Super-Automatic Not Working? 8 Checks First

The tank drops onto a pick-up valve at the bottom of its slot. Until it is fully down, the valve stays shut and the machine reports an empty tank with water visible through the side. Lift it out, check nothing has fallen into the slot, and lower it until it clicks or stops firmly. On Jura machines the tank also carries a magnet that a sensor in the body reads; the sensor only sees it in the last few millimetres.

Most tanks have a small float at the bottom with a magnet in it. Water lifts it, the magnet rises, and the machine knows there is water. Scale glues the float down after a year on Los Angeles tap water, and from then on the machine asks for water no matter how full the tank is. Empty the tank, shake it, and see whether the float moves. If it does not, a soak in descaler, or a straightened paper clip to nudge it, usually frees it. A float that has lost its magnet needs a new tank, which is cheaper than a visit.

The error that most often brings a Saeco or Philips to us reads E04, or on a Jura simply “insert brew unit”: the group is not where the machine expects it. Open the service door, take the group out by its grip, rinse it under the tap, and slide it back along its two rails until it clicks. If it refuses to go in, do not push harder. It is not in its rest position. Switch the machine off at the main switch, wait fifteen seconds for it to go quiet, line the arrow on the group up with the mark the manual shows, and try again.

A group that goes in dry and gritty wants its rails wiped and a little food-grade grease on the guides. A group that goes in and the error still comes back within a few brews is a worn group, and that is our most common Jura job.

The tray carries a magnet or presses a switch at the back of its slot. Pushed in slowly and all the way, it registers and the display clears. Pushed in and stopped a few millimetres short, by a stray puck behind it or a lip of the cup tray on top, the machine refuses to brew and tells you the tray is missing. Pull it right out, empty it, look into the slot, and push it back until it stops.

The machine does not weigh the pucks. It counts brews since the tray was last out, and the message comes when the count is reached. If you pull the tray to empty the water and put the container back with its pucks still in it, the count resets to zero with a full container, the real pucks pile up past the top, and the chute packs solid. De’Longhi puts it in capitals in the manual: empty the container every time the tray comes out, even with two pucks in it.

The second half of this check is the sensor. Coffee dust on the window where the machine reads the container gives the message with an empty container. Wipe it, and leave the tray out for five seconds before it goes back.

“Ground too fine” and coffee coming out in drops are the same complaint. The dial at the bottom of the bean hopper moves the lower burr, and it is designed to move while the burrs are turning. Turned with the motor stopped, it binds, and the setting does not change or changes by a jump. Start a coffee, and while the grinder runs, turn the dial one notch toward coarse. Wait two cups before judging it; the old grounds are still in the chute.

If you have not touched the dial and the coffee suddenly slows to drops, it is not the grind. Oils have dried into a plug where the group meets the spout, and the cleaning cycle with the tablet is the cure before any adjustment.

Oily, dark beans stick to each other and to the hopper wall, bridge over the throat, and the burrs run empty below a hopper that looks full. The display asks for beans; you add beans on top of the bridge; nothing changes. Push a finger down through the beans to the bottom and the grinder catches again. A drier, lighter roast keeps it caught. Super- automatic grinders were built for beans that pour.

A cleaning or descaling program stops between steps and waits: fill the tank, empty the tray, put a jug under the spout. Walk away in the middle of it and the machine stays in that step, sometimes for days, brewing nothing and showing a message that looks like a fault. Put the jug back, press the button it is waiting for, and let it run to the end. Only then does it return to normal service.