When we strive to find out who makes the best coffee maker, we need to take into consideration the type of coffee machine, whether it be a drip, French press or single cup... and then compare how good the coffee tastes an hour after you have brewed it. Let's explore only the drip machines for now.
Many automatic drip coffee makers perform very well, but if you are like me, and want to return to grab another cup of coffee an hour or so after the first... it's important to have a thermal coffee maker.
Why does it matter if choose to use a thermal carafe?
The basic drip brewing system that most of us have in our homes utilizes a technique that heats up your water to the optimal temperature for extracting the best flavor from your coffee, and then slowly drips the heated water over your ground beans and releases the newly brewed coffee into a carafe.
The typical carafes are constructed of glass, and generally sit on a heat plate to keep the coffee hot.
What happens when your coffee sits on a burner for more than 10 minutes is devastating to the outcome of the brewed coffee. If you haven't tried tasting coffee from a thermal carafe, you are in for a real treat.
Why choose a thermal coffee maker?
When you realize that the best tasting drip coffee is brewed into a thermal carafe, the choices you have when selecting a coffee maker are substantially narrowed down to the top few manufacturers. Cuisinart, Black and Decker and Zojirushi coffee makers, just to name a few of the better buys.
I bet you have noticed that all the best coffee houses, such as Starbucks, use thermal containers to store the recently brewed coffee. There is just cause for this!
How do you select the best thermal coffee maker?
To find out which is the best coffee maker thermal style is as easy to find as browsing these few considerations:
Decide if you need a coffee machine to drip 12 cups, 10 cups or maybe just a cup or two at a time. You can find thermal pots in a variety of sizes. If you have a shortage of counter space, you should consider the smaller machine.
It's best to read all the reviews you can to see what others are talking about. Some machines are more complicated to use, and it feels like you need a whole day just to go over the manual. Others perform very simply, like the Zojirushi fresh brew, and you can usually get your first cup nearly as quick as you can unpack your new coffee maker.
Additionally, many manufacturers offer a water filter... and some manufacturers include a water filter (included with your purchase). After all, it's the quality of the water that will determine the final taste of your coffee. You will save money if the coffee maker has a water filter included with your purchase, and you will know that it's the right size for that machine.
Notice where the controls are located, and if they are lit at nighttime. It's not fun to fumble around with a coffee maker full of water. A backlit clock is nice, and it's easy to see when it's dark or early in the morning when most of us use our machines.
Filter baskets... What is the best choice?
Basically there are 2 shapes to coffee filter baskets, flat bottomed and cone shaped. The difference between the two is nominal, but you should know that a cone shaped filter basket would generally use less ground coffee than the flat-bottomed shape.
This is because the filter basket is wider at the top, filtering the hot water through the grounds to the pointed end at the bottom, assuring that all the grounds are uniformly wet. A flat-bottomed filter basket needs to have a good "sprinkler" type of drip machine to equal this, and since the basket is wider, it will use a bit more coffee.
Other options to consider
Typically, thermal coffee makers drip the brewed coffee into a thermal carafe. But, you will find some coffee-on-demand type of coffee machines that use an insulated reservoir to hold your coffee and keep it hot.
The problem with many of the coffee on demand types are that the reservoirs are constructed of plastic, and they use a heating element in the reservoir to keep your coffee up to acceptable temperature. This sometimes leads to plastic tasting coffee.
The idea is good, but I have yet to find one that uses a thermal carafe to hold the coffee and keep it hot for hours like the best thermal coffee maker can.
