Hey espresso and coffee lovers, Marc here from Whole Latte Love. Today, we're taking a look at the JURA D6. It's a bean to cup automatic coffee system. You add whole beans, add some water to the machine, press a button and you can get an espresso or coffee. The D6, for a first at this level, you can make a cappuccino without moving your cup.
The Basics
Alright, let's go through the machine, side to side, top to bottom. On the right side of the machine, we have the bean hopper which features a lid to seal the beans and keep them fresh for longer. Also, this is where you'll find the grind adjustment to change the flavor of you coffee. On top, right in the middle, you have a maintenance chute. A lot of machines have removable brew groups, but in the D6, the brew group stays in the machine. When the machine tells you to, you can open the hatch to the chute and drop a JURA Cleaning Tablet to keep the machine clean inside. Just in front of the chute there's a space to store your cups and keep them warm for when you want some drinks.
On the left side, there's the water reservoir. You can fill it at the machine, or you can remove it and take it to the sink and fill it there. The D6 uses one of the SMART Filters from JURA which will get you better tasting coffee, and you'll never have to descale the machine. If you're not familiar with scaling, when you heat water, if it has minerals in it, scale deposits are created. These filters remove these minerals so you won't end up with scale in your machine. You'll never have to do that maintenance. JURA is the only manufacturer that, if you use that filter right, you'll never have to descale.
On the front, you'll find the front-loading drip tray and dreg box. For anyone more familiar with capsule machines, the D6 is very different. It's not using pre-ground coffee from a plastic cup, it's the real thing. It's a bean-to-cup machine so after you make a coffee, the grounds are discarded into the dreg box, and drips go into the drip tray. To keep things easy, the machine will tell you when to empty these.
The Drinks
Now, for espresso. Browse the menu until you find espresso and press the button on the dial. Now, when you're making an espresso, JURA uses what they call P.E.P. brewing. It's a pulse extraction process which slows down the extraction and pulses water through the coffee puck. The result is a really rich, nice crema in your espresso. Overall, the D6 does a really nice job of making an espresso.
For coffee, unlike espresso, the D6 doesn't use P.E.P. and you can brew up to 8 oz. at a time. Plus, if you want, you can brew two coffees at a time using each of the two spouts. Because the coffee is coming from fresh ground whole beans, it'll be far, far better than anything you'll ever get out of a capsule. I've never had coffee that came from a capsule like I've had with the D6.
Onto the cappuccino, I've gotta say, it's pretty rare for a machine at this price to make a milk drink without having to move your cup. So, with your milk container connected, select cappuccino and open up the switch and milk will dispense into the cup, followed by a few ounces of espresso. You'll get that nice cap of foam and a lovely drink, and it's as easy as that.
For programming options, press and hold the "P" button below the knob and select the "Buttons" option. From here, you can select which drink you'd like to program, press the button, and adjust drink volume (varies by drink), temperature (in 2 levels), and strength in 4 levels. JURA uses up to 16 grams of coffee per cycle, so you can get a really strong beverage out of the D6. That's a lot more than other machines. When programming your cappuccino, you can adjust the "Milk" setting, which sets how long milk is dispensed when preparing a cappuccino.
Upgrades and Accessories
For the accessories, we have the glass JURA Milk Container. There's also the JURA Smart Connect, an optional Bluetooth receiver. It fits on the front of the machine and lets you connect to the JOE app on your tablet or other smart device. You can select your drinks from the app and the machine will brew, just like that.
In Summary
Let's review some of those key features of the JURA D6. First, this is the entry-level into JURA's mainline machines. It does allow you to make a milk drink, start-to-finish, without moving your cup. Some of the accessories, the glass milk container, which you can store in the fridge and take out when you want to make some milk drinks. JURA also has a fully refrigerated milk container so you can keep it on the counter and connected to the machine, ready to go for whenever you want a cappuccino.
There's also the Smart Connect so you can connect to the JOE app on a smartphone or tablet and brew drinks from there or even do all your programming. With the D6, it's freshly ground beans in your cup. It makes excellent, excellent espresso and coffee. And, to reiterate, it uses up to 16 grams of coffee per cycle, which is more than other manufacturers use. Maintenance is really, really easy. You just toss a tablet in the chute, or empty the drip tray and dreg box when the machine tells you to.
So, that's the JURA D6. It's available now at Whole Latte Love. Thanks a lot for reading.
