Automatic Pour-over Machine

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 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.

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 cone, a touch coarser for a flat-bottomed 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: the hand-poured cone these machines imitate.
• Automatic drip: the everyday coffee maker, with less control over the pour.
• Batch brew: large café brewers for many cups at once.
• Kalita Wave: a flat-bottomed dripper that also works under most machines.

Explore every pour-over method in the pour-over chapter.