Desperately seeking good coffee? My husband takes the Blindfold Coffee Challenge

I feel I need to start this blogpost with a confession. I am a totally helpless addict and there's no hope for me. Coffee is my weakness and woe betide the poor devil who comes across me if I haven't had my morning fix. And spare an additional thought for the poor devil who dares to give me bad coffee.

I'll hold my hands up, I am massive coffee snob. I know it's not a particularly attractive quality but I have been known to get a tad edgy if I'm in a strange place and I don't know where my nearest local supplier of good beans is. My husband is almost as bad as me. You see, we're Americano drinkers and so there's no hiding weak, watery coffee behind half a litre of frothy milk. I always ask for my takeaway coffee in the smallest cup available otherwise it's drowning in far too much water and tastes like dishwater. Anyway, enough about my various coffee affectations.

The Jura E8 coffee machine

All this said, imagine my excitement when Jura got in touch and offered to send me one of their all singing, all dancing E8 coffee machines. Honestly, I think even they were a bit surprised by my enthusiastic response. Up until this point I had been keeping it real with a cafetiere and Illy granules. The major downside of this being the clean up afterwards. Then the Jura arrived and changed the game forever. The cafetiere hasn't seen the light of day since. 

I was banging on about how good my new coffee machine was a couple of weeks ago and David dared to suggest that perhaps I was just being swayed by the newness and blinded by the technology and argued that we wouldn't be able to tell the difference if we did a taste test. He likes to try and wind me up. And it worked! It also gave me a mini lightbulb moment and I decided that instead of giving you a straightforward review of the E8, I'd put it to the test against some of its notable rivals. And David was going to be the guinea pig. That'll teach him for questioning my taste.

So without further ado, here's what happened when I made my husband take the blindfold coffee challenge...

Costa, cafetiere and Jura E8 coffee

Here he is. He's a good sport for doing this isn't he? With the blindfold pulled firmly over this eyes, we began the taste test. I handed him the cup holding the coffee from my old friend the cafetiere first. "Do I drink the whole cup?" he said. "Erm, I mean you can if you want, but you've got quite a bit of coffee to get through and you do need to sleep tonight." We settled on a large whiff and a few sips of each one.  A sniff at the "aroma" of the cafetiere coffee yielded surprisingly little reaction from him either way. And after taking a sip he still appeared very underwhelmed. His verdict? "3 out of 5...Not bad but a bit weak and lacking in flavour, disappointing."

Next up was the Costa coffee I had whizzed out to the local garage to pick-up and poured into a china coffee cup for the purposes of this test. Again, David had a sniff and another sip and his screwed up face said it all. His verdict? "1 out of 5 and do not give me that rubbish again!"

Saving the (what I thought) was the best for last, I handed him the cup holding the coffee produced by the Jura E8. "Sooooooo, what do you think of that one?", I asked him. He took a big sniff and nodded approvingly: "Mmmm smells good." He sips. The verdict? "Mmmm very smooth and full of flavour. Definitely the best so far! 4.5 out of 5!"

So there you have it. David has taken the test and we all know the truth. No-one likes a show-off but I was completely correct in my claim that the Jura E8 is a coffee lovers dream. And just a little bit about the technology. Because as well as tasting delicious, it also has a few other major selling points. It's very clever. You can programme it to make your coffee as strong, or as weak as you want at the touch of a button. And you can also control the amount of hot water the same way. And when it comes to cleaning it, it's simply a case of sliding out the tray and tipping it in the bin. No mess and no hassle. As I said, game changer. It is by no means a cheap option and is very much at the premium end of the scale, but I can count on one hand the number of times I've bought a coffee since getting this machine. So it's already working hard for the price tag. I'd file it under one of those things you don't think you need until you get one. Now I can't imagine life without it!

What's your favourite method of brewing coffee? Hop on over to my Instagram Stories later this morning to see the taste test in action. It was fun!

J x