An occasion is approaching on which I’d like to give a friend a gift. He loves coffee. I don’t drink it, at all, ever.
Grind & Brew machines seem to me as if they’d make better, fresher tasting coffee but do people really want to grind their own every time? Does a separate grinder offer more options?
I know that it needs to make 10 or more cups at once and must have “pause and serve”. (The demise of the pause and serve flapdoodle on his current basic model is what inspired this idea in the first place).
A friend’s uncle has a $3000 machine which is plumbed, filters the water, grinds the beans, and stores separate setting for him and each member of his household. I am not asking what is the best coffee maker in the world. I’d like to know what coffee maker I can get for between $60 and $100 that would make someone who likes coffee smile.
It makes one fairly large cup of coffee, in just two or three minutes, and best of all it makes it directly into a travel mug. My mom (who is one of the world’s great coffee drinkers) gave me one a few years ago, and I used it pretty much daily while I lived alone.
The site says they’re out of stock, but I’m pretty sure I saw one at Target the other day.
I have one of these, the Cuisinart Brew Central It’s programmable, has a charcoal water filter, a number of different settings to get the right temperature, and the carafe pours without dripping. Generally available for under $100. They also seem to have a grinding model that is similar to this one for about the same price. :dubious:
I’ll tell you why I don’t recommend the grind and drip all-in-one rigs. It wastes coffee because not all grounds get into the filter. It’s a pain in the ass to clean and dry.
For someone who loves and really appreciates coffee, I’d recommend a simple grinder (if they insist on DIY grinding), a french press, and a fun/whimsical/cool tea kettle to boil the water.
Paper filters spoil coffee taste. Avoid machines that use them.
I came into the thread to suggest pretty much just this solution, except that a 10-cup french press is damn near impossible to find. If the OP’s friend is open to making a cup or two at a time (and any afficionado will tell you it’s better when every cup is a freshly made up), then a french press and your own grinder is definitely the way to go (a water purifying pitcher also helps).
We have the same coffee maker (Cuisinart) as Cheesesteak, and we like it very much. More than any other unit we have ever had, and we’ve had a few in the past 40+ years. Bought it for $99 and not very long after, saw it at $69 at Costco. That was about a year ago, I think. Maybe a little more.
The coffee’s delicious.
We wouldn’t really want a do-it-all coffee machine. We have a stand-alone grinder, but don’t use it at all anymore. Pain in the neck.
I bought a Black & Decker ‘Café Noir’ coffee maker about a year and a half ago. It stopped making coffee a couple of weeks ago. It had the ‘pause and pour’ feature, made ‘ten cups’ (they obviously haven’t seen my coffee cup!), and it was programmable; but every Black & Decker coffee urn I’ve used appears to be some sort of ‘novelty dribble urn’. It takes a certain technique to pour without dribbling.
Yesterday I bought a Mr. Coffee 12-cup coffee maker with pause-and-pour and a timer. I’ve used it for the first time today. No ‘special technique’ required for pouring!
Another method is cold drip…the result is a coffee nectar that you need to refrigerate then just dump it in a cup of hot water…really good stuff!!! http://www.thecajunconnection.com/toddy.html
There doesn’t seem to be a pause and pour feature on the Cuisinart. (Correct me if I’m wrong, Cheesesteak.) And it’s the only maker I’ve ever seen that suggests you stir the coffee after it’s completely dripped, so that the strength is even divided throughout the pot.
I never do that.
Instead, I pour it into our Oggi carafe. When we want a cup later on, we nuke it for a minute or less. The carafe is better than the other one we had with a bulge on top that you press to get the soffee out and into the cup. This thing always drooled coffee on the counter unless you held the cup under it for awhile.
The new one doesn’t, or does so less frequently.
It has a little plastic pumping system that you remove to pour the coffee in and then replace. It’s all very simple, and it does the job. Google for it if you’re interested, but be careful. You can get a 12 cupper in the $20’s, and there are others far, far more expensive.
I might be nuts, but coffee left overnight in the carafe (even the old one) tastes as good or better than fresh.
Thanks, all. I should have been clearer. It’s not that he’s a connoisseur, as much as he likes to have a large amount of coffee around and I think it would be nice if it didn’t splash on the counter. I think for him I’ll look at the Cuisinart machines. If he starts spending more time at my house I might trade in my jar of Tasters Choice for one of those french presses.
My daughter makes coffee with a French Press, and it’s never hot enough. What’s more, the taste is unappealing. But I don’t complain because, well, she’s my daughter.
And while you’re here, thanks, gwendee, for the great tips on my bumper sticker question!
I also have the aforementioned Cuisinart machine, and have found it to be quite good.But if you want a great present for a coffee lover, sign him up for Gevalia coffee at www.gevalia.com. He will receive a free coffeemaker (very similar to the Cuisinart) and a subscription to their coffee service. For those who don’t want to grind their own (a major PITA, IMHO) this is about the freshest coffee around, with many different varieties to satisfy any coffee palate.
I have a Cuisinart, too, but I almost never use it. I have a French Press at home and one at work. I found one on close-out at Target for $4. Expect to pay $10-20 for one under normal circumstances. Spend the rest of the $60-100 you have budgeted on some really good coffee, like Kona or Jamaican Blue Mountain.
I have the carafe model from Gevalia, and I love it. It brews eight cups of coffee then shuts itself off, and the carafe keeps the coffee hot for hours without burning it. I went to Flamingoworld.com to compare the Gevalia deals before I joined, and got the coffeemaker (came with ten filters and a scoop, too) and a pound of coffee for $10 shipped. There are a lot of other models available as well, and you can cancel after the first shipment if you want. I haven’t canceled because I love the coffee, but I do have it set to only deliver every 3 months, sort of as a treat.
