If you’d rather sip tea than coffee, look for a Cuisinart kettle. Make sure you’ve reached the ideal temperature for different varieties, including oolong, green, herbal and black teas by consulting a built-in thermometer. Plus, it functions as a French press for coffee as well. You’ll pay a premium for a model with a thermal carafe. If you entertain a lot, such a model is worth the extra dollars, as you can bring the carafe to the table, where it will keep coffee hot for second cups. While Cuisinart’s insulated servers are top-rack dishwasher safe, they may not actually fit on the top shelf and the machine may not be able to thoroughly clean inside them.
All the parts are easily removable for cleaning by hand or in the dishwasher. During testing we found it simple to use and set up, the thermal carafe keeps coffee hot, but the 10 cup capacity is only enough to fill five decent-sized mugs. We had to play around with the quantity of coffee to get the flavor we were looking for, but overall the Cuisinart Grind & Brew Auto makes a decent cup of coffee for minimal effort. There will be a few parts to clean at the end of brewing, however. The machine will brew according to the button you pressed.
The water reservoir is filled by flipping up the top lid, and there’s a water level indicator with cup markers on the side of the coffee maker. The Coffee Center comes with a reusable gold tone filter, but you can also use a #4 paper filter to brew coffee. Doing so can overflow your filter basket, so choose either one or the other when brewing your morning joe.
Anyway, I went ahead and added two scoops of medium ground coffee and brewed up a 10 ounce cup. I have to say, I was surprised by how fast the brewing process was. However, even though my coffee was ready in under a minute, Hamilton Beach the results were underwhelming, to say the least. One thing I couldn’t help notice was how loud this coffee machine is while it’s brewing. Seriously, some of the pops and gurgles almost made me jump out of my seat!
When I’m not writing about products, I spend time either outside hiking and skiing or up in the air in small airplanes. For my latest obsessions, follow me onFacebook andTwitter (@danwroc). Some people love them and use them all the time, however. So, if you decide to use the warmer, I recommend using the lowest setting. Launched in 2008, Coffeeness is the go-to resource for reviews and comparisons of all things coffee-related, with content in five languages.
It is on the smaller side, so it doesn’t take up too much of your counter space. It is not programmable, so you will have to fill the water reservoir and turn it on manually every time you want to use it. It does, however, automatically shut off 30 minutes after brewing has finished and your dripless stainless steel carafe is filled. As with the previous two models, the DCC-450BK has a brew pause feature, so you can interrupt brewing to get your first cup sooner.
In general, if you use a K Cup or the reusable filter cup, it’s best to brew on the 8 ounce setting per the manufacturer’s instructions. The carafe is your standard glass model and holds a healthy 12 cups of your favorite brew. That’s twelve 5 ounce cups or less, depending on your mug size and how much – or little – you coffee lovers slept last night. Right off the bat, it’s easy to see that this is a good-looking Keurig K-Minimaker. Of course, I’m partial to the black version, but this model comes in quite a few colors. There’s your classic silver and white, but Cuisinart also offers a smart-looking copper model as well as a sleek navy blue.