My wife and I haven't been drinking milk drinks for the past few months, therefore, I keep the steam boiler off on my machine until the need arises, mostly for hot chocolate for the kids. The one downside to this is that the cups are cold and there's no hot water to heat them up. I started searching to see if there was a small electric cup warmer that I could buy and setup next to the machine and I came across a Jura cup warmer that appears to meet my needs. It stores a decent amount of cups, draws only 60 watts or so and has a timer. The downsides are I can't tell if my cups will fit, there are some reports that the plastic parts impart a smell onto the cups, the timer can only be programmed with a single time for on/off and it has a soft power button making it incompatible with a Wemo if I wanted more sophisticated programming (which I do). Is anyone aware of an alternative? My Googling has only turned up a single La Cimbali commercial cup warmer which is beyond overkill.

How about a reptile, aquarium, seedling, ... heating mat?

can't you simply flush some hot water from the machine into two cups put them aside while prepping and pour your shots into the cups? That is what I used to do with my Gaggia Classic.

I can, but I don't want to waste water. I use rpavlis water, so more cup heating means more one gallon jugs of distilled from the supermarket. When I had the Bosco, the passive cup warmer on top got the cups nice and toasty thanks to the huge boiler underneath. An active cup warmer would probably be a lot more efficient.

Jeff wrote:How about a reptile, aquarium, seedling, ... heating mat?

Well, that's interesting. After some googling it looks like the aquarium rabbit hole might be as deep as the espresso hole. Thanks for the recommendation, this might work. Is there a mat you could recommend?

My seedling mats are "vintage" so I don't know I can help much there. I'd go by size and suggest against self-adhesive if you're just going to lay it down somewhere. Stone countertops might benefit from a thin, heat insulator of some type as they seem to suck heat out of everything. I've used cardboard and thin foam sheets in the past, as well as bubble wrap.

mirror heating mat?

Using the steam wand to heat up the cups first might reduce water waste and not require a separate powered cup warmer.

I don't pre-heat my cups, but then again I don't (hardly ever) drink milk drinks.

Like you, I hardly ever make milk drinks, so I keep the steam boiler off. Without the extra heat of the steam boiler, the passive cup warmer barely gets hot and naturally I don't have any water from the steam boiler.

I just saw that Jura released a tiny cup warmer that has a physical on/off button. Doesn't seem to be available in the states yet though...

Marcelnl wrote:mirror heating mat?

What's a mirror heating mat? I did a quick Google search, but I'm getting different results, including an actual floor mat. Between this and the reptile mat I feel like I need to get out more.