this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Most coffee places use automatic coffee machines, as long as they have good beans the coffee is good. Getting the correct weight of grounds and tamping them down is not a process difficult to automate.
I'm from Australia, and visit Germany regularly.
Australian coffee is sublime. Made manually, it's a profession of pride for many, and in all my travels to many countries, the coffee of Australia has never been bested.
German coffee is made through exact, automated machines, and it's crap. It's some of the worst coffee I've experienced.
Machine after machine, I've tried them all, and I've given up.
I don't know what the human does, but whatever they do that the machine is not doing, makes av huge difference, and no manufacturer has cracked the magic formula yet.
I can't help but feel like your sampling might be skewed.
Vollautomaten (I. E. Fully automated coffee machines that brew espressos and cappuccinos etc) tend to make worse coffee, I agree. That's why I don't use the one in the office.
Having an experienced barista grind you an exactly measured dose fresh for your coffee at a good Café is quite nice, on the other hand.
But that's nothing to do with Germany or Australia.
Experienced humans know all the variables - roast levels, grind size, water temperature, slight differences in timing depending on exact coffee in question... And more importantly they can apply them intuitively without mentally processing each variable separately.
Machines could do all that but such a machine would need good programming (expensive) and a lot of sensors (expensive).
In the long run machines are cheaper (also don't take days off nor try to unionize), which is why many companies are looking to automate things with AI or just robots in general.
In assuming that it's simply impossible for a machine to accurately follow the same process as a person and make quality coffee (in his own subjective judgement), @makingStuffForFun sounds much like wine snob to me.
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wine snob
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I've had the opposite experience, my regular coffee shop uses an automatic machine. They have the best espresso in the area, it might help that they roast their own beans.