Pros: An all-in-one time saver with automated timer control, good brewing mechanism, decent features.
Cons: Cleaning the grinder, size, a little noisy.
The Bottom Line: Save time making up to 12 fresh ground cups of coffee at home every morning! Give that time back cleaning the grinder assembly every evening!
customeright's Full Review: Cuisinart DGB-500 12-Cup Coffee Maker
It started in college as a kind of experimental thing. A multi-purpose ‘learning aid’ and hangover helper. With my first job it turned into a ‘productivity enhancer’. And now it’s pretty much a full fledged addiction. Coffee: my drug of choice. But after years of loving coffee to the tune of 2, 3, and 4 cups a day (maybe 5…ok sometimes 6), and relishing in the many choices of coffee flavors and types, I had no idea that I was really only half addicted. But how could I only be half addicted after so many years? Because simply, I had never really tasted fresh coffee (at home at least). Although I always shopped for the best pre-ground brands, I still was buying pre-ground. I figured, what does it matter? Coffee ground is just the whole beans in little pieces; there’s no difference.
But then we received the Cuisinart ‘Grind and Brew’ DGB-500 Automatic Coffee maker as a gift. And like a gateway to a harder habit, home grinding turned my simple addiction into an obsession. The coffee was noticeably better; fresher, less bitter, more pure. Then, I became hooked.
(How much of an obsession did it turn into? Before the Grind N’ Brew, I still thought of coffee as a simple caffeine source. Now I roast my own beans.)
Why might the DGB-500 be for you?
I’ll cut right to the chase. There’s really only one reason I would recommend the DBG-500: the all-in-one ‘convenience’. I put convenience in quotes, because in reality, being all-in-one causes a single inconvenience that I’ll cover shortly (although you can defer that inconvenience until later). But in general having everything right there in a self-contained apparatus is very nice. Having it all work together on a single timer is also very nice. And at the heart of the matter, it makes a good cup of coffee, up to 12 of them in fact.
Why the DGB-500 was for us.
At first, the DGB-500 was not for us. We barely had space for it on the counter where we used to live. But when it arrived on our doorstep, I realized that it actually took up a little less space than our old coffee maker would have, if it had to share the space with a separate coffee grinder sitting next to it (at least that was my rationale). The reason space is important is because my lovely wife has a syndrome: nocoffee-clutterus itus. That means that I’m only allowed to have one visible coffee related appliance on the counter at all times, or she’ll break out in hives. Ok not hives - she just gripes a lot. (Happy wife, happy household). So given her ‘condition’, along with our storage limitations in our tiny apartment at the time, I could not justify a coffee grinder although I had been somewhat interested in one.
But then this Cuisinart…thing…. showed up. I remember the moment well. I opened the box, I squeezed the contraption into a tight little space on the counter. I felt the cold gaze of my new bride looking on with displeasure. But she said nothing. She knew that she couldn’t complain because: a) it was a wedding gift, and the people who gave it to us could come over at ANY time (I made sure to remind her of this), and b) it was all-in-one so there was no separate appliance. So I got my grinder and she had no ‘itus’ attacks, luckily for me.
The Footprint
As noted earlier, the DGB-500 is not the smallest appliance on the counter (you can see the specs here: http://www.epinions.com/Cuisinart_Grind_and_Brew_Coffeemaker_DCG_500BK_Small_Appliances/display_~full_specs ). Not that it’s on a dishwasher or refrigerator scale, but for a countertop appliance, it seriously competes with your larger sized toaster ovens. Of course it does brew 12 cups, and it has the grinder built in. So you can’t expect it to be too small.
The Pro’s
Given the right conditions (fresh quality beans and good water) the DGB-500 makes 12 cups of good coffee. I can’t say that it makes the best coffee ever, but it’s definitely not bad. In fact, I’d give the machine a 7 on a 10 scale for at-home drip coffee taste (on average with multiple brands, types, and grinds). I think the good taste is in part due to the design of the filter cover lid. It disperses the water into the filter chamber in a few areas instead of a central ‘drop zone’ like many. Also, the DGB-500 has a built in charcoal water filter that fits into the reservoir. That’s a very nice feature if you only have tap water available.
But where the DGB-500 gets a 10 (well, a 9) is in having the grinder built in. If you do insist on fresh ground coffee in the morning (and why wouldn’t you?), but you don’t have the surface space or shelf space for a separate coffee maker and grinder, then this machine definitely fits the bill. (But you will need some vertical space, it’s 18 in. tall!)
The DGB-500 will also save you at least a good minute or two in the morning because you won’t have to grind your beans in a separate machine and transfer the grounds to your filter. It literally shoots the grounds right into the filter basket for you. Then it starts the brew process. It’s actually quite simple. The grinder also works with the timer. So you can set the auto-start feature at night, and at 5:30am the next morning you can be ‘pleasantly’ awoken by the nerve-inducing sounds of a weed whacker in your kitchen. Whirrrrrrr-crunch-crunch-crunch!!!!! (Be prepared the first time, and warn any family members within earshot of the kitchen.)
Other handy features
-A drip-stop feature where you can pull the decanter out while it’s brewing, and it won’t drip on the warming plate. (Pretty standard feature on modern makers these days).
-Grinder off button, in case you want to load your own grounds and not use the reason you got the machine in the first place!
-4 cup option, in case you want to brew only 4 cups
-An internal graduated cup measure inside the tank
-Almost all parts are easy to remove and clean (mostly)
-The charcoal filter is easily removed with a long filter holder
-For safety, it has a mechanism that prevents the grinder from turning on without the grinding cover firmly in place and the top cover of the machine down.
-The grinding ‘blade’ is not sharp so it won’t cut you when you wash it, and you don’t have to sharpen it or replace it.
The Con
The #1 problem:
Other than being a bit bulky, which might be expected, there’s really just one thing I don’t like about the machine: cleaning the grinder assembly. All the time you save in having a built-in grinder, you give back in cleaning the thing. According to the instructions you have to clean out the grinding mechanism between each use. In practice, I agree. All the parts of the coffee maker that contact the beans should be quickly washed. But with the grinding chamber, there’s no ‘quickly’ about it. And if you don’t wash and dry the chamber, new bean grounds will stick to the old grounds, or push old grounds into the filter, or the grind won’t be even, etc…
The reason the grinder is a pain to clean is not because of the blades (they aren’t real blades per se; they aren’t sharp). And it’s not because the grinder assembly is difficult to pull out (it comes out easily). It’s that the grinding dust from each previous use gets caked onto parts of the grinder chute, and then get ‘steamed’ into place. This happens because the grinding ‘chute’ feeds directly into the filter basket, and all of the steam from the brewing process goes back up into the grinding assembly. There it condenses, and any coffee dust remaining turns into thick coffee mud. Coffee dust also gets trapped up in the corners inside the chute, and it’s hard to get a sponge in there. Plus, the condensed coffee water drips back down the chute, and exits next to the basket and onto part of the coffee maker. This part of the maker doesn’t detach, and you may get some further residue build-up next to the filter basket holder. And, some of the coffee mud gets under the grinding blades, and drips into the grinding shaft area, which is also a bit of a pain to clean.
The Grinding Method and Some Minor Issues
Until we had the DGB-500, I didn’t even realize there were multiple ways to grind beans. But there are a few different ways. There are sharp blade grinders that spin and cut the beans. There are impact blade grinders that have dull blades that smash into the beans. And there are a couple types of burr grinders that more accurately ‘grind’ the beans to the desired size (see my review on the Cuisinart DBM-8 electric burr grinder: http://www99.epinions.com/content_272330821252 ).
The DGB-500 uses the impactor blade method. That means that instead of actually cutting the beans, it spins and smashes into them. In this case, the DGB-500 does that until the grounds are small enough to fit through grinder holes on the side of the assembly, where they are blown into the filter chute. This technique is perfectly acceptable for drip brewing, but the main drawback specific to the DGB-500 is that you may not get a consistent bean grind because the holes are rather large, and grinds of multiple sizes can make it through. Also, you can’t adjust the fineness of the grind with this grinder. Any bean that can fit through the holes does, be it medium, small or…particle. Since the blades smash into the beans breaking them apart instead of cutting them, some bean dust is created which may get through the filter basket and into your cup. Personally, I don’t mind some grounds in the cup, but some people do mind, and it makes cleaning the grinder messy (see my #1 problem above).
I also have a couple of small gripes with the design:
-The internal measure ‘ladder’ is a piece of plastic with cup markings on it. It’s clever, but it’s a bit hard to read where the water level is in lower light. (It’s not like an outside site measure where you can easily see the water level in the window.)
-Cleaning the inside of the tank, or getting a bean that may have fallen into the tank is not so easy. The internal part of the tank is shaped oddly.
-The filter cover also must be cleaned as well, unlike other coffee makers. It’s easy to clean, and I think it actually helps in the brewing as I mentioned above, but it’s yet another part.
What I wish it had
Nice features that I wish the maker had but might not be a big deal to you are:
-A temperature dial for the warming plate.
-Something to stop the steam from going back up into the grinder mechanism.
-A way to regulate the fineness of the bean grind (maybe interchangeable chute holes?)
Summary
On the plus side, the DGB-500 is a good coffee maker with a grinder built in. The clever filter lid distributes hot water more evenly over the grounds for an even brew. The grinding mechanism works on the timer, so you can load the beans, add water, set the time, and the entire process happens automatically. If you set it this way, you’ll save time and still have fresh ground coffee in the morning.
On the negatives, the machine is a little bulky, but that’s to be expected from a 12-cupper with the grinder built in. It’s also a little loud. But the main drawback is that you have to spend all the time you saved brewing cleaning out the grinder assembly. If you just had a separate grinder, it would remain dry and you could wipe out the area between uses or as needed. The grinder mechanism cannot be adjusted to grind the beans longer, so there’s not way to control the fineness of the grounds.
In general, for the space savings and all-in-one ability, the DGB-500 is a nice coffee maker. I would definitely recommend it if you need it for that reason, otherwise, a different machine with a separate grinder may be a better option.
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