There are hundreds of automatic coffee makers on the market today. Most of them are pretty similar, churning out decent enough drip coffee.
A dozen, probably, are really solid.
And then there are a few that are genuinely outstanding: machines that can deliver the highest highs in cup quality and perform at a high level for years.
In this article, I’m focusing on three machines that represent the peak of what’s currently available.
These aren’t just good brewers—they’re exceptional, each in their own way. And as it happens, all three are also SCA certified, which I know matters to many people looking for that validation.
But here’s what makes this comparison interesting: despite all three being outstanding, they’re remarkably different from each other.
What I want to explain is not just why these three machines are excellent, but what makes each one unique and what separates them from each other.
Quick Comparison Table
| Technivorm Moccamaster Select | Fellow Aiden | Breville Precision Brewer | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  | |
| Capacity | 40 oz / 1.2 L | 50 oz / 1.5 L | 60 oz / 1.7 L |
| Pros | – Exceptional build quality and longevity – Fully repairable. affordable parts – Simple, reliable operation | – Precise temperature profiling – Excellent water distribution – Good for both small and large batches | – Extensive customization – Handles large volumes effortlessly – Multiple basket options |
| Cons | – Brews a bit too hot for medium/dark roasts – Struggles with small batches – Hot plate can overcook coffee | – Lightweight plastic construction – Frustrating software and app – Carafe must be stirred when brewing full batches | – Huge. Similar size as an espresso machine! – Parts availability can be problematic – Not ideal for small brews |
| Best For | Anyone who wants a machine that will still be brewing excellent coffee in 10+ years with minimal fuss | Coffee enthusiasts chasing manual pour-over quality without standing at the counter with a kettle | Households and offices that brew 1.5+ liters daily and want professional-level control |
| Check price | Check price | Check price |
The 3 Best SCA Certified Coffee Makers
After months of testing and real-life use, these three machines stand out not because they’re perfect, but because they’re excellent at very different things:
- The Moccamaster impresses with build quality, consistency, and longevity.
- The Aiden delivers the most precise temperature control I’ve encountered in an automatic brewer.
- The Breville Precision / Luxe Brewer combines large batch efficiency with a ton of adjustability
Technivorm Moccamaster
I grew up around Moccamasters in Denmark. They were everywhere: in my grandmother’s kitchen, in offices, in daycares. They were “the standard” so to speak. The newer generation of Moccamasters are fundamentally the same machine. There are just more fancy colors now.
The Moccamaster is inherently basic: It’s a copper boiler, a simple steel spray arm, replaceable plastic parts, and a design philosophy that prioritizes longevity over novelty. It’s simple, but it works.
Design and Build Quality
Moccamasters are famous for lasting years or even decades. The sustainability story here is real, not marketing.
You can order a new spray arm or carafe for a modest amount of euros, swap it yourself in one minute, and keep brewing. The modular design means that when something wears out, you replace that component instead of the entire machine.
I’ve seen Moccamasters from the 1980s still functioning.
The modular design also helps when it comes to cleaning. Rancid coffee oil buildup is a hidden problem in many enclosed designs, but with the Moccamaster you can see what needs attention and address it directly. The water path is straightforward, the parts are accessible, and there’s an honesty to the construction that I respect more after testing machines with more elaborate internals that can’t be serviced at home.
The newer Select model addresses some historical weak points. The updated spray arm has a ribbed design that disperses water more evenly across the brew bed. Older arms had a tendency to concentrate nine small holes into one aggressive central stream, which would dig a crater in your grounds. It’s still not that fantastic compared to a modern brewer like the Fellow Aiden, though.
The newest Moccamaster model also includes a dual-mode system for batch size, where previously the second button only controlled if the hot plate should full or half strength. This provides a better flow rate for smaller batches.
The standard mode brews rather fast, which is great for 1 liters and above. But for smaller batches it’s a bit too fast, so the option for more control is a welcome one.
Brewing Performance and Taste
The copper boiling element is the heart of the machine. It heats water quickly and maintains steady temperatures in the 92-94°C range, which suits light roasts particularly well. With fresh, Scandinavian-style coffees, I can coax very respectable results from the Moccamaster, especially if I’m willing to intervene slightly.
Here’s what that intervention looks like in practice: I’ll often kill the power for about 30 seconds after the initial wetting to mimic a bloom phase, then restart. Sometimes I’ll give the bed a gentle stir or nudge the spray arm slightly off-center if the saturation looks uneven.
When I run sensory test with the Moccamaster head-to-head against the Aiden on light roasts with these small adjustments, it gets close. I’d say it reaches about 90% of the way there. The gap shows up in the finish and in the overall clarity, but we’re talking about subtle differences that only matter if you’re comparing them side by side.
There’s also the hot plate issue. If you leave coffee sitting on the plate for more than a few minutes, you’ll taste it. It’s that classic “coffee maker taste” that turns people away from automatic brewers: cooked, flat, slightly stale. Luckily, the thermal carafe variants solve this problem, and I’d strongly recommend choosing that option if you tend to brew a full pot and drink it over time.
Pros and Cons
The Moccamaster’s greatest strength is its simplicity married to longevity. It asks very little of you day to day. Clean the obvious parts, replace an inexpensive component every few years, and it keeps working.
No app to update, no firmware bugs, no proprietary parts that might be discontinued. If you value a machine that outlives trends and can be maintained with basic tools and cheap spares, this is the Gold Standard.
The downsides are equally clear. It’s not a small-batch specialist. It doesn’t offer temperature profiling or flow rate adjustment. And on its own, without those small manual tweaks I mentioned, it doesn’t quite reach the level of the more sophisticated machines.
But there’s a kind of virtue to its minimalism. It does one thing well, and it does it for decades.
Read my full review here
amazon Seattle Coffee gearFellow Aiden Precision Coffee Maker
The Aiden forced me to reconsider what an automatic brewer can do. It’s just really, really good. I get cups surprisingly similar to a really good pour over here.
It looks very Fellow: sleek, matte black, elegant, with a round color display that resembles a smartwatch face.
The downside is the build quality. It feels lighter than I expected for the price point. The plastic construction registers immediately when you handle it. The water reservoir lid feels flimsy, especially if you’re used to Fellow’s sturdier products.
That initial impression matters because you expect a certain gravitas when you’ve paid premium money for a machine. But here’s where things get interesting: once you taste the brew, you forget about these minor drawbacks. The cups are so damn good.
Temperature Control and Innovation
Temperature profiling is the headline feature, and it’s not marketing fluff.
I ran tests where I deliberately pushed the machine to extremes: alternating pulses from 50°C to 90°C and back, just to see if it would stumble. It didn’t.
The targets were hit with surprising accuracy, and more importantly, the cup reflected those temperature choices. With light Ethiopian coffees, I could dial in that precise, bright lift without tipping into sourness.
On medium roasts, I programmed a gentle decline from 93°C down to 88°C over the brew cycle, and the usual bitterness you brace for in batch brewing simply didn’t appear. Instead, I got soft, focused chocolate and nut profiles with clean finishes. Refractometer readings consistently landed in the 20-21% extraction range, but the number matters less than the taste: these were high extractions without harshness.
Real-World Performance
Part of the Aiden’s success isn’t only about temperature. The water distribution is also excellent. Many automatic brewers, even iconic ones, saturate unevenly and chew a hole in the center of the bed unless you babysit them.
The Aiden’s shower head reaches everywhere without turning the basket into a whirlpool.
Agitation is the most misunderstood part of brewing. Too little and you underextract patches of your coffee. Too much and you rip out harsh, astringent flavors. The Aiden tends to live in that sweet middle zone, and honestly, many baristas don’t manage that balance as consistently by hand.
The machine scales well across volumes, too. I’ve brewed confidently at 200 ml, which is a graveyard for most batch machines. Using the small conical basket for single servings and the flat basket for larger batches works really well.
The pulse programming feels like it actually scales instead of just dumping water faster.
The Aiden makes a bold choice — there’s no hot plate. But it’s a choice I agree with.
That alone dodges the cooked coffee taste that creeps in after 5-10 minutes on so many makers.
The thermal carafe is actually really high quality and keeps coffee at a practical serving temperature for hours. In my tests, coffee drawn 50 minutes and even 120 minutes after brewing still measured around 70°C, which is perfectly drinkable, and without any degradation from a heating element.
But you’re actually not locked into using the included carafe. One of my favorite workflows has been brewing small 0.3-0.4 liter runs directly into my regular glass server. The daily UX for 1-2 cups becomes much more enjoyabl when you’re not forced to brew into a large thermal carafe every time.
Software and Usability Issues
Now the caveats, because they’re significant. First, the carafe design could work better for big batches. As demonstrated by James Hoffmann in his excellent review, the bottom of the carafe ends up noticeably stronger than the top. The fix is simple but annoying: stir with a spoon before serving. On smaller batches, however, it’s not a big deal, since a quick swirl handles it.
Second, the software feels like version 1.0. The app logs me out constantly, and initial pairing was absurdly tricky.
It eventually connected days later after what appeared to be a server-side queue clearing. When you create profiles on your phone, the sync isn’t reliable and there’s no obvious refresh mechanism.
On the device itself, the single click wheel is elegant but tedious. Naming and tweaking profiles via a scroll wheel feels like punishment.
A firmware update could fix most of these app grievances, and I genuinely hope Fellow prioritizes it because the underlying brew technology is excellent. The hardware deserves better software. There are also workflow restrictions that feel arbitrary.
Finally, there’s a post-brew condensation issue worth mentioning. If you clean up too quickly (toss the filter, close the lid, walk away), moisture can easily get trapped in the upper cavity.
Leave it overnight and you’ll wake to a faint mildew smell. The fix is simple: open and dry the insert or leave the lid ajar. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s a “know your machine” detail.
Pros and Cons
The Aiden changes what’s possible in an automatic brewer, and it does so where it actually matters: in the cup. If you’re chasing manual pour-over quality without standing there with a kettle, this machine gets closer than anything else I’ve tested.
Read my full review here
fellow AmazonBreville Precision Brewer
The Breville Precision Brewer feels like an espresso machine wearing a drip costume. It’s large, metallic, confident, and packed with controls: PID temperature adjustment, selectable flow rates, programmable bloom, multiple baskets to match different volumes, and enough brewing modes to keep a full-time barista occupied.
Control and Customization
The control isn’t cosmetic: it’s a real lever for taste. As an example, I’ve brewed darkish supermarket Colombian at 87°C to sidestep bitterness and ended up with something surprisingly drinkable.
On the other hand, when I brewed very light roasts, I’d opt for hotter brew temps and stretched out the bloom and flow rate to keep extraction in the sweet zone.
The interface, with its large bright display and adjustment wheel, is pretty intuitive, in my opinion, although it’s probably a bit cluttered.
The workflow feels robust and thoughtful in the way Breville products often do.
The machine overall seems overpowered, and to me that’s an advantage. If you routinely brew 1.2-1.7 liters for a family or small office, the Precision Brewer cruises through it.
The ability to use both cone and flat baskets depending on volume is nice. The bloom actually functions as advertised. And the PID temperature controller, which is technology usually reserved for expensive espresso machines, gives you precise thermal management that most drip makers can’t match.
2025: Luxe Brewer update! ⚠️
In the middle of 2025, Breville launched the Luxe Brewer as a sort of replacement for the Precision Brewer.
Despite the new name, it’s essentially the same machine with a few thoughtful refinements. Think of it as the Precision Brewer 2.0 rather than a completely new design.
Main Upgrades
Removable Water Tank This is the most significant improvement and the one that matters most in daily use. The original Precision Brewer’s fixed tank was always a bit awkward since the machine is substantial and heavy. Now you can lift out the tank for easy filling and cleaning, and properly empty it without having to tilt the entire brewer.
New Color Options The Luxe arrives in a range of colorways that mirror Sage/Breville’s espresso machine lineup: matte black, seasalt white, nougat, olive, blue, plus the original stainless steel finish.
Smaller Improvements
- Simplified Brew Options: The Precision Brewer had too many similar-ish brew modes. The Luxe Brewer has removed most of them so you just have 3 modes. But you can still tweak what needs to be tweaked.
- Improved display: Larger display with a dark/black background
- Bloom Volume Control: Now available on all versions of the Luxe (was not available on US-versions of the Precision Brewer previously)
Should You Buy the New Version?
If you’re buying new at full retail price, the Luxe is worth getting. The removable water tank alone makes it the better choice.
However, if you can find the original Precision Brewer available for 30-40% less (which you often can), I’d probably go for that one instead. The core brewing performance is identical, and none of the improvements are so transformative that they warrant paying a significant premium.
Performance and Limitations
As mentioned the footprint is substantial. It claims counter space like a compact heat-exchanger espresso machine. I would only go for this machine if I really needed a workhorse for those frequent +40 oz brews.
And while the machine offers about a dozen modes, I lived almost exclusively in “MyBrew” during my testing phase because most of the presets either duplicate outcomes or don’t map to how I think about coffee. Luckily that has been fixed with Breville’s 2025 facelift/upgrade model.
The glass carafe is a weak link simply because replacements are notoriously hard to source, even when they appear on Breville’s own website. Breville’s long-term parts and service availability have been inconsistent historically, and for a niche product in their sprawling lineup, that risk is annoying to take.
Probably the thermal carafe is the best way to go here, just based on those facts.
Cup-wise, the Precision Brewer can be excellent, but when you compare it against the Aiden on flavor clarity, especially at smaller volumes, the Aiden wins. The Breville shines when you push volume and still want control. For sub-0.5 liter brews, it does have a special basket but IMO it just makes more sense to brew a manual pour over batch here.
Pros and Cons
If your reality involves brewing large quantities regularly and you want more control than a basic machine provides, the Precision Brewer makes a strong case. It’s easy to recommend to the household that needs 1.5 liters on tap every morning with some customization baked in.
The caveats are the size, the parts availability concerns, and the fact that it’s a bit soulless compared to the focused excellence of the Aiden or the honest simplicity of the Moccamaster.
I think it strikes a good balance overall. It has the sturdiness of a Moccamaster with many of the features of the Aiden. But it doesn’t quite have the same charm and looks as the two other brewers, which is a shame.
Read my full review here
Precision Brewer Luxe brewerUnderstanding SCA Certification
The Specialty Coffee Association (formerly SCAA, now simply SCA) maintains a certification program for home brewers that represents the highest standard in automatic coffee making. This isn’t a popularity contest or marketing program. It’s a rigorous technical evaluation based on decades of research by the Coffee Brewing Center.
What Does SCA Certified Mean?
To earn SCA certification, a coffee maker must pass objective tests in three critical areas: temperature, brew time, and extraction quality. These aren’t arbitrary numbers. They’re based on extensive research into what produces the best-tasting coffee via the so-called “golden cup” standards.
SCA Certification Requirements:
The certification criteria are specific and demanding. First, temperature must be maintained between 195-205°F (90-96°C) during brewing, and the brewer must hold coffee at a proper serving temperature for at least 30 minutes after the brew cycle completes. Personally, I think that this criteria is a bit overrated, because I like to drink my coffee right away, but I know that I’m in a minority here. For many people, a reliable heat plate or carafe is a non-negotiable.
Second, timing matters. The brew cycle shouldn’t complete in less than four minutes (which would underextract) or take longer than eight minutes for drawdown (which risks overextraction and temperature loss).
Third, and most technically complex, is the extraction requirement. The SCA mandates a beverage strength (solubles concentration) between 1.15% and 1.35%, resulting from an extraction yield between 18.0% and 22.0% of the coffee’s weight. This is measured with a refractometer and verified against the brewing control chart.
In simpler terms: the machine must make genuinely excellent coffee every single time, hitting the “golden cup” standard. As of 2014, the SCA renewed its partnership with the European Coffee Brewing Center, which maintains its own longstanding testing program.
These organizations are aligned in testing requirements, procedures, and rigor, working together to promote better coffee brewing worldwide. Blooming (the practice of wetting grounds briefly before full brewing to release CO2 from roasting) isn’t part of the official certification criteria, but it’s become a hallmark of the best certified machines.
Two of the machines I’ve featured here (Aiden and the Precision Brewer) incorporate some form of pre-infusion or bloom control.
It’s worth noting that SCA certification doesn’t rank machines or declare winners. It simply confirms that a brewer meets the technical baseline for excellent coffee. What you do with that capability, and which certified machine matches your specific needs, remains your choice, and that’s why I’ve created this article to explain the difference between each machine more clearly.
Which Machine Is Right for You?
These three machines represent different philosophies in automatic brewing, and your choice should align with what you value most. The Technivorm Moccamaster is the repairable workhorse that prioritizes longevity and simplicity over sophistication.
If you want a machine that will still be brewing excellent coffee a decade from now with minimal intervention, this is your answer. The Fellow Aiden pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in flavor extraction through precise temperature profiling and exceptional water distribution.
It’s the choice for coffee enthusiasts chasing pour-over quality in an automatic format, though the software experience needs refinement. The Breville Precision Brewer delivers extensive customization and handles high-volume brewing with impressive control, making it ideal for households that need consistent large batches.
All three will make excellent coffee. The question is which approach matches your priorities: sustainable longevity, cutting-edge extraction technology, or versatile high-capacity brewing.
