I love coffee, but wow, that's lame.

I get it! This doubles as an enema machine! Coffee, suction... totally getting it! Wonder if it'll be in the next Wootoff? B.O.C maybe...

Cheaper than buying your own barista, plus you avoid all those pesky anti-slavery laws...

Ok, seriously, let's get a grip here.

The article mentions that the coffee company sells coffee at $22- but wait, what it really says is that it sells coffee from a few bucks _up to_ $22, all using the same machine. That means it's probably the beans that make the price difference, which is totally reasonable if you look at the variety of prices coffee beans can come at.

The Clover is a great machine that is designed for a single task, and it performs that task very well. The coffee it produces is very good and quite different from French press or Chemex coffee. The $22 figure is totally unassociated with the Clover, and $11,000 for a professional, restaurant grade machine that makes coffee isn't any more than a real coffee shop would pay for a real espresso machine, either.

Let's not jump too hastily to slap it around, eh?

The best cup of coffee I've ever had was produced by one of these machines. It was $5 with the tip, and totally worth it.

Hey, if you're pretentious enough to only drink coffee that came out the butt of a Civet cat, this is your coffee maker.

other coffee related things you could spend 11,000 on that are less idiotic..

you could fly juan valdez to your house to make you coffee,

you could start your own Cafe

you could invest in coffee bean research to make your own personal coffee blend (goth roast)mmmm

you could buy a 50 dollar coffee maker, and then have it installed in your car.

you could fly to colimbia and get true columbian coffee, along with true columbian cigars, and cocaine.

you could pay for many years for therapy in fidning out why your addicted to coffee

As both an engineer and a barista who uses a Clover on a daily basis, I can attest to the superior quality of the coffee that comes from this machine. The intent in creation of this machine was to allow for precise control over any relevant brewing parameters, with an emphasis on brew temperature stability. It has lots of other 'unnecessary' features such as an internet connection for logging sales and for dialing in specific brewing parameters for a range of coffees that you manage through the Clover site. It's a substantial initial investment, but serious coffee drinkers can appreciate the difference, and we charge on average 2.50 (CDN) for a cup.

I'd rather have this than a similarly-priced Kia.

As both an engineer and a barista

So, how's that degree working out for you then?

I'm sure the coffee that an 11,000 dollar machine produces is probably vastly superior to regular coffee.

But after 11,000 dollars, I'd only taste regret and tears.

I've had some fantastic coffee from this machine as well. It precisely controls the most important parts of making a cup of coffee which are brew temp, and brew time. Once you find the perfect combo for a particular coffee you can reproduce results without fail. This is a truly incredible machine.

@jorshsshsh:

Wow, you must do reviews on Amazon too. Everyone on there is an "engineer".

At $22 per cup, it would take 550 idiots for any cafe owner to break even on such a purchase. Maybe Le Parker Meridien will get one just to say that they have one.

Hey, I know this machine isn't for everyone. I'm just saying that it's easy to say what a retarded machine it is when you don't get what it's meant to do, and you're told it sells coffee for 22 bucks a cup. Any commercial espresso machine worth its salt costs about the same, and a latte doesn't cost that.

@elvisisded: 550 idiots are not difficult to come by

$50,000 Mercedes: It burns fuel. People.

Am I nuts or is that the same basic premise to ALL pod and single-cup brewers? The Cuisinart SS1 works exactly the same way for $200.

The coffee shop I go to has one of these machines. They charge less per cup than Starbucks, and the results speak for themselves. Unlike Starbucks, the coffee it produces hasn't been sitting in a carafe for hours before you drink it.

I don't know why anyone would assume this is intended for home use - any coffee machine built for commercial is similarly expensive.

i just got the bialetti mini express, which is the best gadget ever

@Hestika:

How's being a smartass working out for you?

My friends company has 6 Clovers, and they produce an amazing cup of coffee ... of course you need excellent beans to go with it (like Guatemala Finca El Injerto). For those of you knocking it (Sean and others), try it first you hateful gadget whores.

And for your information, no other coffee machine out there can do what a Clover can. You ever heard of "innovation"?

@MeNotYou:
@Hestika:

And do you realize that there are "engineers" who design and work on things like this? Probably not. Such ignorance on here.

God I can't believe all you suckers still pay for drip coffee. What I do is dive into the dumpsters behind starbucks, rescue handfuls of used grinds, roll them up in cheesecloth and chew on the disgusting wet wad all day.

It's free, and it's water poured over a bean for god's sake.

where can i find a coffee shop in the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia area that has such a device. I drink about 8 to 9 cups a day and I would like to see if this is the coffee that finally kills me. If it's that good, it should. Jersey Shore area would be preferred but I'm in either city pretty regularly.

nevermind [cloverequipment.com]

@dead_red_eyes:
I totally agree! Look at you, for instance.

@jorshsshsh: Wow, I thought you Starbucks guys were all English majors. Amazing.

@MeNotYou:

FAIL. Try again dribbles.

I have a cup of Clover coffee about once a week and it costs me less than $3 every time, so I don't know why the $22 number is out there... Less than a Starbucks latte and way way more flavorful. Totally worth it -- go find a cup and try!

Yeah, I'm not buying one for the house (or anything even close to 1/10 this expensive) but the coffee place across the street has these and there's nothing like it. It blows every thing else out of the water ANYWHERE, and I'm not a coffee snob. It's just that f-ing good. I've seen it destroy people who have a cup for the first time. It's like they are getting a handjob from Jesus.

Best with organically grown beans fertilized by the blood of a sacrificed virgin, slowly roasted over a fire made from broken up Victorian antique furniture, beans then lovingly hand ground in the empty skull of the sacrificed virgin whose purity nourished the beans. Skillfully decanted and hand delivered for my consumption by an Italian supermodel...huh?!? Oh yeah, it's just a friggin' cup o coffee! Enough with the magic of heated water and ground beans. This ain't rocket surgery!

@dead_red_eyes:
LOL@That being the best you can come up with.

Um, the automatic espresso machines at Starbucks cost just as much. They're built for extreme durability and that ain't cheap.

@Pope John Peeps II: That's awesome! I guess if we paused to think about what we eat and drink, we'd do a lot less of it.

@xerloq: Every time I make myself a sandwich, I pause to think about the cosmic ontology of the food that I eat.

Consequently, I haven't eaten in 8 months, and I'm dead.

so, starbucks barista here.
our machines cost 13-15000 dollars.

Each. The main reason for the price (no matter how whoever makes this is pushing it) is not quality, but the fact that it can make these fancy crap drinks over and over and over.

People don't like coffee, people actually like all the shit (chocolate, cream, various syrups, sugar) that they add to the coffee. I wouldn't be surprised if you were all sipping warm urine.

Fun fact: Coffee actually comes from the Guatemalan Pissing Tree. Enjoy

I'm calling shenanigans on you, Giz. This is a commercial coffee machine. Seriously, this is in-line with what commercial-grade coffee machines cost.

As the above person mentioned, it also tracks sales and has individualized settings for different coffee beverages, and performs a whole host of other business oriented activities.

Spending $11k on the right tools that help you do your job, track sales, save you time, and ensure a consistent high-quality brew every time? That's called smart, not stupid. If you're running a coffeeshop, you don't want to make just a good cup of coffee, you want to make the exact same cup every time efficiently.

Seriously, what from this list can your coffee machine do?:

# Barista Controls
# Brew:
» Adjust brew time in 1 second increments
» 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 fluid ounce sizes
» Adjust boiler temperature in 1°F increments
# Rinse: rapidly flush brew group
# Clean: automated cycle using approved coffee cleaner
# Machine settings:
» Two different workflow modes
» Absorption compensation
» Boiler PID control parameters (best if not adjusted)
» Many more (unit selection, cup counters, default parameters, etc.)

Wow! People, can we please calm down with the name-calling?

I don't think it's worth it. Yes, commercial espresso machines cost the same, but they're huge, have multiple spouts, and many come with burr grinders built in that can go thousands of cycles before maintenance. They are worth it for many reasons. From the product page, I see nothing to warrant the cost.

For $11,000, I want push-button operation for my cafe. Otherwise, they're claiming that this is more valuable than a La Marzocco. And I find that statement both absurd and vaguely insulting. Getouttamyface.com

One degree temperature control? Weeee! They were able to install some thermistors. They cost 88 cents at Radio Shack. The 4500 watt boiler is very impressive, though.

Still, It doesn't filter its own water, it doesn't grind its own beans, and it can be set to take, let me get this straight, FIVE MINUTES to brew coffee? That's an eternity in a busy cafe. A useless setting, and, I argue, a useless machine.

And a badly marketed one. Obviously, I can't prove it, but I'd wager this sucker has, at most, $200 worth of raw materials in it (save for the boiler). If they sold it for, let's go crazy, $1,000 to a consumer market obsessed with luxury goods, they'd probably triple their sales.

@ludwigk: My Jura Capresso Z5 does it all, and it cost $3,000. I'm not saying it's commercial-grade, but it does the exact same tricks.

One thing I can say here is that the price is not surprising for commercial grade appliances. I managed restaurants for 15 years, and spent crazy prices for:
Toasters = $1000 (yeah to toast bread)
Microwaves = $2000-$5000
Now, I would take a guess and say that the reason for the price of this coffee maker is because of the ridiculous amount of money some people spend for a cup of coffee, just a hunch.

Some people have absolutely no knowledge about coffee and/or what it costs to run a coffee business. And that's fine. Not everyone should. Some people would rather spend $20,000 on their home stereo speakers, after all.

But then to also act like you actually aren't speaking out of your rectum as if speaking with authority? That's ignorance supremo. Well done, mate.

@thechansen: try cafe grumpy on 20th bet 7th and 8th I believe.

Folger's Crystals Baby!

I recently had a cup of coffee from one of these machines and it was easily the best cup I've ever had. The advantage of having this machine is that each cup is made separate. The quality of each singular cup of coffee remains the same. And it was one of the smoothest cups of coffee I've ever had, pulling a lot of sweetness out of the beans.

It didn't take very long to brew a cup, just about as long as it took for the guy to ring up my order, and that includes grinding the beans for it. The ultimate advantage, however, is offering a variety of beans. This shop was able to run different prices for different varieties of beans. Their higher quality, rarer beans were about $4 a cup, but their regular beans (which were still fantastic varietals) cost about $2 a cup, slightly more than a regular brewed cup. The best part is that this coffee shop has easily paid off the machine because people go out of their way to get to this coffee shop for the machine.

@Aaron Martin-Colby: That was my thought. My F60 has most of those features and was under 1k at costco. Would it hold up commercially? Probably not.

My bet is that you're paying 11k for a machine with no non-reparable parts inside, so you can use it for years. Which, from a business standpoint, is probably worth it.

Starbucks drip is swill. I would crawl a mile over broken glass to get a cup of this stuff. Okay, I wouldn't do that--but I'd walk a bit further to get it. And I wouldn't mind paying $4.
Shit, that thing could pay for itself inside of a month.

A place in my town has this, and they charge about $2-3 per cup. As has been noted, it is better than Starbucks, but then the rest of their coffee is too.

The machines Starbucks uses up around my area at $60,000. Where I work, we want to buy one, but we're looking at at least $12-15k.

@Pope John Peeps II: Is your real name John Zoidberg, perhaps..?

@designbean: Starbucks uses the Verisimo, which costs about $13,000. It's a Starbucks exclusive, but the Schaerer Ambiente is apparently the same thing.

And the Verismo, as even Starbucks' chairman Schultz will tell you, has been one of the most negative impacts on the quality of Starbucks' product in recent years.

$10k better come with a hot asian chick to bring you the cup!

Seriously, remember when coffee was FREE at the local diner if you bought a piece of pie? For what Starbucks charges, the pie should be free now.

@swag: Shultz decries the loss of hand-crafting because of the move to fully automatic. He has said that the Verisimo solved quality problems, not caused them.

Not only is this lame, but when you look at the countries that grow coffee, and how little money they receive for it - this is just reprehensible.

Spend the money on fair trade coffee instead, pretend you have a conscience.

Toki, this is the very machine you'd want to get fairtrade coffees into the shops. The entire idea of the Clover is to be able to make a single cup of excellent coffee from multiple single origin and blended coffee beans on demand. You can stock ten or fifteen different SO's in your shop, and at any time allow someone to order any of them and get it to them freshly brewed, at the grind and temp and time that that particular bean is best suited to.
Hey, if Starbucks superauto swill or Folgers boiled is your thing, you can go for it. More power to ya, and you can find cheap solutions to your deal any time you want. Some of us prefer real coffee to that crap, real beer to PBR, real wine to boxed Gallo, In short, some of us like what we consule to be something special and good.
I have over $12,000 worth of espresso machinerey on my kitchen counter, and another grand and a half (easy) in my travel kit. Of course, I didn't pay retail. I happen to like a bit of a coffee that is ahead and shoulders above what you can get at your local paper-hat run Starbucks.
And it ain't just hot water over a bean, brother.
Those that don't understand will always ridicule. ; >