Beko CEG7425B Bean to Cup ESPRESSO Maker, 15 Bar, Black [Energy Class A]

So, I have been living with this machine for a week now and I’m happy to share my opinions so far. I am by no means a “coffee snob" but I do enjoy a nice brew. Actually, I enjoy a lot of them. I drink far, far more coffee than I’m sure they say you should, but to heck with that, if I am to die, I’ll die happy thank you very much ;-)I have had more coffee machines in my life than I dare to count, in my house at the moment there are more than six, a number my wife assures me — at every opportunity, is too many. But I’ve never been truly happy with a single one of them (bar the trusty old cafetière(s) – I have three of those). What I have always wanted is a good automatic machine. I have tried to get just such a thing with various types of machine, from using bean-to-cup drip coffee makers to the more common (now days) pod coffee machines.TL;DRIf you wish to read no further then the short story is, this Beko machine has replaced them all — at least to the point where I have stored the others away.For a machine at this price range I think it’s an absolute bargain, it out-performs some coffee machines (of various types) which I have paid significantly more money for. I am delighted with this and would not hesitate in recommending it.But I like to make my reviews as informative as I can, when I can, so I’ll ramble on some (a lot, lot) more.They all have their strengths and weaknesses as far as I am concerned. The pod style machines are probably the most convenient as you can make a single cup, or mug, with just the press of a button. However I find they are just too constraining for me when it comes to the selection of drinks. And while certainly some of them are tasty, they still cannot compare to freshly ground beans, as I’m sure you’re well aware if you’re reading this, coffee loses it’s flavour very quickly.Though I suppose a quick recap wont hut for any potential newcomers, seasoned coffee drinkers can skip this next paragraph.Coffee beans in their raw, green state, can keep their flavour for up to a year. However once you start to mess with them, things change quite dramatically — and quickly. Freshly roasted beans begin losing their flavour after a few weeks, but as soon as they are ground, they begin to lose flavour after just 45 seconds.This is, as you may have guessed, due to each bean having a significantly larger surface area after it has been ground. Which is why the very best coffee is coffee you haver freshly ground yourself, or even better roasted and ground by you, if you want to get really serious.Coffee pods do help to minimise this flavour loss by sealing the ground beans in the little airtight capsules. But even then, as I’m sure you can imagine, they’ve already lost flavour during the factory processing before they get to be sealed in the capsules.My other big issue with coffee pod machines is the waste, I can guess some of you are rolling your eyes, but we need to look after the planet which looks after us, maybe that’s the ageing hippy in me. While there are some parts of pods which are recyclable and companies making recyclable pods and even some who are making 100% compostable pods, there aren’t enough of them. There’s enough waste going to landfill as it is, so I like to minimise my contribution to it — so coffee pods are out.(I know you can get refillable pods for many of the pod machines now, but if you’re going to go to that kind of trouble, you’re probably looking at the wrong kind of machine in the first place.)All of which brings me to the Beko CEG7425. I’m going to start in the middle and address the elephant in the room — temperature, as I have seen it mentioned by people in more places than here on Amazon.Now I am not about to tell anyone what temperature they should drink their coffee at, it’s a personal preference, so do whatever makes you happy. My own preferred drinking temperature is a comfortable, but still warm 56°C. A temperature I maintain by using the brilliant Ember Mug, but that’s another story.When I said before, I wasn’t a coffee snob, I’m not really, but if I’m making fresh coffee of any variety I do like it to be done properly — a subject I’ve done much research and testing on over the years. Let’s get some of the science and expert recommendations out of the way then. First and probably most important of all, the espresso, as most coffee drinks should start with a good espresso it’s important your machine should be capable of making one.The Italian Espresso National Institute (they really, really know coffee) defines the parameters to make the “perfect” espresso. There’s a few important factors and due to the difficulty/impossibility of testing some of them on the Beko unit, I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt, based on the end result. The end result being the in-cup temperature should be 67°C ± 3°C. As you’ll see from the images I’m posting, the Beko falls comfortably in that range at 69°C/70°C. I got two slightly different results from my thermocouple as the reading were taken nearly a minute apart.When it comes to a good old Americano, or just a nice mug of coffee as we brits would say. There’s a whole other world of research, actual research, not just me. I’ll save you ten hours of lecture and break it down as simply as I can.If you like a nice rounded, sweet and yet slightly bitter cup of coffee then the in-cup serving temperature should be between 68°C and 79°C.If you’re a person who enjoys a sharper brew then you’re looking at an even lower temperature range of 48°C to 60°C.Finally if you care less about the flavour and just more about the nice warming effect of coffee you get from, say a mug of instant topped off with milk. Th temperature is around 80°C — 87°C. If you can drink it at that temperature you must be like my mother-in-law and have a mouth like asbestos :-)That’s the science bit at least and I have to say, my personal taste in coffee does actually agree with those findings for the most part. Which is why this particular coffee machine suits my tastebuds perfectly. As my photos show, it will dispense an espresso at around 70°C, an Americano at around the same 70°C and a cappuccino around 63°C.My biggest pieces of advice with this particular machine are, unless you like a cool coffee, do not use milk straight from the fridge. It’s far better to let the machine dispense a warmed milk into your drink. And secondly, whenever possible, use warmed mugs — you lose a lot of heat to a cold mug with coffee from any source. So if you want it to be as hot as the machine can do dispense hot water into your mug first, something which can easily be done by turning the dial on the top of the machine to the ON position, just make sure the milk hose isn’t in use at the time.Speaking of the milk hose, I have seen people describe it as annoying, impractical, fussy and an afterthought. I’m not saying their opinions are wrong, we’re all entitled to our own, but for the sake of completeness, here’s my tuppence worth on the subject.I don’t mind it at all, I use it almost every day and I find it straightforward and simple to use. I do not, as the instructions suggest, clean it every single time I use it. That is just a bit obsessive and I cant help but think (based on using other machines with similar systems) something of a mis-translation. If I have used the milk system, I will run the cleaning routine at the end of the day when I know I’m making no more coffees, it really doesn’t require more than that. Cleaning it takes a little less time than making a coffee and is no more complicated than flicking a switch.The milk system itself isn’t that different to many other (including significantly more expensive) devices of this type I have used. Many of them employ an external milk canister connected with a piece of tubing. I imagine because it’s the most hygienic way of doing such a thing, the tube is easily and inexpensively changed out if and when you need a new one.The big mistake Beko made, I think, compared to the other machines is that they didn’t include a milk canister with the machine. I really think they should have, it’s an inexpensive item and would probably have made some people happier about the whole thing. Personally I just nicked one of the kids mason jars, the kind which come with a lid with a hole in it for a straw. It works perfectly as a milk receptacle, the hole is just the right size and I can just pop it in the fridge when I’m finished with it. (You’ll see it at the side of the coffee machine in one of my photos.)Compared to other machines I have owned this one, for what it is, it’s actually quite compact. It doesn’t take up too much counter space and best of all, once it’s in place you can just leave it there. Everything being accessible from the front of the machine is a brilliant design decision, no more fumbling around trying to get to a water tank on the back of a machine. Yes, this water tank is ever so slightly smaller than some of my previous machines, but for it’s implementation and ease of access, that’s a sacrifice I am happy to make.Everything on this machine is actually designed to make your life as easy as possible. Let’s be honest, there isn’t a good quality, proper coffee machine out there which doesn’t require a degree of maintenance and there never will be. But with this one, the used grounds are dropped into a drawer on the left hand side of the machine. Which you can then just pull out and empty onto your compost heap, or if you’re binning them, drain through a fine sieve and empty into your recycling bin. The entire brewing chamber pulls out of the front, from behind a door, in one piece for easy cleaning. Do be sure to clean out the empty cavity in the machine when you’re doing this as you will over time get little amounts of grounds in there.Adding your beans, or indeed grounds if you like as the machine takes both, is via a simple lift-up flap on the top of the machine. I find it holds enough beans to last me three days or so, but as I mentioned before, I drink an awful lot of coffee in a day.The grinder is thankfully of the much preferred burr type grinder, which I wont lie, if it was of the blade variety, I wouldn’t have bought the machine. If you’re wondering why, it’s simply because a burr grinder produces a more consistent, precise grind size, with less oil loss than a blade grinder will and with less flavour alteration due to the heat from the blades.So then, the single most important part after all of that, the coffee itself. Needless to say the beans you use will play a massive role in how your finished coffee tastes. But if you’re considering a machine like this, I’m going to assume you have your preferences already nailed down. If you don’t, then I’d suggest first of all, buy the best beans you can afford — read some reviews and find opinions which sound like your tastes. And of course buy lots of smaller pack sizes to try out different ones until you get your favourites.I have my preferred beans, though I did try several others with this machine as the flavour can be different from machine to machine. I do have to say and you’ll probably be expecting this, I didn’t get the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had from this machine straight off the bat, it did take me several cups until I got it nailed down.Your first steps before you even consider making a cup of coffee is to set the water hardness level, a simple procedure and one which Beko thankfully provide a testing strip for, just in case you don’t know what the water in your area is like.Then you can set the temperature of the hot water, there are three levels to choose from but trust me, just go for the hottest setting, it’s the most accurate for a perfect brew.Then you should set your water dispensing level, there are three cup quantities and three cup sizes, giving you 12 possible settings to store. Something which is done, and easily changed at any time by just holding down the start button until the appropriate level of water is in your cup. Then just release the start button and the quantity is stored for future use even after the machine is powered off at the mains. Though the 4 and 8 cup quantities are there really to be dispensed into an appropriately sized coffee pot, as I’m sure you guessed.There are several things you can change which will affect the final flavour of your coffee. First of all there’s the grind of the bean itself, something which MUST be adjusted while the grinder is actually running, or you can potentially damage it — or so they say.Second, there’s the strength setting, of which there are three, each one will alter the quantity of beans which are ground for your coffee and is calculated by the machine automatically taking into account how much coffee is being prepared. Bear in mind, the machine may need to brew several cups to make its auto-calculation quantities just right, so don’t just judge the fist cup you get as the final taste.Finally and most obviously, there’s the quantity of water used for your coffee, which I talked about above.One very nice thing the machine does, something I used to do when making coffee manually and something we should al really do. Is to pre-soak the grounds for a few seconds, before it actually begins to brew your coffee. This is, for me, a very important step which any good coffee maker should do. This is also why this machine can seem a bit slower than some other machines.Dispensing warm, frothy milk is just as easy as making coffee. Simply select the coffee specialities option (the top one in the row of differently shaped cups) and the heater light will flash for a few seconds as it heats up. Then you just turn the knob on the top of the machine 90° and the warmed, frothed milk. Is dispensed. When you have enough, just turn the knob back.Once I had all of my settings finalised after several cups of coffee, the taste was simply delicious. This machine does make a really tasty and importantly, consistent, coffee every single time. So far I have had Espresso, Americano, Cappuccino and Latte Macchiato from this machine and I have enjoyed every single one of them. (Post calibration.) I really like the height adjustable dispensing unit on this machine, it’s better implemented than some machines I’ve had and much better than just having differently sized drip-trays as some machines do.There are some other nice touches you can fiddle with in the settings, such as setting the automatic switch-off time. For which you can choose 9 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 3 hours. You can also set whether you’d like the water tank illumination to be on or off, may seem like a pretty pointless option considering the machine will tell you when it’s empty. But it does make the water level easier to see at a glance, if like me you like to keep an eye on these things, an it looks quite nice too.Naturally the machine will illuminate certain graphics on it’s display to let you know when to empty the grounds bin, when to fill the water tank, to run cleaning routines and so on. They’re all pretty straightforward and easy to recognise. Though if you forget there’s a waterproof mini-guide, tucked away at the bottom of the machine, a really nice touch I think.The user manual is probably the weakest point of this machine, I don’t normally look at user manuals, but I did with this machine. While it actually gives you ample information, I could definitely see how some people would have issue with it. The machine is so much simpler to use than they manage to make its sound.So for that I’ll say, if anyone wants a short and simple guide on how to operate this thing, without wanting to pull their hair out because of the manual. Leave messages in the comments to this review and I would be happy to do a short write-up of what you actually need to know, and/or I can make a short video explaining the basics.What I like:Makes consistently beautiful, tasty coffee — once you set it up to your liking.Pre-soaks the grounds, an essential part of the brewing process as far as I’m concerned.Creates coffees at, what I consider, the perfect temperature.Dispenses lovely, warm frothy milk without having to steam it yourself.It has a good quality Burr grinder.Has enough options to cater for different sized cups/mugs and types of drink, temperatures, water hardness and more.Lovely Espresso with good Crema (as you’ll see in the photos), perfect Cappuccinos, Latte and Americano.Really accessible components for filling water, emptying coffee grounds, adding beans/grounds and cleaning the brewing chamber.Brilliant height-adjustable dispensing unit, to accommodate different sizes of cup/mug.Comes with a nice array of accessories, including a combined measuring spoon/cleaning brush, descaling agent, pack of cleaning tablets, water hardness test strip and the milk system cleaning solution.Simple and automated cleaning routines.What could be better:They really should have included a container for the milk. Ok, it’s not difficult to have your own, you can just use the milk carton if you like. But still, it would have been a nice touch.The instructions could be simpler. I didn’t have a problem but I can certainly see some people having to read them more than once.And that’s all really. For a machine at this price range I think it’s an absolute bargain, it out-performs some coffee machines (of various types) which I have paid significantly more money for. I am delighted with this and would not hesitate in recommending it.(And I paid for it with my own money, it wasn’t a vine product. Not that it would change my reviews, I am steadfastly, brutally honest, but I wouldn’t say the same for everyone based on some reviews I’ve read in the past).Hopefully this review has been thorough enough for you, maybe you’ve even learned a bit of the science behind coffee (which my poor wife gets bored to tears with when I go on a rant if she dares to suggest we go into a Costa, for example).If there’s anything at all you’d like to ask me about this machine, please do leave a comment and I’ll get back to you ASAP. I’m happy to answer questions on the machine and the review, as well as provide any help I can if you have a question relating top using the machine.

This machine, was very difficult to set up. Then it made a very weak coffee. I tried a few times but you could hear that the machine wasn't grinding many beans and it was spitting out ground coffee in the used coffee compartment that wasn't pressed. If you like strong coffee, I cannot recommend - maybe it should be called a coffee machine but not an espresso maker as it just doesn't make an espresso. The design seems quite nice, very plastic but functional- but then the coffee isn't any good. Maybe the machine was faulty... I have returned.

If it breaks, you're on your own

I have just replaced my 12-year old Siemens surpresso (used almost daily with no problems) with this Beko machine.it takes a while to get used to a new machine, but so far, it's good.It takes a little while to warm up, but the selection of cup/mug, and grind strength is easy.it switches 'off' rather than go into standby, so doesn't waste electricity.the water tank is smaller than my old machine, but easy to fill.the bean holder is also smaller capacity...and this is where the 'grind' (fine, medium, coarse) lever is found...I filled it up with the beans before finding it!I would suggest using only bottled water rather than try to fiddle with the water hardness test strips.neat, small item, doesn't take up much space in my little kitchen.

It makes very nice coffee but I bought it for my office and it is a pain that it goes through its self cleaning evertime it's gone into sleep. Just too slow for a business and a bit fiddly with the milk cleaning. It would be just fine for a home machine and is attractive and easy to fill etc. Ok as an office machine if you go without the milk.

wow makes nice coffee at nice pricenot used milk function yet I like long coffee bearing in mind beans will make big difference on qualityeasy to set up lot of options that other makes charge lot more cash forcant beat it for value and nice coffee looks nice toogive it a try it wont dissapoint

Really happy with this coffee machine. Make great coffee. Easy to use. WE have a De Longhi ay work so I get to make a lot of coffee and definitely prefer my Beko purchase. Money well spent, Great looks too and goes well with our black Smeg kitchen accessories.

Worked well for 6 months then the grinder died. And in all honesty, I was kinda glad as the espresso was weak and watery. Looking forward to getting it replaced.