A COFFEE OPERA

BEAN ADAPT TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER INNOVATIONS ARE KEEPING DE’LONGHI AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE DOMESTIC MARKET FOR SEMI- AND FULLY-AUTOMATIC COFFEE MACHINES.

When developing a machine for the home market, De’Longhi says it needs to be three things: high quality, flexible, and easy to use. Using Bean Adapt technology, the manufacturer ticks all three boxes.

“The general consumer is becoming highly educated when it comes to coffee, and with so many people around the world working at home, they want to replicate the experience from their favourite café,” says Cheryl Bosworth, Product Trainer at De’Longhi Group.

“Bean Adapt technology simplifies the set-up process, providing customers with an amazing starting point so they get used to their machine faster and aren’t going through kilograms of coffee to find the right recipe.”

Bean Adapt technology is available in two of De’Longhi’s flagship machines: the manual La Specialista Maestro and the automatic PrimaDonna Soul.

The PrimaDonna Soul automatically adjusts the machine’s grind setting, dose size, and water temperature, based on the coffee used, following optimum settings identified by De’Longhi.

The PrimaDonna Soul is the latest premium fully automatic machine from De’Longhi.

As a manual machine, the La Specialista Maestro provides these settings as a reference point the barista can alter to achieve their desired result. Coffee drinkers can then access those parameters via the De’Longhi app and are guided in how to adjust them to create their own personalised coffee experience.

“De’Longhi conducted extensive research and surveys that found grind, dose, and temperature as the three most challenging elements of coffee making for home consumers. They will often change all three of these things at once without understanding how each is impacting the coffee,” Bosworth says.

“With Bean Adapt Technology, it’s easy for them to gather information on their favourite coffee, like the roast level or type of bean, then pop that in the app and have the machine adapt its settings to suit. These parameters aren’t just pulled out of thin air. They’re based on numerous taste and sensorial tests carried out by coffee scientists to ensure we could identify the best starting points for most coffee blends, beans, and roast levels.”

For people who want to be more involved in the coffee making process, the La Specialista Maestro allows them to experiment with these settings to understand how they impact the end cup. In the PrimaDonna Soul, operators benefit from the automatic increase in simplicity and quality.

In both machines, De’Longhi’s LatteCrema milk texturing system complements Bean Adapt, providing the same automatic quality control over milk that it does for coffee. The La Specialista Maestro also offers manual milk texturing as well for a more artisanal approach.

“Some people just want to get to a good cup of coffee fast, while others want more

The La Specialista Maestro uses Bean Adapt to create a reference point the barista can alter to achieve their desired result.

control. The beauty of the Maestro is that it caters to both. Not everyone knows how to froth coffee, and you don’t want to keep having to ask ‘the barista of the house’ to do it for you,” Bosworth says.

“There will always be people who love the manual coffee making process and will want to change settings and explore what’s possible. With the technology in the Maestro, it’s easy to explore how different settings will change the coffee, like altering the temperature or finetuning the grind.”

The fully automatic PrimaDonna Soul offers much of the same functionality but is geared more towards people that just want to get a good cup of coffee quickly.

“I have been in coffee for 25 years, and some mornings when I’m in a hurry I just want to press a button and get my coffee quickly. Or if you have a friend over, you want to be able to talk to them and not have your head down thinking hard about the coffee you’re making,” Bosworth says.

“That’s what De’Longhi is all about – making beautiful coffee moments for people, whether that’s enjoying coffee at home with friends, roommates, or family.” Since early 2020, De’Longhi has seen a massive surge in interest for domestic coffee machines, and with more people making coffee at home, Bosworth says it’s even more important they be intuitive and easy to use. “I hear stories from customers all the time about how their kids will make them a coffee, as well as a hot chocolate for themselves. The coffee machine is becoming a family product, that everyone in the household needs to be able to use to justify the purchase,” she says. Thanks to technology like Bean Adapt and LatteCrema, Bosworth adds that the conversations she has with customers have evolved from being about basic techniques to the finer points of coffee making. “Most of the questions have traditionally been like ‘how hard should I tamp?’ or ‘what settings should I put the machine on?’, which limits the conversations that can occur,” she explains. “Automation has already answered many of those questions for them, so we can discuss more about the coffee itself, what they like and why, and how to bring the best out of it or find similar coffees.”

Consumer education will continue to be a key part of De’Longhi’s offering. In September, the manufacturer launched Coffee Lounge, a virtual platform where coffee lovers can seek information and advice on their machine or connect with local roasters.

“As a barista making hundreds of coffees per day, it becomes quite a fast process. At home, it is more of a hobby and can be done much slower, and the more we can teach people to make use of that time, the better,” Bosworth says.

In Australia, the De’Longhi Coffee Lounge has partnered with several esteemed local specialty coffee roasters – including Industry Beans, Criteria Coffee, and Seven Miles Coffee Roasters – to host educational classes and provide access to their coffee. Similar Coffee Lounges and partnerships with roasters have been set up in key markets across Europe, with more countries and continents to come.

“As a company that is always striving to innovate and make coffee more accessible for the consumer and enjoyable at home, it’s important we work with and be engaged with coffee roasters around the world,” Bosworth says.

“The feedback we receive from these roasters and our customers goes right back to HQ to help develop new machines and technology that caters to consumers’ wants and needs.”

Other key innovations to recently join Bean Adapt and LatteCrema include sensor grinding technology, active temperature control, dynamic pre-infusion, a smart tamping station in the Maestro, and Wi-Fi connectivity to the De’Longhi Coffee Link app.

“As a Product Trainer for De’Longhi Australia, it’s really exciting to first hear these ideas and innovations then watch our design team bring them to life in new machines,” Bosworth says.

“Many of these innovations are present in both the semi-automatic Maestro and fully automatic PrimaDonna Soul, but they work differently on both machines to help you create an enjoyable specialty coffee experience and excellent cup of coffee.” GCR

For more information, visit www.delonghi.com