Gina By Goat Story Coffee Review - The Versatile Take on a Traditional Drip System - 7/10 Must Buy

Pros:

Bluetooth compatibility

Excellent coffee brewing system

Versatile

Built in Scale

Cons:

Expensive

Difficult cleaning requirements

Time intensive for your morning Coffee

The Gina by Goat Story is a fantastic piece of coffee hardware. It excels at making a fantastic cup of coffee and an excellent cold brew if you have the time and patience.

It has an accompanying app, and the Bluetooth hardware built right into the base of the brew system making it a beautiful centerpiece for your countertop. The app is your access to the onboard scale, as well as a brew timer and even a storage for your most loved recipes. I have found after using it for an extended period of time that the app has the occasional glitch that the scale will sometimes change the weight, either by spiking to several thousands of grams, or zeroing out part way through the brewing process. Gina does find itself on the upper price bubble of the manual drip brew systems. The base system comes in at a staggering 220€ (248.63 USD) which is quite hefty compared to your basic pour over brew system.

You do get as I mentioned the added versatility that comes with the system, you can use their immersion, drip, and cold brew systems all in one artfully designed piece of equipment. To give you a picture of my normal day, I will make a cold brew pitcher overnight. I use the scale every time to make sure that I am using the proper ratio for the given bean, grind it coarsely and let it rip. This will take about 8 hours for you to brew the entirety of the provided carafe of cold brew. I will then store the excess in the fridge in an airtight bottle. Then I will boil some water and make a morning cup using the pour over method. Again, you can weigh the beans and conduct most of the brewing all within the system, however, you will find that you still suffer the same expenses as a traditional pour over system, you have to purchase the filters for both the pour over and the cold brew system, a grinder if you do not already have one on hand, and gooseneck kettle for the increased water pouring control. Above all, the largest expense that you will incur with this system is time.

You will still have to weigh and grind your beans (I use a manual conical burr grinder for the perfect amount), you will have to heat up the water, and you will have to conduct a pour over ritual. This includes the oh so important blooming process, and the 5 or so minutes for liquid gold to fully drip. You are looking at an average time investment of 15-20 minutes before you get your morning pick me up (if you ask me that is a little too long) and for this reason alone, I have searched for other gadgets to make sure that my first cup of morning coffee touches my lips as soon as possible. I will say though that on the weekends I break out my Gina and enjoy an expertly brewed and well controlled cup of coffee when I have a little less time constraints.

If you are comparing this system to your traditional pour over system, where you simply put a dripper over your mug, you will likely get a similar result, but the versatility of the Gina system cannot be understated. The drip nozzle can be toggled to keep more water in the drip vessel to extract the maximum flavor out of your beans. You can fully close it when you are using the immersion feature, and you can slow it down to a cadence of 5-6 drips a minute for the cold brew. I have found that from time to time the drip nozzle does get stuck from coffee residue if you do not clean it after every brew, which brings me to my final, albeit, minor grip with Gina. There are some rather tedious cleaning restraints for the vessel. Given that it has to be hooked up to a power source, you cannot simply put it in the dishwasher. The drip vessel is hand wash only, the scale and stand section must be wiped down with a cleaning cloth or wet wipe, and the carafe itself might be the only thing that I would recommend putting in the dishwasher. The lid to the system would also be okay, but I have experienced some color fade on the ceramics while doing so.

In summation, I would still recommend this to my closest friends, I have been using it for the better part of 2 years and I still rave about it when someone asks what I brew my coffee through. The built in scale as well as added versatility save me a significant amount of counter space when they are all integrated into the system and if you have morning time allotment to utilize it, I would say that it is a staple in any modern kitchen with the sleek looks to match. I'm sure that you can pick up a traditional drip system, a competent cold brew system, and a percolator, French press or other immersion system and I still don't think that they would total the overall cost of Gina, but when the product looks this good, I personally would take the Gina by Goat Story 10 times out of 10. And although I generally stay away from the immersion system (I don't feel my palate gets enough flavor from the brewing process), I would say Gina is very well rounded and deserves a spot in your coffee brewing arsenal.

Thank you so much for reading my thoughts on the Gina by Goat story, if you have any other coffee systems that you would like for me to review please let me know in the comments below.

Don’t forget to leave a like on this post if you found it helpful and don't forget to check out the video review.