Cosori's New Juni Coffee Maker Mimics Barista Pour-Over and Uses AI to Tune Brews

Cosori, which TechRadar has previously covered for its air fryers, says the Juni takes a different approach from most drip coffee makers. Instead of showering water over the basket of ground coffee, the Juni uses a rotating basket and an extendable nozzle to recreate the movement and speed of a barista wielding a goose-neck kettle. According to Cosori, this creates a 360-degree spiral flow that evenly saturates the coffee grounds while avoiding channels that would cause uneven extraction. The process is consistent and repeatable, so once a user has found ideal brew settings for preferred beans, the same flavor profile can be produced each time.

Pierce Barnard, Head of Product Innovation at Cosori, said the mechanics were not the hardest part. "The physics weren't the difficult part," Barnard said. "The real work was understanding the human element: spending 18 months studying and mapping how skilled baristas move across the coffee bed and translating that motion into a system that can deliver the same result, every single morning."

The Juni can handle as much or as little of the brewing process as the user wants. It can use AI to help pick optimal settings and warn if the selected brewing profile is not ideal. A user can scan a bag of coffee beans, and the machine will generate a brewing profile based on the bean type and chosen cup size, then invite adjustments to agitation, temperature, flow rate and pause time. TechRadar reports it is not yet clear whether the Juni will only be able to scan a particular brand of coffee, as is the case with the Lavazza Assoluta espresso machine TechRadar tested earlier this year, which can only adapt its brew settings to Lavazza's own beans.

Manual mode lets users take control, though the AI can still warn if selected settings are likely to result in an under- or over-extracted drink. For simplicity, there are one-touch presets for different coffees and roasts. The Juni also has a timer, and Cosori lets users set different times for each day of the week, plus a reminder to prepare the machine the night before.

Despite its complexity, the Cosori Juni costs $299.99, about £220 or AU$430, according to TechRadar. That is significantly less than the similarly technical Fellow Aiden Precision Coffee Maker, which has a list price of $365, £365 or about AU$580. TechRadar says it hopes to test the Juni soon to see how the two advanced brewers compare.