B+ coffee with A+ convenience.
That’s the Jura ENA Micro 90 in a nutshell.
And that makes it a solid option if you're looking at super-automatic espresso machines.
How can I advocate for B+ coffee?
The ENA Micro 90 delivers true one-touch brewing with a high quality beverage, and that’s no small feat.
It has an extremely intuitive and comprehensive user interface, which allows you to dial in your perfect beverage and then brew it in perpetuity at the touch of a single button.
With an incredibly intuitive user interface and a compact design relative to other automatic espresso machines, the Jura ENA Micro 90 scores extremely highly for Design and Performance.
Of particular note (especially if you’ve ever used a Jura ENA espresso machine before) the user interface has been improved over previous models, such as the ENA Micro 1 and Micro 5. It’s much easier to navigate.
Everything you need to brew the perfect coffee beverage with the push of a single button has been molded into a simple design that doesn’t take up much space on your countertop.
Read below in my Jura ENA Micro 90 review as I’ll touch on the standout features.
B+ in coffee quality, which isn’t necessarily an indictment of this machine.
You see, Jura is going for convenience above all else with the ENA Micro 9. Literally, this might be the simplest, easiest-to-use automatic espresso machine available today.
There are a few places where they opted to improve convenience and usability at the slight expense of espresso quality, but that can be remedied in large part by taking the time to dial in the settings to your specific tastes.
Set the temperature to High, set the brew type to Strong, and set the grinder to the finest grind possible, and I’m fairly positive you’ll be happy.
A trained barista will outperform the Jura ENA Micro 9, as will a more robust super-automatic espresso machine. But for the degree of simplicity and convenience Jura has achieved with the Micro 9, I’m very impressed with the quality of espresso.
Any review of appearance and aesthetics is subjective, but I think this is an attractive, almost futuristic machine.
The exterior has a matte silver surface that’s resistant to fingerprints, and the top is a sleek, black plastic. While I praised the user interface above for being easy to use, it definitely has an archaic-looking, 1980s-style digital interface.
You won’t have any issues with the Jura ENA Micro 90 if it’s maintained properly.
Please note that cleaning can be a hassle with automatic and super-automatic espresso machines — I’ll detail this in the Ease of Cleaning section below — but it’s a necessary evil when owning one of these machines.
This model comes with a 2 year warranty (or 6,000 brews, whichever comes first) which gives you some peace of mind.
Relative to other automatic and super-automatic espresso machines, the Jura ENA Micro 90 is easy and straightforward to clean.
That doesn’t mean there’s little cleaning and maintenance to be done — no, you’ll have some work to do — but the ENA Micro 90 is designed in such a way to make that cleaning easy.
You still need to use a water filter or filtered water to reduce internal scaling. You’ll still need to use cleaning tablets to keep the inner components humming like new. You’ll still need to routinely soak and flush the milk foaming attachment to prevent any build-up.
This machine’s best selling point its the wide variety of customizable settings, which allow you to dial in your perfect beverage.
The Jura ENA Micro 90 makes 4 types of beverages. You can modify the settings for each as follows:
*Milk Volume is customized in dispense time (seconds) and not dispense volume.
You can program each of these settings within the following ranges:
Mix and match those settings in 100s of different combinations to get something that’s truly your specialty drink.
It’ll take a few tries and several minutes to get the settings the way you like, but from that point onward it’s true one-touch brewing.
It’s as easy as it sounds.
The Jura ENA Micro 9’s bean hopper is lined with rubber around the edges, ensuring a tight seal to lock in freshness.
The grinder has 5 different grind sizes and works extremely well. You can also use the bypass to brew with pre-ground coffee, as shown below.
There’s no steaming wand with the Jura ENA Micro 9.
Instead, the machine has a milk frothing attachment that plugs into the base of the coffee dispensing nozzle.
Here’s how it works:
At first I didn’t like this frothing method. It seemed cheap, and the foam was merely above average.
But actually, it’s grown on me a little.
It’s a simple setup, the frothing attachment is easy to clean with the Jura’s rinse button, and it detaches easily for a more robust soak/clean.
You’ll still make better foam with a true steaming wand, especially one that gives you control over the frothing process.
Then again it wouldn’t be true one-touch brewing with super-simple cleanup!
The Jura ENA Micro 90 has an Energy Save Mode, which you can toggle on or off.
If Energy Save is on, the machine will turn the heating element off after 5 minutes. It’ll need to heat back up in order to brew a beverage or foam milk.
If Energy Save of off, the machine will remain ready to brew on demand until it’s switched off.
Noted above in this Jura ENA Micro 90 review, you can choose either Normal or High water temperature. I find that to be (a) a little limiting, and (b) a little vague. A lot of other automatic espresso machines, and even higher-end coffee machines, will give you more options and tell you exactly how hot the water is.
Honestly, I wish the machine could brew a hotter beverage, but you can counteract that by pre-warming your cup. If you do that I doubt you’ll have any issues.
In the end I was satisfied with the temperature on High, but I would have appreciated more granularity here.
This isn’t a knock on the Jura ENA Micro 9. Instead, it’s a fact of life for automatic and super-automatic espresso machines. These things are investments and they require maintenance and upkeep.
Use the recommended water filter if you don’t fill your water reservoir with pre-filtered water
Clean the frothing attachment and milk tube after every single use
Replace the milk tube after 6-9 months to prevent clogging
Toss a cleaning tablet into the bypass doser every 180 beverages or when the machine tells you
