Methodology

Allowed sources

Equipment specifications come only from the manufacturer: product pages, technical sheets, manuals and catalogues. Trade and production figures come from US federal datasets (USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, USITC DataWeb, the Census Bureau), from FAOSTAT and from the International Coffee Organization's historical tables. Places and coordinates come from Wikidata. Caffeine comes from USDA FoodData Central. Business facts come from open registers (the NCA member list, USDA Organic INTEGRITY) and the business's own site.

Retailers, review sites, forums and encyclopedias are never fetched for facts. Where a manufacturer does not publish a value, the field is empty and labelled not verified. A missing value is never zero, never "no" and never a guess.

Evidence labels

Sourced

Read directly from the manufacturer's page or document, with the URL and the date it was read.

Catalogue

From a manufacturer catalogue listing or spec summary rather than the product's own sheet; list prices carry this label because they are published, not observed.

Derived

Computed from sourced values, with the arithmetic stated in the field's note (current from power and voltage, for instance).

Not verified

No allowed source gave a value. The field is listed at the foot of the table so the gap is visible.

Units and conversions

Data is stored in SI: millimetres, kilograms, litres, watts, volts, amperes, degrees Celsius, bar, grams. Imperial equivalents are computed at render time (25.4 mm to the inch, 2.2046 lb to the kilogram, 33.814 fluid ounces to the litre, 9/5 C + 32) and shown beneath the SI value in a lighter type. Production is in thousands of 60 kg bags as USDA publishes it; imports in kilograms as USITC publishes them.

Silhouettes

Where the maker publishes a usable product photograph, the model page shows it, credited and linked (see product photographs). Every model also has a drawing, used wherever there is no photograph and on the shared-scale views. Each machine is drawn as a front elevation from its published width and height, in a shape chosen from its category: box with group head, lever, super-automatic, capsule or multi-group for espresso; electric, hand or shop grinder; drip, batch, pour-over, moka, immersion or siphon brewer; drum or air roaster; cartridge or reverse-osmosis water system. On hub, brand and compare pages every drawing in a set shares one scale, so sizes compare truthfully. When a maker publishes no dimensions the outline is dashed and stands at a typical size for its kind; when a drawing is too large for its card at the shared scale it is fitted and marked "reduced".

The compare radar

The shape on a compare page is drawn only from figures both makers publish. Each axis places a model among every model of its family in the database that publishes the same figure, from the smallest at the centre to the largest at the rim (a percentile). It describes size and position, not quality, and a figure one maker leaves unpublished is left off the shape rather than scored. With fewer than three shared figures no shape is drawn.

In the table beside it, a cell is lit as the better value only where nobody would argue (more boiler or hopper capacity, less retention, a lower list price, a feature present) and only when both makers publish the figure. "Not published" is never counted as a loss.

Illustrative set-pieces

The Shot Replay on espresso machine pages is shaped by the machine's own published pump type, boiler system, pre-infusion and profiling capability: a spring lever unloads, a thermoblock wobbles around its set point, a dual boiler holds. The curves show how each mechanism behaves in general, scaled to the dose and ratio you enter; they are not measured shots. The Burr Chamber on grinder pages draws the burr set at its published diameter and spins it at a speed set by its published rpm; its particle-size histogram and brew-method bands are illustrative, and the dial is limited to the grinder's published grind range. The drum on roasting-machine pages is sized by published batch capacity.

Electrical figures

Commercial machines often ship in several electrical configurations, so voltage, phase, current and power may be a single value, a list of options or a range. Where a single figure is needed (the Bar Planner and the commercial tables), the highest listed current is used. Where a maker publishes power and voltage but no current, current is derived as power divided by the lowest published voltage (divided by the square root of three as well for three-phase-only machines) and marked as derived.

Prose and images

Every description on the site is written here in its own words. Quotations of up to fifteen words are allowed when attributed in a page's claims. World Coffee Research's variety catalogue is cited as a reference and never copied. Atmospheric illustrations are generated locally in a fixed style and labelled as illustrations in the footer; machines are always drawn, never generated.