Coffee trade shows unfortunately often skimp on real news. New colors for well-known espresso machines are hyped as innovations, gentle revisions from established manufacturers are marketed as the latest craze. So it's all the more wonderful when real innovations hide among the stands that repeat year after year at the World of Coffee — like Datum Coffee.
Datum Coffee is an Austrian espresso machine startup, founded by two 28-year-old mechanical engineering and design students Christoph Konheisner and Nikolaus Potapow. What have the two developed? Two prototypes of an espresso machine and grinder that are connected to each other and make espresso using the latest technology. The product is not yet finished, but the concept is promising — and my personal trade show highlight at the World of Coffee in Brussels.
This article is based on a trade show encounter with a prototype at the World of Coffee 2025 in Brussels. It is explicitly not a complete Kaffeemacher test. All technical specifications come from conversations with the founders and from the Datum website. We can only judge what the machine can do in everyday use once we have a production machine in our hands and put it through our test protocol. We will do that as soon as it is available.
Who is behind Datum Coffee?
Chris and Nikolaus, mechanical engineering students from Lower Austria, based in Innsbruck. In around two and a half years, they developed the two presented prototypes, a concept, and the associated software, and presented them at the trade show in preliminarily 3D-printed housings.
The two founded the company essentially with their own funds, without external investors, with government funding in the background. What drove them was a question many beginners ask: Why do people have to throw away multiple espressos until the grind setting is right? As an answer, they developed datum.coffee.
The Concept: Machine, Grinder and Platform as a System
Datum Coffee is not a single device, but a duo consisting of an espresso machine and grinder that work together in a networked fashion and are coordinated via a platform. This sounds like marketing, but it's technically actually the core of the system: the two devices exchange data, adjust parameters to each other, and thus reduce the manual effort required during setup.
The idea behind this is not new. We have described the principle behind such networked systems in detail in the article "Grind-by-Sync: Grinder and Machine in Dialogue". What Datum Coffee does is a consistent further step in this direction — with the difference that the platform here is designed from the outset to be open to roasteries and, from a future perspective, to other machine manufacturers as well.
What the Machine Announces
At first glance, the "58-mm portafilter" seems surprising: it does away with the classic handle and instead consists of an oversized sieve insert.
Heat is provided by a thin-film heater. The heater heats up while the grinder grinds — according to the founders, this takes about 10 seconds. Whether and how a preheating of the portafilter is planned beforehand is still open. This is not an unknown technology: the Maro Model 1, one of the most technically advanced machines we have tested so far, also uses a thin-film heater (FTH) and achieves heat-up times of 4 minutes with it. The Roxy espresso machine, which also works with a thin-film heater, achieves similar speeds.
What Datum Coffee additionally brings: an automatic tamper, integrated directly into the brew group. A hydraulically controlled piston moves down, tamps with adjustable pressure (the demo showed 20 kg), and then brews automatically. This means: insert portafilter, press start — the machine handles the rest. This is reminiscent of what Sage does with an integrated tamper on some devices, but with the difference that the tamper at Datum is not in the grinder, but in the brew group. The portafilter can therefore be removed and the coffee grounds distributed manually before the machine takes over.
According to the Datum team, a flow sensor, pressure sensor and temperature sensor are installed. Flow and pressure profiling should be possible. Demos of a corresponding app or browser view show the programming of stages and exit conditions.
Two variants of the Datum espresso machine are planned: with and without a milk wand. According to the founders, the milk wand will also be smart, with a temperature sensor and automatic steam control. The water tank holds 0.8 liters and has an integrated water filter.
What the Grinder Brings
The grinder grinds with 64-mm flat burrs, a brushless motor with adjustable speed and an integrated scale. Grind-by-Weight unlocks many smart functions of such a setup. This is complemented by electronic grind adjustment in micrometer increments. An LED display on the grinder shows the most essential information; more complex settings are made via app or browser.
The Grind-by-Sync principle is deeply integrated: if the machine notices during extraction that the flow is too fast or too slow, it sends a signal to the grinder, which adjusts the grind setting for the next extraction. We know this principle from other systems — the Mahlkönig Xenia with the E64 WS pursues a similar approach, as does the startup nunc. with its smart espresso machine. What Datum Coffee promises is an open variant that does not rely on proprietary beans and exclusive partner roasteries from the outset.
The Platform: Recipes via App, Open to All
When you buy a new coffee bean pack, you take a photo of the label with the app once. The platform recognizes the product, if it has been registered, retrieves a recipe stored by the respective roastery, and sends grind size, extraction parameters and drink type directly to the grinder and machine. At the next extraction, the grinder adjusts itself. Those who want to can intervene manually — the Pro mode allows multi-stage brewing profiles with free control of temperature, flow and pressure.
For roasteries, registration on the platform is planned to be free. In the long term, the platform should also be opened to other machine manufacturers. Datum is thinking of a kind of open operating system for networked espresso devices. This sounds ambitious — and it remains to be seen how and to what extent this can and will actually succeed. The value of a platform increases with the number of users, and an open platform has a better chance of remaining relevant than a closed ecosystem.
When Does the Machine Come Out?
At the end of 2026, Datum Coffee is planning a Kickstarter campaign. Those who want to pre-order can note this down now. Delivery is planned for the end of 2027. The founders freely stated what the machine should cost at the trade show: on the website, a price of €1,199 is visible for early buyers, regularly €1,499 later — and that applies to machine and grinder together. For comparison: the Mahlkönig Xenia alone costs significantly more. Whether Datum Coffee will actually stick to this price remains to be seen. As an announcement, it is remarkable.
Classification: What This Means
The direction in which Datum Coffee is thinking is not singular. Networked systems consisting of grinder and machine are becoming a real trend in the home segment. Mahlkönig shows with the Xenia and the E64 WS where established manufacturers want to go. nunc. has had a similar concept with NFC bean recognition for some time, but is still in the process of rolling out production. Maro is building a learning platform around their machine with the Smart Profiler and the Maro Home extraction database.
What sets Datum Coffee apart from these systems: the automatic tamper as part of the brew group, the open platform idea, and the entry price, which — if it comes as indicated — is significantly below what comparable systems cost.
Whether all of this will work in the production machine as promised at the trade show remains to be seen. We will test it when the time comes. Until then: a promising startup, a well-thought-out concept — and two machine builders from Innsbruck who know what they want to do.
We have made a point to order a machine as soon as the Kickstarter goes live.
Conclusion
Datum Coffee is not yet a finished product, but a prototype with a clear concept. Espresso machine and grinder as a networked duo, automatic tamping in the brew group, an open platform for roastery recipes. The direction is right, the team seems competent, the announced price would be, if it comes, a real exclamation mark. What the machine really does, we can only say after a complete test with our protocol. That will follow as soon as a production machine is available. Until then we'll keep an eye on Datum Coffee — and we're curious.
Kickstarter: planned end of 2026 · Delivery: planned end of 2027 · Price: €1,199 (early buyers) / €1,499 regular — machine + grinder as a set · More: datum.coffee
