes. This feature proves especially useful for families with varying preferences, allowing them to enjoy the same drink with different ratios of milk to espresso strength at the press of a button, with no dialling in then required. More generally, the menu options are well-organised, ensuring an intuitive user experience for manual maintenance tasks and settings, with the most prominent settings feature being that for the 'my recipes' area, which is essential and easy to get to grips with.
Performance
Coffee: Even with a more budget-friendly bag of robusta beans at our disposal, as well as freshly roasted medium blends which we mostly use, the outcomes were all surprisingly favourable. The machine exhibited the capability to grind, tamp, and efficiently pass water through the coffee, resulting in a textured body that effectively captured the fibre from the beans. This process contributes to the creation of an enjoyable espresso or americano. Experimenting with a longer pull from the machine by adjusting the quantity, creating a cafe lungo style but dialling down the strength to normal, produced a beverage that, far from being bitter, was rather tasty. This suggests that the pump or internal mechanisms have the ability to vary the pressure of extraction. It also hints that tweaking the grind setting could potentially lead to even more impressive results, emphasising the machine's versatility in optimising the coffee-making process.
The manual override for the grinder is located on the rear of the machine, allowing for a courser or finer output. We have fiddled with this, but as the espresso results from the weight of what is brewed when the machine arrived is basically spot on, and the characteristics from the medium roasts we have mostly worked with through the Melitta are silky in body and produce a caramel-like visual quality within the crema, it didn’t seem necessary to adjust further. While it doesn't quite match the rich tastes of the espresso produced by the Sage Barista Express Impress, it's remarkably impressive for a fully automated system, and guests will certainly be exclaiming praise.
Milk: The milk attains a beautifully textured consistency, and the foam, which is delicately fine, particularly excels when using vegan barista milks. As observed in our recent reviews, these plant-based alternatives consistently prove to be the optimal choice for crafting indulgent cappuccinos and latte macchiatos. Maintaining the espresso ratio at a strong setting is recommended, yet, once more, we found ourselves delicately adjusting the nuances of millilitres via the dial to ensure that the milk's rich texture was not overshadowed. Careful calibration does, however, ensure a harmonious balance, allowing the espresso and milk to complement each other, resulting in a beverage that fully showcases the luxurious qualities of both elements and thus the results approach artisan coffee shop standards. British tastes will likely feel the need to adjust to hotter milk and espresso settings in their recipes, due to the default being warm rather than hot, which some might like more than others. A cappuccino will be around 69°C and a solo espresso is 78°C, with the former possibly being a little too tepid for some British tastes. Nevertheless, we personally really like it being immediately ready to drink and, of course, the milk is not burnt.
Melitta typically opt for a separated plug-in milk system, and there's no doubt this has its advantages as well as drawbacks. It does introduce notable convenience in not having to measure milk quantities, unlike our Siemens bean to cup machine, and this is particularly beneficial if you are making drinks for a party of people, as we can pop two cups under and follow by a simple press of a button, which we cannot do with wand styled milk systems. However, the practicality of placing two cups underneath does come with a slight consideration. The proximity of the spouts to each other means that cups with wider bases, such as traditional styles, work well, but more specialised options, like dual-walled cups, require a bit more thought to avoid any spillage. The only downside to this separated plug-in milk system is that when making just one occasional drink the system can seem a tad fiddly, so to overcome this it’s worth keeping milk within the milk unit and housed in the fridge for immediate use. The tube connecting the milk unit automatically flushes into the drip tray after use, so is ready for the next drink, and when it comes time to clean the milk unit, it is dishwasher safe.
Verdict
The Melitta Latte Select delivers a persuasively personalised coffee experience via its customisation options, with the added convenience of being able to make two impressively enjoyable beverages simultaneously. Having two different bean roasts in the hopper is a real advantage. Some may find the maximum temperature of 69°C for milk based drinks not quite warm enough, excluding them from this model, so it might be worth doing some at-home testing of liquid at that temp to see if it's for you. The emphasis on easy cleaning/maintenance, and in our case descaling every 1-2 years, further enhances its appeal to us. Melitta’s Latte Select is a bean to cup coffee machine with versatility and design features that make it easy to interact with. It’s undoubtedly a top contender in the fully automated coffee machine category.