The home brewer is iconic. Mr. freaking Coffee, right? So while we spend most of our time thinking about industrial coffee makers, directly plumbed to water and often requiring higher amperage to heat water up fast enough to keep up with demand, the home machine is still found in most of our homes. Let's look at a couple of good ways to serve up a great cup each morning with the press of a button or two.
Bonavita 8-cup Enthusiast Coffee Brewer:
Coming in at around $150, this compact brewer with insulated stainless-steel carafe was my first foray beyond the $20 to $50 dollar basic Krups, Mr. Coffee, Black n Decker, Cuisinart department store jobs. Why this one? Mostly it came down to positive reviews about spray head providing full even saturation of the coffee bed and filter shape (flat bottom with angled sidewalls) which evenly and fully extracted the coffee creating a clean cup of delicious Bluebeard Coffee. I'd go with a washed Oaxacan coffee if they are in season.
Upside/Downside: Great price point for the quality overall. Also available in a 5-cupper, with available pre-infusion, and lots more. Stainless carafe keeps coffee hot without the carafe burner. Downsides include a flat bottomed basket being less suited for smaller batches. And, a deal breaker for many, the carafe lid for pouring brewed coffee needs to be put on after the brewing cycle. You can't brew with that sucker on, which is inconvenient. Note: We are now seeing this model come in a version with co-mingling lid and brew basket, so this may have been put to bed.
Technivorm Moccamaster:
This is the author's current home brewer, which we love, with reservations. Ours is model 79312 KGBT coming with a 40oz. stainless carafe. We see this online at about $320, which is a significant increase from the Bonavita, but we were looking for a new brewer and were curious enough about the Moccamaster's devoted following to give one a try. My wife (and Bluebeard co-owner!), works from home and so we grind 40-50 grams of coffee first thing each morning and I have my first cup lying in bed before I start pouring espresso in upon arrival at that morning's Bluebeard Coffee Roasters establishment.
Upside: This brewer makes delicious coffee at almost every quantity we've played with. The cone shaped basket means that even a small batch comes out delicious. And the spray head, although thin and sylish looking in a stainless bar, evenly and fully saturates the coffee bed for a nice full clean extraction and cup.
Downside: It's expensive. And I'll admit, kind of plasticy for the price. And it's fairly easy to create a mess of coffee and grounds on your countertop if things aren't done in the right order. The lever that the carafe and insert trigger below the brew basket for brewed coffee to exit basket into carafe is somewhat finicky, we've found. You need to drop ground coffee into basket, place basket into place within brewer and THEN slide in carafe below that to properly insure that the trigger lever below basket. It's becomes a dam when not done properly and folks who are just waking up don't always get this right, we've learned from experience. Annie has heard some choice expletives first thing in the morning when this process has gone awry. That it's often (but not always) her brew batches which result in said mess is not a thing we would be dumb enough to share. Still, we recommend highly with this caveat.
Coming soon: We've heard good things about Oxo brewers and there's a new Fellow brewer to check out so stay tuned for more soon in the space.