5 SCA Golden Cup Certified Home Coffee Makers

At Whole Latte Love we’re obviously big fans of espresso, but it’s undeniable that sometimes, nothing hits the spot quite like a well brewed cup of coffee. But what does “well brewed” even mean? Fortunately I don’t need to reinvent the wheel on this one. The Specialty Coffee Association or SCA has a program to certify if a coffee maker can consistently brew coffee that meets what they refer to as their “Golden Cup” standard. All five of the coffee makers we’ll be taking a look at in this article have received this certification from the SCA, so regardless of the disparity in features between them, all of them are capable of brewing consistently good coffee.

What is the SCA?

The Golden Cup certification comes from the Specialty Coffee Association, and it’s a designation given specifically to automatic coffee makers so you won't see things like the xBloom or French presses on this list. The SCA is a global organization of coffee professionals dedicated to improving the industry through sustainability efforts, education, carefully developed standards, and growth opportunities. The SCA was formed in 2017 when the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) and the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) merged together.

Why Buy a Premium Coffee Maker?

Truth be told, there are a lot of coffee makers out there, many of which will be more affordable than the five I'll be covering in this article. I can personally attest to the quality and longevity of several options I'll be covering, but I also tend to compare coffee makers to mattresses when it comes to a purchase. One of the arguments I hear in favor of buying a new mattress is that you sleep on it every night. So by that same logic, if you make coffee on your coffee maker every morning... checkmate.

Our Parameters for Evaluation

To keep things as consistent as possible, I used the same grind, dose and ratio for each coffee maker. For entries on this list that have variable temperature control, I used the default brew settings supplied by the manufacturer.

All coffee was single-dosed and ground at 300 RPM using the Varia VS4 grinder.

Coffee: Whole Latte Love Beaned Up

Ratio: 60g/Liter - 16:1

Grind Size: 9 (Varia VS4)

Filter: Paper (cone or basket based on the coffee maker)

I wanted to evaluate a standard brew cycle for each machine, meaning just putting coffee and water into the coffee maker and pressing "brew." After that, I took measurements for brew time, extraction yield, and TDS. The idea here was to see how the extractions differed across each coffee maker when their advanced features weren't taken into account. I've linked a livestream segment later in this article if you want to see several of the more advanced coffee makers on this list in greater detail.

For our coffee I chose our Beaned Up blend. It's a heavier and sweeter coffee thanks to its honey processed Uganda Mabono. The other key component, a washed Colombia Castillo livens things up a bit with some acidity to balance the sweetness, so this coffee has multiple facets that can emerge while brewing and it's one we like to brew as filter coffee in addition to espresso.

Most Budget Friendly - Bonavita Enthusiast

Bonavita is a brand that I’ve consistently thought of when it comes to quality coffee makers, so much so in fact that I bought one for my friends as a wedding gift more than 10 years ago. Bonavita’s design philosophy is fairly straightforward. They make simple coffee makers that brew coffee to the SCA golden cup standard. The Enthusiast series is the latest from Bonavita, available with both glass and thermal carafes with brushed stainless steel or painted black housing.

Product Specs

The Enthusiast has a few neat features that are worth talking about on top of its certification. For very fresh and light roasted coffee, it has a bloom feature that will dispense 120g of water onto the bed of coffee before brewing, followed by a pause.

There’s also a dedicated button for descaling, which is an essential part of maintenance if you aren’t filtering your water. There’s also the spring-loaded drip stop basket that will stop the flow of coffee if you decide to remove the carafe to pour a quick cup in the middle of a brew cycle. On the glass carafe version of the Enthusiast, the hot plate will keep your carafe warm for 4 hours before powering off.

Brewing on the Enthusiast

Making coffee on the Enthusiast is pretty straightforward, you just fill the reservoir and add your coffee. One thing I really like is that Bonavita actually recommends how much coffee you should use based on the number of cups you're going to prepare. On the side of the reservoir is your cup count with a dose range in grams listed next to it. This is especially handy for someone looking for a more basic approach to brewing. That said, I do want to point a few things out.

First, the Enthusiast has a 1.3L reservoir that measures up to 8 cups. With a bit of math, that works out to each cup being 5.5 fl oz. With that in mind, I calculated the ratios provided by Bonavita. Regardless of the number of cups, 4, 6, or 8, they all had the same range of ratios, 23:1 - 18:1. We wound up brewing with a 16:1 ratio as mentioned above

To cover a few more of the fine details, the drip stop basket is a somewhat contentious feature for my colleague John. On the one hand, you can interrupt your brew to pour a cup right away which is very convenient. That said, at different points of the extraction, you'll be pulling different flavors and characteristics that want to be mixed and balanced. Similar to a salami shot when pulling espresso, the coffee brewed at the start of a cycle will be different from the coffee brewed near the end.

In-Cup Results

At first glance you might see these notes and consider our experiment a failure. However, we did mess with the suggested ratios from Bonavita. Our 16:1 goes beyond the suggested ranges of 23:1 - 18:1 and really goes to show that sometimes less really is more with regards to extraction. Something the Enthusiast has that the Breville and Moccamasters don't is a very wide dispersion showerhead.

The increased distribution of water throughout the basket is the likely culprit for the TDS and extraction we recorded compared to some of the other entries on our list. So, my advice would be to follow Bonavita's suggested brew ratios first before experimenting with your dose.

Most User Friendly - Breville the Luxe Brewer™

The Luxe Brewer™ replaced Breville’s Precision Brewer back in 2025. There are two versions, glass and thermal, and several available colors including Black Sesame and Damson Blue if you’re looking to shake things up from the traditional stainless. The Luxe Brewer™ has a traditional brew cycle that will simply prepare coffee to the Golden Cup standard. However, it also features a custom brew mode where you can set your desired temperature, bloom, and water flow rate.

Product Specs

There’s also a dedicated cold brew mode that can be programmed for a set duration of steeping. You can also program a clock and timer for the Luxe to begin brewing automatically so you can wake up to a fresh pot of coffee.

In addition to its programmable features, the Luxe Brewer™ has one more trick (or several) up its sleeve. The brew basket can be fitted with several different types of filters including paper basket style filters, paper cone filters via a cone insert, and a reusable gold tone basket. In my testing, the three bloom settings Low, Medium and High dispensed around 116g, 207g, and 296g respectively before initiating the brew cycle. Temperature control, while present, is fixed at 2° increments so it isn’t as precise as you can get with the Fellow Aiden.

Brewing on the Luxe Brewer

The Luxe brewer has several selectable options for brewing coffee: Brew, Custom, and Cold Brew. "Brew" is the standard brew cycle that produces Golden Cup quality coffee and this was the brew cycle that we used for our testing. The Luxe has the highest capacity of any of the five coffee makers in this article at 12 cups or 1.8L, though we stuck with just 1L for the sake of this experiment. The carafe also features a "drip stop" component like the Bonavita Enthusiast and will close the brew chamber when removed to prevent dripping.

Using the selector knob/button beneath the screen you can select the other two brew options, "Custom" and "Cold Brew." The "Custom" setting will execute a brew cycle using your programmed settings, so you'll need to get a handle on those before using it. Custom brews are programmed via the settings menu and the full list of customizable settings include:

• Bloom Volume: Low/Med/High
• Bloom Time: 10-60 Seconds
• Brew Temp: 184-208° F
• Flow Rate: Low/Med/High

The different baskets included with the Luxe are interchangeable to a degree. When making 2-8 cups you use the cone filter, more than 8 can either be brewed with the gold tone filter or the basket with a paper insert.

For cold brew, the Luxe essentially steeps your coffee for a set amount of time using unheated water from the reservoir. You add a paper basket filter and your coffee and remove the lid from your carafe. You can program a steep time between 30 minutes and 36 hours, after which the Luxe will automatically dispense your cold brew into the carafe. You can brew a maximum of 600ml of cold brew at a time. Just like with the custom brew, your cold brew settings can be programmed via the settings menu prior to brewing.

In-Cup Results

The results from the Luxe in our experiment were very pleasant. Surprisingly it had the fastest extraction time of any of the coffee makers we tested which is the likely culprit behind the increased acidity. It's worth noting that the showerhead in the Luxe is fairly small and concentrated towards the center. This isn't a huge surprise though as the brewer is designed for both basket style filters and cones based on how much coffee you're brewing.

In addition to those two styles, I really appreciate the inclusion of a reusable gold-tone filter. Though not everyone's preferred filter for drip brewing, the fact that it's reusable can cut back on paper waste and save some money while you're at it. You can also experiment to see how flavor and body change when using mesh vs paper.

Most Premium - The Moccamaster KBGV Select

The Moccamaster coffee makers carry the unique distinction of being the only entries on this list that are made outside of China. Handmade in the Netherlands, Moccamaster’s primary focus is on build quality and longevity, using metal housing, a copper heating element, and offering a five-year warranty.

Product Specs

The KBGV Select is a glass carafe coffee maker that takes its name from the selector switch that allows you to choose between a full and half carafe brew cycle, this will affect brewing speed and also the holding temperature of the hotplate (slower and lower when using the half carafe). Otherwise, the only other interface option is the on/off switch.

With its metal housing and wide variety of colors, the KBGV reminds me a bit of the Gaggia Classic which has a similarly no-frills design and is also made in Europe. The hotplate on the coffee maker is independently heated and will power on for 100 minutes whenever the power switch is turned on. The glass carafe included with the KBGV Select is fairly unique.

When coffee flows from the brew basket into the carafe, it travels through a funnel located in the center of the carafe to the bottom of the carafe. This means that coffee fills the carafe from the bottom up rather than dripping on top, which helps to properly mix the freshly brewed coffee into the coffee that’s already in the carafe. When seated, the carafe presses into and raises an arm that unseals the brew basket and allows coffee to flow out of it, AKA "drip stop." 

Brewing on the KBGV Select

The KBGV Select is pretty much as Coffee Maker® as a coffee maker can get. You simply fill the reservoir with water, add your filter and ground coffee and flip the power switch. If you're going old school and dosing coffee without a scale, Moccamaster provides a chart of recommended coffee amounts relative to the amount of water. Because they suggest that you use the included brown plastic scoop for measurement, they give a pretty generous +/- 5g margin of error when dosing. Coincidentally, at 60g per liter, we're within the +5g range of Moccamaster's officially recommended 55g per liter.

Moccamaster themselves recommend brewing no fewer than 4 cups of coffee at a time on their brewers, though the KBGV Select is unique in that you can specify whether you're brewing a full or half carafe and both brew cycles will produce coffee to the SCA standard. While the body of the Moccamaster is metal, the reservoir lid, brew basket, and basket lid are all plastic and the tactile experience of assembling them each brew tends to conflict with the otherwise premium nature of the coffee maker.

One final note is that the KBGV Select has no audio queues to let you know that the coffee maker is done brewing. You'll run out of water in the reservoir before the coffee stops flowing from the brew basket, so it's really a matter of getting used to how long your particular brew takes, though in our testing we found coffee stopped flowing/dripping around 6 minutes.

In-Cup Results

This interpretation of Beaned Up turned out to be one of my colleague John's favorites, with praise given for the pleasant finish and overall presence of body without bitterness. The acidity wasn't as bright here, but ultimately this was one of the closest interpretations of Beaned Up's S'mores notes that I've experienced.

In terms of extraction percentage, the KBGV Select was lower than the Bonavita Enthusiast and the Fellow Aiden that I'll be talking about in a bit. Similar to the Luxe, the shower head on the KBGV is a bit more narrow than the Enthusiast or Aiden, but has greater distribution than the Luxe.

Most Unique - Moccamaster Cup One Brewer

The Moccamaster Cup One is a really interesting brewer. In many ways, it’s essentially the same as the KBGV Select with the same metal housing, warranty and heating element, but refined for a singular purpose. That being, a single cup.

Product Specs

With just a 10oz water reservoir, the Cup One brews a single cup of coffee at a time. You fill the reservoir, add a filter and coffee, place your cup, and that’s it. The clearance under the brew basket is high enough to accommodate cups up to 5” and the cup holder is removable to fit a variety of shapes and sizes.

While the Cup One isn’t a new product by any means, its niche design feels more in step with modern coffee preferences, especially the popularity of single-dosing. Not to mention that several other coffee makers on this list, including the Breville Precision and Fellow Aiden have dedicated single-cup brew cycles. The Cup One is simply bold enough to submit that a person never needs to brew more than one cup at a time. Pairing the Cup One with a quality single-dose grinder like a member of Varia’s VS series or a Mignon Zero from Eureka feels only too right with this coffee maker.

Brewing on the Cup One

Brewing on the Cup One feels the most to me like brewing on a pour-over coffee maker. Not because you necessarily have all of the same pour-over style programming as something like the Fellow Aiden, but because you're preparing a single cup. It's the most conducive coffee maker of the assortment to single-dosing with its intimate 10oz single-cup preparation.

Compared to other coffee makers, the Cup One has a little bit of assembly required, though not much. It has a one piece lid that covers both the reservoir and the brew basket. Unique to the Cup One is a removable steel pipe that connects fits into a socket in the reservoir and dispenses water on the coffee in the basket. Otherwise, the Cup One more or less behaves like a traditional coffee maker with a simple power switch.

While the Fellow Aiden has a single-cup mode, the thing about the Cup One is that it's single-cup only. You don't have to change any settings or peripheral attachments, adjust valves, etc. You simply add water and coffee, place your cup, and brew. As I mentioned above, total clearance is around 4.5" or 5" with the cup platform removed. We were able to fit a variety of our favorite cups underneath the spout on Cup One, including the 400ml SCS mug and the 12.2oz KINTO TO GO tumbler (though not the Travel Tumbler which is a bit taller). We could also comfortably fit a notNeutral LINO coffee mug and our own Camelbak Whole Latte Love mug.

While it is a single-cup brewer, you could reasonably fit a pour-over server like the Varia FLO under the spout and split the coffee into two smaller cups. Depending on how patient you are, brewing takes anywhere from about 5:30 / 6:30 minutes. I watched the flow of coffee out of the spout to determine when brewing was finished. Like the KBGV, the Cup One doesn't have any audio queues when it's done brewing and will continue dripping for a while after all of the water has left the reservoir. At around 5 minutes 30 seconds coffee switched from a stream to drips, but 6 minutes 30 seconds, dripping was very infrequent and basically done.

In-Cup Results

The in-cup results for the Cup One were very pleasant. It produced a very drinkable, single cup of coffee. The calculus here is really whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze when it comes to investing in a fully manual brew station complete with a dripper and kettle. Moccamaster's Cup One presents a pretty compelling all-in-one alternative to hand brewing that accommodates both coffee at home and on-the-go. 

Of all the coffee makers we tested, the Cup One had the lowest extraction percentage. Granted, it has the smallest basket and therefore the smallest bed of coffee, but it also has the most limited distribution of brew water as well. If you think of it like pour-over, the Cup One essentially brews directly into the center of the bed without moving.

Most Sophisticated - Fellow Aiden

The Fellow Aiden is easily the most advanced coffee maker on this list, featuring the greatest degree of brew cycle customization. You can program your desired volume, temperature (by degree), emulate pour-over brewing via phased pulses, the volume/temperature of each pulse, as well as a dedicated cold brew cycle. The Aiden can also be programmed with a schedule to power on at your desired time to brew your coffee so it's ready when you are.

Product Specs

Like the Luxe Brewer™ the Aiden also features variable brew baskets and has a multi position switch to change water flow based on the selected basket. You can even set it to a dedicated single-cup option, with Fellow themselves promoting brewing into one of their Carter mugs.

The design language of the Aiden is very “Fellow” with a circular knob and screen that echo the Stagg kettle and Tally scale. At its core, the Aiden is an IoT (Internet of Things) coffee maker and there is a large element of app use in order to get the most out of your purchase with this coffee maker. You can download (and upload) brew recipes to the Internet and the Aiden needs to be connected in order to receive regular updates from Fellow. However, the functionality comes at the expense of the entire brewer being made of plastic in order to help keep costs reasonable.

Brewing on the Aiden

Compared to the other brewers on this list, the temptation to play with settings and customize our brew was strong with the Aiden. However, because we were evaluating a standard brew cycle, we opted for the Aiden's "Instant Brew" feature that can be accessed via the menu screen. Unlike the printed brew guides and labeled reservoirs of its counterparts on this list, the Aiden also has a feature called "Guided Brew." Guided Brew allows you to select from preset profiles for light, medium, and dark roasted coffee, cold brew, and then any coffee profiles that you've either created yourself or downloaded from Fellow.

The customization options on the Aiden are significantly more robust than even the Breville Luxe. All recipes are created with a default temperature and programmed using a ratio rather than a desired dose or volume. This allows you to vary the amount of coffee you want to brew at a time while maintaining a proportional recipe. Temperature can be set within 1° increments. You can also optionally program bloom, single serve, and batch pulses.

Bloom can be programmed for duration (which affects flow rate), ratio (which determines the amount of water used), and temperature. Pulses are meant to emulate pours from manual pour-over brewing. By default, when creating a brew cycle, the Aiden has a single pulse for batch brew and three pulses for single serve. You can also adjust the number pulses between 1 and 10, the temperature of each pulse, and the duration of time between each pulse. If that's making your head spin, it's worth noting that you can also simply download existing recipes to brew instead, rather than creating your own.

Last but not least, the Aiden has Cold Brew like I mentioned. Similar to the Luxe, you program a duration with the maximum cold brew cycle of 24 hours and a maximum volume of 1,500ml.

In-Cup Results

This was by far the heaviest interpretation of Beaned Up that we brewed for this blog. Comparing it to the Bonavita which was the second heaviest, there was a similarity that was immediately apparent, both the Aiden and the Enthusiast had 13 widely distributed holes for thorough saturation. Where the Aiden differed however is that the brew basket for the Aiden was narrower, resulting in a taller bed of coffee.

What's most interesting to me at this point would be going back and testing the Aiden to see just how differently we could brew some Beaned Up just by changing variables on the coffee maker rather than touching our dose or grind.

Going More In-Depth

Obviously there's a lot more that could be said about any one of the brewers we've taken a look at in this article. Fortunately our recent livestreams from winter 2025 featured a segment on several of the coffee makers mentioned above including the Bonavita Enthusiast, Breville LUXE, and the Aiden. I've linked it below if you're interested.

Good Coffee Starts with a Good Grinder

Brewing good coffee starts with using freshly ground whole beans. Grinding coffee releases CO2 and volatile aroma compounds that, once lost, can’t be recovered. If you don’t own a grinder, the best way to start making better coffee at home is to buy one. If you already own a coffee maker but not a grinder, you’ll be amazed at the difference in quality that comes from grinding fresh, right before brewing. I’ve linked an article below that covers the basics for selecting a new coffee grinder. Needless to say that I strongly recommend you purchase a grinder for best results from any coffee maker on this list. We used the new Varia VS4 and took things a step further quality-wise by single-dosing.

What You Brew Matters

It’s important to remember that the quality of the coffee you brew with has a huge impact on the overall in-cup result. That’s not to say that you should start slacking on other variables like your grinder and water, but starting any recipe with quality ingredients will put you on a path to success. Among the coffees we carry, our in-house blends and single-origins are roasted fresh and feature a range of balanced and nuanced flavors to satisfy a variety of tastes. If you’re looking for a new coffee to try, we recommend you start there..

Final Thoughts

We live in a time where it's very possible to brew very good coffee at home without much effort. Beyond that, there's a range of features and added functionality to suit a variety of preferences and budgets. I hope this overview helped to give you a better idea of what's out there in the world of coffee makers and how an SCA certification could be the determining factor in your next purchase.

Photography and Graphics by Grace Walker and Elley Ellison

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