I don’t use the timer features of my current model so that’s no big deal.
Some use carafes to keep the coffee warm so you don’t need to keep it on a burner. My current model does not burn the coffee (to my taste anyway) but the model at work does within 20 minutes it seems…perhaps its the temperature. Do the carafes typically keep the coffee hot enough?
Pouring a cup while it is brewing is important to me…does that feature exist on the models with carafes?
One feature that might be worthwhile to me is a built in grinder…do they seem to work well?
Finally, in general, are there any other worthwhile features that you might recommend?
I just bought a KitchenAid coffee maker in the last month or so, and one thing I like about it is that the reservoir is detachable, so you can fill it up and pop it back into place rather than having to fill the pot with water and pour it in. It isn’t a “must have” feature but it’s certainly convenient at times.
To me, pretty much everything is secondary to making excellent coffee, pot after pot, year after year. Most makers lose that ability in the short to medium run, so the features really don’t matter much any more. What good is convenience if it results in lousy coffee?
I have gone through a succession of higher end coffee pots. the last couple were Kitchen aid at about eighty or a hundred bucks each. A year later, the coffee was not staying hot, and the quality was poor.
I replaced it with a Mr. Coffee that was twenty bucks. Four months and counting, the coffee is hat and tasty when I wake up, The brew timer and the pause and poor function work perfectly.
Other than pause-and-pour and timed brewing, my other big must-have is auto-shut-off. Never again do I have to wonder, on my way to work, “damn! did I turn the coffee maker off?” Once I got that horrible feeling on an airplane on the outbound leg of a week long trip. Got home (fortunately not burned down) and immediately went out and got the kind that shuts itself off after two hours.
The difference between a $20 Mr Coffee and a $150 KitchenAid is the styling, pretty much. Better materials and finish, probably. More “features,” absolutely. Better brewing, holding and longevity? Doubt it. (Not in my experience, anyway.)
Definitely an appliance to buy based on the ratings of coffee aficionados, not Consumer Reports or Amazon reviewers. Reminds me of the old CR reviews of muscle cars that bitched because the back seats were too small, the glove box wouldn’t hold a year’s supply of tissue boxes and they got lousy mileage.
But I don’t need a “stylish” coffee pot. I want to set it up the night before and when I wake up I want hot, tasty coffee ready when I walk into the kitchen. If I get up a little early and the coffee is still being made, I want to be able to take the pot off of the warming plate and fill a cup.
I don’t know of too many makers that don’t have a basket valve permitting a grab of the pot. But that, and timed operation, are contrary to quality brewing in the first place.
If you set up coffee 8-12 hours in advance, you’re either using ground (in which case nothing much matters) or the ground beans will lose a noticeable amount of flavor and quality sitting all night.
If you “grab a cup,” you’re disturbing the brew balance of the whole pot by taking a cup of early brew without it being diluted and blended with the remaining brew. It’s not likely to make either that first cup or the rest better.
If brew quality isn’t all that important to you - if setting it up overnight and grabbing a cup halfway through don’t make any difference in the result, to your taste, then it’s just a matter of finding a pot that has the features you like and perhaps CR thinks is a good buy. There are hundreds. Pick a color.
I’ll just note that truly good-quality makers brew fast enough - around 4 minutes a pot - to make the need for nighttime setup and a timer irrelevant. Some makers take as long as 15 minutes to finish, which is what leads to the whole chain of (IMVHO) faulty design and use choices. Kind of like shopping for a car with the biggest gas tank because all the models you look at get lousy mileage.
Were I to buy an automatic coffee maker, it would have to have a copper heating element rather than aluminum, so it would heat the water up quickly and evenly and keep it at the proper temperature throughout the brewing cycle. Since these types of coffee makers tend to cost a small pile of money, I’ll be pouring boiling water through coffee in a filter cone for the foreseeable future.
I’ve been really happy with grind-and-brew coffeepots.
You can get a 12-cup Cuisinart G&B for as low as $60 at Amazon (I’d link, but for some reason Amazon’s driving my computer crazy today; just search Amazon for ‘cuisinart grind and brew coffee pot’ - I’ve got the $100 version with the thermal carafe), depending on what features you want. But they all have pause-and-pour, AFAICT.
When I’ve had a carafe that wasn’t thermal, I’ve always just turned the coffeepot off after brewing was done, and nuked the coffee if I wanted to warm it. Sitting on a hot burner is generally bad for the coffee flavor, but not nuking AFAICT.
The thermal coffeepot with my coffeemaker keeps the coffee warm (not hot, just warm) for a few hours, but on weekdays I’m out the door <2 hours after waking up, so it doesn’t matter much. And there’s the microwave if I want it warmer.
I don’t plan to ever have a coffee maker without a carafe again. Heated models always taste burned to me within 15 or 20 minutes. I am currently hanging on for dear life to an old Black and Decker with a wonderful stainless steel carafe that keeps the coffee hot for hours. The filter wore out and the platform has eroded, but I’m keeping it as long as it still works.
The carafe’s the thing for me, too – I never would’ve thought it was a big deal, but the last cup of coffee tastes the same as the first, and I don’t have to worry about turning off the coffee maker since it turns off automatically after brewing. We have a Cuisinart model, and I’ve had warm (not hot, but still warm) coffee from its carafe the next morning after the morning it was brewed.
You can also take the carafe out to the living room, or the patio, or a picnic table out in the yard – very handy.
FWIW I gave up on the 12 cup maker and use a 4 cup & a 5 cup maker sometimes at the same time. (yes I know that is only 9 cups).
I found it works better and faster on how I use coffee. When is is just me I use only a single one , either the 4 cup or 5 cup model (simple low cost Mr Coffee models). When I have company I use both together, that gives me the advantage of getting 2 autodrips going at the same time, so is faster then a single coffee maker. It also allows me to make 2 different brews if I so desire.
Both have the pour and pause feature. I have the 2 different size only because I bought them at separate times and that is what they had. It also allows me to open the water fill area without having to move the coffee makers out from under the cabinet, which i had to do with the 12 cup model.
One word of concern if you decide to do this, ,make sure your electric panel can handle it, mine has no issues with this plus 2 toasters on the same circuit, but it may be a issue for some.
Thanks for the input! Here’s another feature that I’m wondering about… the coffee goes into a reservoir and it is dispensed like the water dispenser on the front of a fridge.
Anybody like those…how about removing any old coffee and cleaning it??
I had a Hamilton-Beach “carafe-less” maker for a while. Didn’t care for it on a number of levels, but I did take it to a long-time work site and it was more convenient because I could just turn to that part of my desk, top off my mug, and go back to work.
Really, this whole thread boils down to a choice: do you want first-rate coffee, or some degree of “convenience”? IMHO, and IME, most of the above “convenience” gimmicks reduce coffee quality, some of them substantially.
Absolutely untrue, at least in some cases. Yes, you can buy a $150 (or more) coffee maker that is just bells and whistles. But there’s a ton of difference between a Technivorm or Capresso and a $20 Mr. Coffee maker, and all of it is around better brewing.
Higher end drip makers will regulate the brew time and temperature to a much more exact standard than the $20 one, resulting in richer, tastier coffee. I personally can’t drink most drip coffee; it’s just bad. But the coffee that comes out of one of the makers that hold the water temperature around 200 degrees and makes sure the water stays in the ground the perfect amount of time make coffee that is hard to beat with any other techniques (I’m looking at you, French Press). It’s definitely worth the money if you want the convenience of drip and delicious coffee.
I have found little difference between the $25 or so tier and those up to around $150 in terms of actual brewing quality, especially after a few months to a year of operation. The very cheap ones (Target has some that go down to around $8, IIRC) are uniformly awful, of course. But $100 or more does not necessarily get you anything better than $30 or so except bells, whistles, “features,” “convenience” and perhaps generally better build and materials.
Technivorm? Absolutely wonderful. Also $300 and up. I love mine. About two years in on this one and it still brews an absolutely perfect [del]pot[/del] carafe every time, in about 4 minutes flat. The only bell, whistle or feature it has is a brew basket valve that is more for safety than convenience.
I have an old Braun that makes decent coffee; it was a gift & came with a gold filter. Gold filter…! three-note brass line
In the machine… it makes you that Midas Cup!
(…can’t make this up!)
I’ve been told that using actual coffee through a filter is way out of date though (by someone asking for a machine for Christmas),
so you’ll just have to have the modern coffee maker discussion: Pods vs K-cups. They like Pods, other people like K-cups.
