This Genius Machine Brews the Most Precise and Personalized Coffees
Coffee—you need it. You need a cuppa to wake up, you need a molten gulp to get through the presentation to the CEO, and you need a late-day brew to power through the after-work workout. And maybe you also need a super-strong roast to finish an important story about why you need coffee to wake up, not get fired, and lift heavy metal. Confused? Well, you need coffee to get things straight, too.
Two dreamers and doers did just that. Amid the haze of the pandemic, coffee entrepreneurs Leon Foo and Andre Chanco spent many days with so many cups of the hot stuff to launch the Morning Machine, the countertop instrument that promises perfect coffee by distilling the synergy of three brewing parameters—temperature control, pressure profile, and coffee output—into a library of adjustable recipes.
The last time Leon had a record number of cups was in college, when he was “...younger and a bit reckless.” He was studying for, well, an exam about coffee and remembers downing maybe 15 to 20 cups of coffee that day. “Not full cups but just tasting it,” he clarifies.
Andre had his caffeine overload more recently. To expand the Morning Machine’s ecosystem—that network of coffee masters that supply its array of coffee capsules—he meets with roasters regularly. He shares how coffee tasting (or testing) is much like wine tasting in that you slurp and spit around “15 or 20 or 30 coffees on the table.” Andre continues, “We taste and spit but if you taste and spit too many times you just...”
A variety of morning brews
In the little Zoom window, Andre and Leon, who are broadcasting from Singapore, appear behind a low table laden with various coffee pods and, of course, the sleek Morning Machine. They report their morning cups (Leon had the slightly sweet Wander & Wonder, while Andre, a coffee from Thai micro-roastery Roots) and are now buzzing about the intricacies of their invention or rather its simplicity: how with a few turns and clicks of its analog dial (a design akin to the click wheel of an old school iPod), you get, not only the roast of your choice, but also the exact flavor its maker designed.
We spent quality time with the Morning Machine and can attest to that—great coffee always despite the foggy brain of early mornings (or late nights). But quick cups with precise flavors are just the beginning. You, the coffee noob, can get a demitasse of Nyabihanga from Copenhagen’s April Coffee Roasters—25 grams of coffee brewed at 92 degrees and Celsius using a short flow, as detailed on the Drink Morning app—but, as the duo demonstrates in this practical session, you can also fiddle with the flow and so much more.
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Maybe you are a coffee expert like Leon, who is currently making a cuppa, and know that compostable coffee capsules such as Nyabihanga pods require a gentler touch to extract the most optimal flavors. “If we did not slow down the flow rate, the coffee will be very watery and light,” explains Andre, who points out how Leon, via the controls in the app, brewed the Nyabihanga at a slightly lower pressure instead of the maximum.
And that is the ideal journey with the Morning Machine. You start with coffee brewed with the built-in presets and then play. “If you want to make it more bitter or less bitter, or slightly stronger or less strong, then you can edit the recipe on the application,” explains Andre.
So maybe you are an old-school dragon editor, who is powered by the tears of writers and black coffee. Lots of devil-black coffee. An ocean of bitter sorrows, in fact. You like the Tried and True from Peru but its recipe sputters only 25 grams of the stuff. You need more.
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Recipes in the app
On the app, a recipe is visualized in two ways: concentric circles, which control weight and temperature, and a squiggly graph that denotes the flow. Andre demonstrates how you can drag the outermost ring from 25 grams to 100 grams (three ounces) or all the way to 150 grams (five ounces) for a mug’s worth of full power. And if you want to tweak the cup even more and make it less bitter, you just lower the brew temperature by sliding its bar downward.
Two things: Tweaked recipes can be saved (and named) on the app under My Recipes and synced to the machine, so you don’t have to redo the settings each time you want your long, well-rounded brew. As well, personalization or manual brewing can be done on the Morning Machine itself.
Andre demonstrates the latter by recreating a 12-hour Japanese cold brew in four minutes. On the machine, he dials to the Manual Brew function and then programs in a low temperature, about 100 grams, and a very low pressure. “Now I'm setting to K2... This will drip for the next two minutes. What you get is this very aromatic, concentrated coffee,” says Andre. But if you don’t want to mess around with the settings (you are very busy), Leon suggests to “just use the Kyoto Slow Drip recipe.”
Now, an important question: Do you need another contraption on your kitchen counter to park alongside the old microwave, the new Vitamix, and the large-capacity air fryer?
Maybe you ran out of pods and deferred ordering from Morning’s website (or getting compatible Nespresso pods) until life got in the way. You still need coffee so you returned to your tried-and-true: Mom’s best blend of half a teaspoon of coffee, two teaspoons of creamer, and half a teaspoon of zero-calorie sweetener. It’s a familiar flavor that sharpens the senses and, more important, comforts.
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A world of roasts
But then you see the handsome profile of the Morning Machine (shapes stacked on shapes) and remember the wild world of roasts and blends, cold brews in minutes, and other caffeinated wonders that you played with. This interesting idea from your conversation with the coffee masters returns: How about drinking so many cups of coffee in one sitting like Leon and Andre to fully explore the various things the apparatus offers?
“The beauty of capsule brewing is you can enjoy coffees in a flight like in wine tasting because of the simplicity of the method,” says Andre, who suggests doing flights in two ways. Try one recipe with different capsules like a light, medium, and dark roast or choose one capsule and apply different recipes.
Another idea: How about a (responsible!) coffee social with your bubble? You can enjoy coffee, distribute the ultra-load of caffeine among many hearts, and, most important, not buzz and crash like Leon post-exam in college, or a high-powered editor trying to finish a story about why you need coffee in whatever form or flavor always.