[Review] GINA: the smart coffee instrument

I'm not a professional barista or even an experienced coffee lover. I like a good cup of warm coffee, however most of the ones I drank so far were crafted outside. I studied a bit the art of brewing hot coffee, so I know how it works, but I have 0 practice to it.

Back to December 2016, I joined the Gina (https://www.goat-story.com/products/gina) adventure on Kickstarter as I was looking for a coffee system that would help me to accomplish the perfect good cup in the most easy way possible. At that time, I was mostly drinking Nespresso coffee at home, having young babies to take care of and no time and patience for other things.
The Gina coffee machine seemed very promising as it would include a scale, be connected to a smart phone and giving a step-by-step approach to brewing coffee. It also offered a cold brew capability that charmed me a lot at that time.
A bit more than a year later, in February 2018, I received my long awaited Gina machine and brewed my very first hot coffee with it. Yes, that's right, for the past year, I only made cold drip coffee at my place and never ever tried to brew hot coffee (despite having found an old chemex that my wife bought several years back).
This article aims to share with you, dear reader, a real true first experience with the Gina and coffee brewing. Somehow, it's a good test to see if the promise from the makers (Goat Story) has been fulfilled.

I will cut the chase and give you my first impressions. Let's start with the good stuffs:

• Nice modern design (I have the black version). It's well built, from the arch to the glass. The tower seats well in the living room.
• It comes with everything you need (some paper filters) and pre-charged. I took me only few minutes to connect it by bluetooth to my iPhone. On the above photo, you see the machine plugged, but it's only to charge it. You is totally wireless for many hours after.
• The system is super easy to clean.
• The glass jar can contain about 2 mugs of coffee. That's good enough for me.
• The scale seems accurate. I weighted my beans first with a Hario scale and Gina gave the same number.

Now, the less good critics:

• I tried the cold drip system. It didn't pass the test for me (and I am experienced in this area). The cold drip container's joint is just odd and doesn't hold the system horizontal. Quite difficult to explain, I let you check the photo. In addition, the makes recommends to use 50gr of coffee for this method due to the size of the coffee container. Well, it wasn't easy to have such amount of coffee in the cold drip module. I have to do compress the grounded coffee gradually as there is not much space there. The cold drip container should be at least 1cm taller. Last, the diameter of this module is not very wide, not fitting the usual aero press filters (they have to be cut with scissors).
• The iPhone app is super confusing, for both hot and cold brew. after few hot brew, I think I start getting it... but still not 100% sure. It's a clear miss for me. That was a very important selling point, the step-by-step easy approach. The result is that you spend more time trying to understand how the app works than brewing the coffee itself. It definitely have to be redesigned.
  Also, one big disappointment from a cold drip lover: for the app to know how long the brewing will take, it requires you to tap on the screen to know the drop frequency. Come on... they could have figured something out with a sensitive scale?

To conclude, I like the system's design and I am not ashamed to have it in my living room. The design is neat and very appealing. It can brew a good hot cup if you know how to make one (forget about cold drip if you're serious about it... really). The whole smart phone concept is a miss. It can still be fixed with a new app... I keep my fingers crossed!