Taste rules: Thermal carafe a must
Dec 24 '00
Ever notice some coffee tastes great, and other coffee is undrinkable? Aside from the actual beans used, two critical factors affecting flavor (and therefore "drinkability") is 1. water, and 2. heat/time on burner.
Use excellent water, get better tasting coffee. That is why filtered water is critical. If you have a fancy built-in water filter in your kitchen, great, if you are a slave to your Britta, great, otherwise, get a coffee maker that has a charcol filter feature. Capresso machines have it, and so do some Phillips models. Filtered water, better tasting coffee.
Thermal carafe means that the brewed coffee is sealed in a thermos, and does not sit in a bare glass carafe, getting cooled by the surrounding air and burned underneath by a burner trying to keep it warm. Sitting on a burner for even as little as 8 minutes burns the insoluable components in the coffee and makes your coffee bitter, and after 15 minutes, awful. If you want to enjoy the last cup as much as the first, thermal is the way to go. Make sure the thermal carafe tightly seals to keep in the heat, and pours easily. That way, with a thermal carafe, you can get to that second cup a full hour (or more) after you had your first cup, and, your second cup will still taste just as great and be as fresh and hot as your first!
Get a maker with a programmable feature if you like to have coffee at the ready in the morning or at other times. I rarely use this feature, but it is nice to have and does come in handy (i.e. in the morning before work, or when you have a meeting or dinner party and want to set the coffee to be ready for the conclusion of the gathering.)
Built in grinders? Not really too important: the grinder can be separate or attached, but the important thing is that coffee does need to be ground in a conical grinder, not the miny food processors that have a blade that whirls about in a small chamber. Why? Uniform particle size means brewing will optimally extract coffee flavor and not coffee bitterness, and cone-grinders grind coffee evenly to a specified size, whereas metal blade grinders smash coffee into uncontrolled bits, usually too fine and powdery, or, if you try to avoid making it too find, then, to uneven and course.
I have a Capresso, which has the FOUR critical coffee maker features for me- 1. thermal carafe, 2. water filter, 3. programmable, and 4. drip-stop, plus, it has a movable water resevoir that I can cart around the kitchen to fill by its handle (actually, my kitchen sink hose reaches over to fill it). The problem with the Philips model which is thermal and has a filter is that it is NOT programmable, plus, it has a very small capacity, which is problematic when you are having a dinner with some friends over or a brunch. I also own the Mr. Coffee thermal machine, it is only$49 (on sale) compared to the $125 of the Capresso, but, it does NOT have a filter, and, it is difficult to pour out the last cup as it leaks through the brew-hole in the top of the lid when the carafe is angled down to pour out that last cup.
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