Office coffee machine needs replacing

[jackal10]

The coffee machine in the office or one of my companies is beginning to leak, and repair costs indicate its time to replace it. It serves around 20 people, but being in high-tech compter industry good coffee is vital.

The current machine is a Jura X90 bean to cup machine, and its done well.

Suggestions please on its replacement.

Should we continue with

a) a bean to cup machine, or

b) Seperate grinder and expresso (potentially messy: these are programmers, not barristas); or

c) Conventional pour-on and paper filter (many options here)

d) Instant sachets, like Flavia (ugh!)

e) Other..

Your opinions please on make and model, or just sound off about office coffee...

Of course this is not as famous as that other Cambridge coffee machine, The Trojan Room coffee machine, the world's first web-cam. The coffee machine was sold on ebay, and bought by Spiegel Online, reconditioned, and is once more online..

I was a student and then faculty member at the time in the Computer Lab, and knew the original. It made awful stewed coffee...

Edited September 30, 2004 by jackal10 (log)

[melkor]

It depends what the priority is, amazing coffee often makes a mess. If budget is no issue then a LM Swift grinder and single group Linea would likely be your best bet - the grinder also tamps the filter basket and somewhat limits the mess being made. The Jura isn't exactly cheap, but it's much less expensive than the LM setup.

[phaelon56]

Your specific circumstances being what they are and human nature being what it is... stick to the bean to cup option. I've tasted some surprisingly pretty good coffee from those little plastic sachets but a good superauto can beat it and offers far lower cost per cup, not to mention greater flexbility in choice of bean type, roast level etc.