# Automatic Pour-over Machine

Source: https://dailyextraction.com/methods/single-cup-pour-over-machine/
Last updated: 2026-10-20

> It's a machine that does the pouring in pour-over coffee for you. You put coffee in a dripper, and the machine heats the water and pours it in measured stages, with a bloom, pauses and set temperatures, like a barista with a kettle. Poursteady makes them for cafés; Hario's Smart7, the Hiroia Hikaru and the xBloom Studio are made for the home.

## At a glance

- Ratio: 1:17 (xBloom default)
- Grind: Medium-fine (table salt)
- Water temperature: 93 °C
- Category: Pour-over & Drip (Percolation)
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Origin: Global & Modern
- Also known as: robot pour-over, automatic pour-over coffee maker, pour-over robot, smart pour-over brewer

## Steps

1. **Fill the tank**: Fill the water tank. On Hario's Smart7 you can add more than you need, because it only pours the amount the recipe calls for.
2. **Set up the dripper**: Put a paper filter in the dripper, add your ground coffee, and set the dripper centred under the shower head.
3. **Choose a recipe**: Pick an automatic mode, or a saved recipe with your own temperature, bloom and pours.
4. **Let it brew**: The machine heats the water, wets the coffee for the bloom, waits, then pours the rest in stages with pauses in between.
5. **Remove and serve**: When it stops dripping, take off the dripper and serve.

An **automatic pour-over machine** does the one job that makes pour-over slow: the **pouring**. You still put a filter and ground coffee in a dripper, but the machine heats the water and pours it in measured stages, with a **bloom**, **pauses** and a set **temperature**, the way a barista would with a gooseneck kettle. Cafés use them to serve pour-over without a queue; at home they let you repeat a recipe exactly. Here's how they work, the main machines, and what you can control.

## The short version

- **The machine pours, you choose the coffee**, grind and dripper.
- **You can set** the water temperature, the bloom, the number of pours and the pauses.
- **Café machines** such as **Poursteady** brew several cups at once.
- **Home machines** include Hario's **Smart7**, the Hario-backed **Hiroia Hikaru**, and the **xBloom Studio**, which grinds too.
- **The catch** is the price, and some machines need a bigger minimum brew than one cup.



## How does an automatic pour-over machine work?

Pour-over by hand means wetting the coffee with a little water, waiting about 30 seconds for the bloom, then pouring in a thin, slow stream in circles. Kakaku Mag's reviewer points out why that's tiresome on a busy morning: you can't hurry the kettle, and you can't do anything else while you pour.

An automatic machine follows the same steps on its own. **Hario's Smart7** shows what that looks like. In its **Auto Mode**:

| Stage | Smart7 Auto Mode |
| --- | --- |
| Water temperature | 93°C |
| Bloom | About 50 ml of water, then a 25-second rest |
| Main brew | 100 ml pours, each followed by a 7-second pause |
| Cups | 2 to 5 |
| Pour | Through nine holes, in a gentle circle |

Kakaku Mag timed it: the display showed **1 minute 48 seconds** of brewing, but heating the water for three cups took about **3 minutes** more, so a pot took around **4 minutes 30 seconds** in all.

What sets these machines apart from an ordinary [drip coffee maker](https://dailyextraction.com/methods/automatic-drip/) is control. The reviewer notes that most drip machines simply run the whole tank through the coffee, while the Smart7 pours only the amount you set, in the pattern you set.

## What can you control?

On the Smart7, a **My Recipes** mode lets you set:

- **Temperature**, from **80 to 96°C**.
- **Total water**, from **270 to 700 ml**.
- **The bloom**: how much water, and how long to wait.
- **Up to 10 pours**, each with its own amount and pause.
- **Flow speed**, by changing how long each pour takes: a short pour gushes and stirs the coffee, a long one trickles.

You can save **four** recipes. Kakaku Mag's reviewer, who uses dark roasts, found the 93°C Auto Mode a little bitter, and made a recipe at **87°C**: a 30 ml bloom for 30 seconds, then 240 ml of water. The result was cleaner and crisper. Their biggest praise was for repeatability: you can change only the temperature, keep everything else the same, and actually taste the difference.

![Chart of coffee grind sizes from extra fine to extra coarse, with medium-fine highlighted for an automatic pour-over machine](https://dailyextraction.com/diagrams/grind-size.svg#medium-fine "Grind as you would for a V60 or other cone, typically medium-fine.")

The machines don't change the basics of grind. I'd grind as you would for the dripper you're using: medium-fine for a [V60](https://dailyextraction.com/methods/v60/) cone, a touch coarser for a flat-bottomed [Kalita Wave](https://dailyextraction.com/methods/kalita-wave/).

## Which automatic pour-over machines are there?

| Machine | Where | What stands out |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Poursteady** PS1 and PS2 | Cafés | Three or five stations brewing at once; a nozzle pours a computer-controlled spiral |
| **Hario V60 Auto Pour Over Smart7** (EVS-70) | Home | Auto Mode or custom recipes; heats the water in the tank; comes with a glass V60 and server |
| **Hiroia Hikaru** V60 Smart Brewer | Home | App control, built-in scale, 10 flow rates, 700 ml tank |
| **xBloom Studio** | Home | Grinds and brews; pre-dosed xPods or your own beans; circular, centred or spiral pours |

### Poursteady

Poursteady began with a coffee queue. In **late 2012**, robotics engineers **Stuart Heys** and **Mark Sibenac** watched a barista make the same pour-over again and again while the line grew, and decided to automate it, using the engineering they'd applied to **NASA test rovers** and laboratory equipment. With **Stephan von Muehlen**, they took a prototype to the **NYC Maker Faire in 2013**, where it made **over 800 cups** in the first weekend.

The five-cup **PS1** won **Best New Product at the SCA Expo in 2015** and began shipping internationally that year, followed by the smaller **PS1-3c**. The **PS2**, launched at SCA 2023, added on-screen recipe creation and an internal boiler. Poursteady says its machines are made in **Brooklyn** and used in **over 25 countries**.

### Hario Smart7

Hario's **V60 Auto Pour Over Smart7** (model **EVS-70**) is a compact U-shaped machine, **245 × 290 × 120 mm** and about **2 kg**. It comes with a **glass V60 02 dripper** and server, but Kakaku Mag found most drippers fit, including a wedge-shaped three-hole dripper. Unusually, it heats the water **in the tank**, with a 7 cm heating plate in the bottom. That means the tank can't be removed and washed, so cleaning is a citric acid rinse every three to six months. Its one quirk: you must set the server **dead centre**, or the water misses the middle of the coffee.

### Hiroia Hikaru

The **Hikaru V60 Smart Brewer** is made by **Hiroia**, which Sprudge describes as a smart-coffee subsidiary that Hario has invested in. It's controlled from a phone app, with a built-in scale, a choice of **10 flow rates** (for what Hiroia calls "variable turbulence extraction"), nine preset recipes, recipe sharing and a 700 ml tank. It launched on Kickstarter, with a retail price of **$649**.

### xBloom Studio

The **xBloom Studio** goes further and **grinds** too, with a **48 mm conical burr** grinder and 80 settings. Tom's Guide describes three modes: **Autopilot**, where you scan a card from a pre-dosed **xPod** and the machine sets grind, temperature and pours; **Copilot**, for your own recipes; and **Freesolo**, for any dripper. Its default recipe is **15 g of coffee at 1:17** for a 255 ml cup, and it can pour in circular, centred or spiral patterns. Tom's Guide notes the **25 g** maximum dose makes batch brewing tricky.

## What are the downsides?

- **Price.** Tom's Guide lists the xBloom Studio at **$599**, and Kakaku Mag reported an average price just under **50,000 yen** for the Smart7 in April 2017.
- **Minimum and maximum amounts.** The Smart7 won't brew less than 270 ml, which is more than a cup; the xBloom tops out at 25 g of coffee.
- **A learning curve.** Tom's Guide found the xBloom's unlabelled dials fiddly at first.
- **Taste is still up to you.** Kakaku Mag's reviewer still preferred their own hand pour, at least before finding the ideal settings.

*General guidance only. Follow the maker's instructions for descaling, and take care with hot water and glass drippers.*

## Automatic pour-over vs other methods

- **[V60](https://dailyextraction.com/methods/v60/):** the hand-poured cone these machines imitate.
- **[Automatic drip](https://dailyextraction.com/methods/automatic-drip/):** the everyday coffee maker, with less control over the pour.
- **[Batch brew](https://dailyextraction.com/methods/batch-brew/):** large café brewers for many cups at once.
- **[Kalita Wave](https://dailyextraction.com/methods/kalita-wave/):** a flat-bottomed dripper that also works under most machines.

Explore every pour-over method in the [pour-over chapter](https://dailyextraction.com/methods/pour-over/).

## Words used in this guide

- [Pour-over](https://dailyextraction.com/glossary/pour-over/): Pour-over is a way of making filter coffee by hand: you pour hot water over ground coffee in a filter cone and let it drip through into a cup or jug.
- [Bloom](https://dailyextraction.com/glossary/bloom/): The bloom is the first small pour of water in a brew, usually 2–3 times the weight of the coffee, followed by a 30–45 second pause.
- [Roast level](https://dailyextraction.com/glossary/roast-level/): Roast level describes how long and how hot coffee beans were roasted, usually labelled light, medium or dark.
- [Extraction](https://dailyextraction.com/glossary/extraction/): Extraction is the process of water dissolving flavour compounds out of ground coffee.

## FAQs

### How is an automatic pour-over machine different from a drip coffee maker?

A standard drip machine usually runs a whole tank of water through the coffee in one go. An automatic pour-over machine lets you set the bloom, the temperature, the number of pours and the pauses between them, like pouring by hand with a kettle.

### Can you use your own dripper?

Often, yes. Kakaku Mag found that Hario's Smart7 works with most drippers, not just the glass V60 that comes with it, and the xBloom Studio has a Freesolo mode for any dripper.

### What is Poursteady?

An automatic pour-over machine for cafés, made in Brooklyn. Its moving nozzle pours a computer-controlled spiral over three or five cups at once. The first model, the PS1, won Best New Product at the SCA Expo in 2015.

### Do automatic pour-over machines make better coffee than pouring by hand?

They make it more repeatable. Kakaku Mag's reviewer found the Smart7 better than an ordinary coffee maker, but still preferred their own hand pour; the advantage was being able to change one setting, like temperature, and keep everything else the same.

### How much do they cost?

They're expensive. Tom's Guide lists the xBloom Studio at $599, Sprudge gave the Hikaru's retail price as $649, and Kakaku Mag reported the Smart7 at an average of just under 50,000 yen in April 2017. Poursteady sells to cafés on request.

## Sources

- [About Poursteady](https://poursteady.com/about)
- [Poursteady automatic pour-over machines](https://poursteady.com/)
- [コーヒーマニア絶賛！お湯の注ぎ方に超こだわれるコーヒーマシン「ハリオ Smart7」](https://kakakumag.com/seikatsu-kaden/?id=10043)
- [Just look at this automatic V60 smart brewer](https://sprudge.com/?p=216096)
- [xBloom Studio review](https://www.tomsguide.com/home/coffee-makers/xbloom-studio-coffee-maker-review)