Jura Capresso A8

by brendan on January 16, 2007

The man on the street is not one to kiss and tell. I like to live a decent life, but not too extravagant. I like to keep my personal life, personal and simply share where I eat. However, when it comes to a product that is this good, I had to share.

I’ve been drinking lattes since my mom took me off the tap. I love them. Until 3 years ago, my wife didn’t drink coffee at all. Something snapped when our son was born, but that is a latter story.

For our wedding, we got a Krups espresso maker. It was great and one of the few wedding presents that we used regularly. We had it for several years, but when my wife and I started to drink lattes two or three times a day, the wear and tear ended up taking it’s toll. The Krups machine only lasted about a year after that.

When the machine blew up, literally, we upgraded to a Delonghi machine. We didn’t need a coffee maker / espresso maker, so we went solely with the espresso maker. The machine again lasted about 2 years, but the pump died. It still made great steam, but no espresso, so it got trashed. Now we were left with a decision, do we buy a cheap machine again and hope that it lasts for a couple of years or do we upgrade to a real espresso machine? We took the plunge and bought a real one.

The Jura Capresso A8 is the Mercedes C Class of the Jura line. It is nice, but it is the cheapest version of this line. It was also way out of our budget, but we didn’t buy a Christmas present for ourselves, so we felt we could justify it. Credit, baby, its the American way. Plus, if we do more than 2 coffees a day, which we do easily, it justifies not going to Starbucks in less than a year.

Once we decided to get a real, almost commercial machine, we had two primary requirements for a new espresso maker. The first is that it was fully automatic. Press a button and out comes the exact amount of coffee that we want. Press another button and it steams milk exactly the way that we like. The second requirement, was that it had an awesome warranty. We wanted at least 10 years and would prefer lifetime.

I have to say, the A8 is amazing. It is everything that we wanted and more. The automatic functionality is exactly what we wanted. Press a button and 2 minutes later we have a perfect latte. It also cleans itself, grinds beans, filters water and probably does all sorts of other things that we haven’t figured out yet. The coffee is grand. A perfect shot of espresso. Plus, it is an almost commercial grade machine, so we expect it to last a long time. Finally, we bought it from Williams-Sonoma, who offer a life time warranty on all of their espresso machines.

The Jura Capresso A8 machine is an amazing espresso maker. While the cost is a bit steep, it is in line with other fully automatic cappuccino makers. The man on the street highly recommends it.

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