Posted: 6/12/2010 6:15:14 AM EDT
| I want a new coffee maker. I have the standard Mr. Coffee kind now, but it just makes "okay" coffee. Is there anything out there that makes decent coffee that isn't too expensive? I |
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I don't have one yet but my next will be a Bunn. It dosen't have any timer or anything on it, just a on off switch, but that sucker will make a pot in about 3 min flat.
One like this one: Bunn |
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I don't have one yet but my next will be a Bunn. It dosen't have any timer or anything on it, just a on off switch, but that sucker will make a pot in about 3 min flat. One like this one: Bunn My parents have one- when we go to visit them it's awesome!!! 3 minutes is no lie and makes a great cup of coffee  A french press is good if your in no hurry like was said above
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Quoted: I don't have one yet but my next will be a Bunn. It dosen't have any timer or anything on it, just a on off switch, but that sucker will make a pot in about 3 min flat. One like this one: Bunn That's because it keeps a tank of hot water hot all the time. Makes sense for restaurants, but is kind of a pain for home use if you have hard water. The on off switch is for the pot warmers. |
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I don't have one yet but my next will be a Bunn. It dosen't have any timer or anything on it, just a on off switch, but that sucker will make a pot in about 3 min flat. One like this one: Bunn That's because it keeps a tank of hot water hot all the time. Makes sense for restaurants, but is kind of a pain for home use if you have hard water. The on off switch is for the pot warmers. Agreed. If you want your coffee "right now" when you get up, I'd suggest a programmable coffee maker. Put your coffee & water in the night before and set it to brew 20 minutes or so before you wake up. Better than Bunn, IMO, because you're not paying 24/7 to keep the water hot. |
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I did this recently too. My old coffee maker was a Cuisinart 12-cup grind and brew type machine. The carafe ( ok "pot" ) kept coffee hot for a couple of hours, but was hard to clean and had a sloppy pour. I really liked loading the coffee maker with beans and having fresh ground coffee when I woke up. Unfortunately, the chute from the grinder to the basket would become caked with coffee and cause catastrophic coffee failures if you didn't stay on top of it. I experimented with different beans, theorizing that oily beans caked the chute up quicker. Turns out that any bean would clog the machine over time, and I think it's due to the grinder in the machine heating the beans up during the grind phase and the "cake" forms when the ground coffee cooled on the way to the basket. After a couple of mornings of waking to a pool of water on the counter when the machine malfunctioned or a pot full of hot water instead of coffee, I decided to replace it.
I looked into the Keurig pod-style coffee makers, but the coffee pods were between 4 and 8 times as expensive as whole bean coffee. I have acquaintances who rave about Keurig, but I couldn't take the plunge. I did some intarwebs research, and the Cuisinart I had was consistently well ranked on Amazon and Consumer Reports. I considered buying another Cuisinart, hoping there had been product updates since my last purchase. That was until I saw a unit in a big box somewhere; exactly the same. I was seriously considering going back to a grinder and Mr. Coffee when I found a Capresso 10-cup model that was similar to the Cuisinart. It's features were nearly identical to the Cuisinart except for two things; a smaller capacity hopper and a burr grinder. I decided to give it a try ( got it at Bed Bath and Beyond and they have a reasonably liberal return policy and I had one of those ubiquitous 20% coupons they mail out ). After a couple of months and lots of checking, the chute from the grinder to the basket is still clear of caked coffee and no early morning malfunctions. My guess is the burr grinder doesn't heat the beans up as much, letting the ground coffee flow better down the chute to the basket. The coffee is better since I can pick whatever beans I like. The pot is much easier to clean since I can get my hand in it, but it doesn't keep coffee hot as long ( maybe two hours ). I'm not quite in love with it, but it'll do until something better comes along. |
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Believe it or not, I have had repeated excellent results with General Electric drip coffee makers. I am on my second one. I tried a Mr. Coffee and it made lousy coffee for some reason.
My GE has a timer on it, so if I am going hunting or otherwise getting up at O'dark-thirty I can set it up the night before and it'll be ready when I wake up. This is an excellent "regular" coffee maker. I think it was 20 or 30 bucks from Walmart. And this recommendation comes from someone who you might think of as a coffee snob, because my other coffee machine is a $600 Rancilio Silvia, so I am very fussy about my coffee... |
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Are there any advantages to a percolator style over a drip maker? A perc wrings about the most caffeine you can get out of your bean. Some people dig the taste, some don't. I like the french press sometimes, and examples are pretty cheap. I think it gets a lot more flavor out of the coffee than drip or perc, but it doesn't pull out as much caffeine as a perc. If you get one, I suggest glass, but don't use a metal utensil to stir or you stand a fair chance of breaking it. It doesn't take much when the pitcher is full of nearly boiling water. I think the press gets more flavor out of good coffee than any other method. I even think it does pretty well with the standard stuff we find in the supermarket. The flavor can go from "mild to wild", just depending on the water temperature and length of brew. I also have a Bialeti (Bialetti? whatever), moka pot. It's a very traditional way of making a type of stovetop espresso. I do like it sometimes, particularly with Illy espresso coffee. It is not espresso in it's truest form, but it's what passes for common household coffee in a lot of Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Quite good. If you want to try an unusual method of making coffee on not so much loot, either of these are fine options. Another neat one is to find a vietnamese coffee filter. They look like this, and cost just a few bucks: 
They take a little practice to get right, and evidently the closest one can find to VN coffee in the US is the chicory coffee mixes one gets like Cafe DuMonde. Commonly VN coffee is made by pouring a finger or so of sweetened condensed milk into a small cup. The coffee maker is placed on the cup, and the coffee floats on the milk. One can mix it or just drink the coffee off the top and ignore the condensed milk. I mix 'em and sometimes ice the stuff down too. It produces a thick, oily jet fuel that I would happily drink until my heart exploded. I played with this stuff for a while, but convenience drew me back to the standard American drip brewer... The cheaper the better. Been using a ten dollar Mr Coffee at the office for years and just replaced the same thing at home with a slightly nicer model, but only because we wanted one we could set up on a timer the night before. |
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french press if I an't in a hurry and the Kuerig if I don't wanna wait 2 great options if you aren't a large volume drinker. I typically drink only a cup the whole day Bodum's coffee press mugs can be really neat if you want to take good stuff with you. I did that for a while, just needed to wait for water to boil and then out the door. I'd drop the press halfway to work 
They're also incredible for camping and such. People fuck coffee up SO BAD when they're roughin' it sometimes. With one of these mugs, you can boil water any way possible and in any container, and wind up with gourmet coffee anywhere. I had two and used 'em both quite to death, and am in need of a few more
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Quoted: I don't have one yet but my next will be a Bunn. It dosen't have any timer or anything on it, just a on off switch, but that sucker will make a pot in about 3 min flat. One like this one: Bunn I have that exact model, but it's all black. It makes a pot in three minutes flat, because it's always on, and keeps a reservoir of water hot. Just dump in water to replace the hot water it will use, close the lid, and three minutes later...a pot of hot, awesome coffee. |
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The two most important factors for drip coffee makers to make a good cup of coffee are: 1) the temperature of the water - most don't get hot enough. and 2) how long it takes to brew ... and faster is not necessarily better - the water needs to be flowing over grounds for an appropriate length of time. |
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Black and Decker SmartBrew DCM2500. I bought my 5 cup model brand new about three years ago from Sears for about $30 and I love it. I've heard of problems with the newer ones, but the ones with that model number are GTG, imo, and I believe you can still buy them on Amazon. It comes with one of those metal filters which is really nice. |
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If you want to spend ~$100, get a Bunn.
They use copper tubing (or at least they used to), and supposedly this makes for a much better cup of coffee than plastic tubes. Keurig is good, if you don't mind making coffee one cup at a time all the time. (Not sure if they have larger models, but the only one's I've seen are "single cup" models). Krups makes good coffee. Hell any of them will make a good cup of coffee if you know what you are doing. I just have a cheap POS coffee maker, but I'm sucking down a mug of coffee right now and it tastes pretty good. Someone once told me years ago that the secret to making good coffee is to start with VERY COLD water. True or not, I don't know, but that's what I've always done. |