If you haven’t heard of Meticulous Espresso, you must have been living under a rock. For the uninformed, they have been one of the most exciting and premium coffee brands to ever come through the Kickstarter platform.
The long story short, a group of Mexican inventors led by Carlos Lopez Pandas set out to revolutionize the espresso machine. And out of it came the revolutionary robotic lever machine that is aimed to deliver the perfect shot everytime, with minimal wastage and more importantly promises of a highly autonomous and repeatable process. Within a week of going live on global crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, it was able to raise $3 million within a week.
What sets them apart from the competition?
1) A highly consistent and repeatable workflow
There are so many variables when it comes to making espresso such as the temperature stability of the water, the consistency of the force exerted on the coffee bed, time duration of pre-infusion. What if the machine was able to provide a high level of consistency with all these variables? It would be virtually unheard of in the espresso world.
At this point, we swear we could almost hearing the Meticulous say “hold my beer”, or rather, “hold my coffee”.
To take it one step further, envision the Meticulous pulling a shot at a coffeehouse on another side of the world which turned out to the best coffee you’ve ever tasted. Now you can request for the extraction profile that was being used at the café (let’s say if the profile was made available publicly on the Meticulous website) and combine in with an air-flown delivery or subscription of the very same beans, you could well be enjoying the same coffee in the comforts of your home. Sold yet?
2) Straight up good looks and aesthetics
You’ll be hard-pressed not to take a second look at the Meticulous machine. We think if Apple were to design a coffee machine, the Meticulous wouldn’t be far from it. With the choice of jet black or milk white, it is designed to blend seamlessly into every home or cafe exterior.
We love how they’ve kept the black and milk drinkers separate, offering the Meticulous Milk in a separate package as opposed to a single unified machine. The Milk offers a Manual and Automatic mode, featuring sensors that allows it to steam automatically and achieve textured milk easily.
The Meticulous Milk will be available at the The Coffee Folks at a later date with pricing yet to be confirmed.
3) An intuitive app for full control
For any modern day espresso machine, it needs to be a great balance of hardware and software. This is truly a department where the Meticulous truly shines, with the app promising of monitoring and tweaking flow rate real-time, creating personalised profiles for different bean types and customizing pressure and water temperature presets.
Imagine being able to pre-determine different pressure profiling points throughout the coffee extraction process without the fuss of going through adjusting the OPV on a standard 9-bar pressure machine or burning the pocket for capabilities found almost exclusively on high-end commercial machines. Just like how roasters can map out the roasting patterns with first cracks, baristas can now map out their extraction pathways.
The shareability of such recipes would come to be highly appreciated by chain coffeehouses looking to implement new coffee recipes on the fly. For the specialty coffee roasters with access to varieties of exotic but limited bean types, the app will ensure that every bean counts. For the everyday user, it is a great way for experimentation where it is safe to say that every new bag of beans would bring about surprises.
4) A boiler-less system means less maintenance
A traditional espresso machine regardless of heat exchange or dual boiler usually comes with an internal boiler system. This boiler is needed to heat the water for coffee extractions or for steaming purposes. The Meticulous does away entirely with that, heating only the necessary amount of water needed for extraction.
In fact, the machine was engineered with far fewer parts (50 instead of the 200+ on traditional espresso machines). This translates into lesser repair parts SKUs, lower service components inventory, quicker turnaround time for users and overall higher serviceability. Fingers crossed, imagine a service technician being able to hook up the Meticulous and run diagnostics to find out the root of the problem within minutes as compared to relying on experienced technicians to open up the machine to assess the issues.
On a side note, we loved how the Meticulous team have gone above and beyond to make every part of the machine count. It is noteworthy mentioning that the base of the Meticulous has cleverly incorporated an high-precision scale from the folks at Acaia into the machine. Yes, we are referring to the very same company that has brought to the coffee world the ever-popular Lunar and Pearl scales seen at cafes worldwide.
5) Company culture of transparency and openness
Above all, if we had to really pinpoint what sets the Meticulous Espresso team apart from the crowd is the degree of transparency with their backers and the high level of commitment to innovation.
Carlos takes it upon himself and the team to provide the community with timely updates on the development of the machine as well as gradual improvements to the product. It keeps to generate interest on the Meticulous and overtime, creates an environment where everyone gets to become part of the success story.
In the recent November 2023 update, the product has been enhanced to include in audio speakers (a more noticeable audiovisual reminder when extraction completes) and a re-deployment of the Wifi module (for better connectivity). The Meticulous machine has truly come long way since its first inception and have been rated highly by those who’ve been fortunate to have time with it.
The Coffee Folks is an authorized Integrated reseller for Meticulous Espresso for Singapore and be expecting delivery in the months to come.
For more questions, feel free to contact us at
+65 98677776 or thecoffeefolks.sg@gmail.com