🔬 Fellow Aiden

The Fellow Aiden Precision Coffee Maker was released last fall after an extensive pre-order wait. It’s billed as the world’s best automatic, barista-quality, batch coffee maker, allowing you to make automated pour-over-quality coffee with the press of a button. It costs $365 and is WiFi-enabled, so you can set up a brew schedule and enable special coffee-specific brewing profiles. Can the coffee live up to the price point and the hype? Do we really need our coffee makers to connect to the internet?

Let’s find out.

Performance

I’ve been a happy owner of numerous coffee-making products and accessories from Fellow for years. They’ve built a reputation for making attractive products out of nice materials, and while they tend to cost more than the rest of the market, I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with their gear. In other words, the combination of design and functionality has historically made it worthwhile to invest in their products. As a result, when the Aiden was announced—despite the eye-watering price—I cheerily pre-ordered one.

While this is not a formal review, I’ll say I’ve had a generally very positive experience with its performance. The unique design allows you to brew everything from individual cups of coffee to an eight-serving carafe’s worth, all with a simulated pour-over-style brewing method. It uses a large, showerhead-like system to selectively pour temperature-controlled water in precisely the right places on the grounds, enabling even extraction.

What does this mean for the end user? I’ve been able to get just as much flavor out of my coffee beans as I would if I took the time to do a proper manual pour-over through a V60 or Kalita—except now I can automate it to have my coffee waiting for me when I wake up in the morning, or quickly batch-brew excellent coffee for myself and guests without spending half an hour making pour-over after pour-over after pour-over.

Some of the real magic of this brewer is the ability to download or create your own brew profiles, specifying variables like the coffee-to-water ratio, distinct water temperatures for the bloom and brew phases, how many “pulses” to use for the pour-over, how long to pause between each, and more.

Naturally, you can create your own profile for your favorite beans, but Fellow will also happily sell you beans paired with bespoke brew profiles as part of their weekly Fellow Drops program. Once a week, you’ll get a text with a limited-time offer for specialty beans; simply replying YES will charge your card and put the beans in the mail, while your internet-connected Aiden downloads the appropriate brew profile so it’s ready for your next brew.

Long story short, the performance is excellent, and—true to form for Fellow—I find it to be a very attractive piece of gear.

That said, there are some downsides.

The first is the materials. The primarily plastic body is a letdown after everything else I own from Fellow has been made with nice, sturdy materials. They’ve done a good job using completely food-safe, BPA-free plastics, and there’s a pleasing texture on the machine, but for the price, I’d love to see some aluminum or wood accents. To their credit, the included thermal carafe is made from lightweight, insulating stainless steel, but again, the handle is plastic.

The other (minor) shortcoming is the user interface. In an effort to maintain a clean, minimalist aesthetic, all interaction—from starting a quick brew to choosing a brewing profile—is done via a single clicky knob. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good-looking knob! But navigating through multiple sub-menus can feel like a chore, especially as my list of brew profiles grows over time.

The Catch

So, minor quibbles over materials and interface aside—what’s the real catch with the Aiden?

First things first: $365 is an awful lot to replicate the experience of making a pour-over with a ~$30 Hario V60. Is it worth it? Obviously, this depends on one’s budget, coffee standards, available time, and so on. That said, the price isn’t entirely out of line for excellent batch brewing—the highly regarded Technivorm Moccamaster runs $300–$350, depending on the model. Personally, I find the Aiden worth it given how much coffee I consume and how little time I have these days to savor the process of hand brewing.

The second possible catch is the internet connectivity. Do we really need our coffee makers to have WiFi? Is it worth adding yet another network attack vector to my house?

This one, I’m less convinced about. I’ll admit, as a tech nerd, there’s a part of me that wants remote control over all the things. But realistically, the only value of the WiFi connection is downloading profiles for Fellow Drops orders. Well, that and getting a nice notification on your phone when the brew is complete.

The good news is that the Aiden comes with built-in profiles for light, medium, and dark roast beans, as well as a cold brew formula. You can also manually create and save your own profiles on the device—though you’ll have to endure the clicky wheel for that. In other words, there’s no requirement to connect it to WiFi if you don’t want to.

Given you can still use the Aiden perfectly well without an internet connection, I’m not too concerned about security risks. And the coffee it makes is good enough that I’m comfortable letting this one out of the Lab and into the wild.

While I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, if you happen to sit in the middle of the Venn diagram circles of Can Afford It, Likes Pour-Over Coffee, Appreciates Minimalist Design, and Often Doesn’t Have Time or Energy to Make Your Own Pour-Overs, I can heartily recommend it.