BrewNotes is an independent publication about coffee machines, written for people buying one in the UK. We keep notes: what a machine actually does on the fifth morning, how long it takes from cold, how loud it is on a worktop at seven in the morning, and what it asks of you before it gives you a decent cup.
We are not a retailer and we do not run press releases. When a listing and a manual disagree, we go with the manual, and we say which one we read.
Who writes it
Every article carries a named byline: who wrote it, and who read it before it went live. Their pages list everything they have put their name to on this site.
Iona Brackley — Coffee machine tester
Independent testing: measurements taken at the worktop, manuals read in preference to retail listings, and no machines accepted from makers in exchange for coverage.
Douglas Pettifer — Editorial check
Data and method check: every article is reconciled against the catalogue and the published testing method before it ships.
What our scores mean
A score is an editorial judgement, not a laboratory result. We give each machine a mark out of ten and rate five things from one to five: build and durability, steam and milk, ease of use, versatility and value for money. Separately we score, out of ten, how close the drink in the cup gets to what a good café serves — the axis buyers care about most and no retail listing carries.
Where we have used a machine ourselves, the article says so and says how we got hold of it. Where we have not, the article is a synthesis of the specification and what owners consistently report, and it says that too. We would rather publish a narrower claim than a confident one we cannot stand behind.
How we're funded
No maker has any say in what appears here, and none of this changes a score or the order of a list.