Coffee & Espresso Makers Tips

Incredibly Disappointing Cuisinart DGB 500 12 Cup Coffee Maker I love/need a good cup of coffee in the morning, and so the idea of a grind and brew all-in-one coffee maker seeme...

Cuisinart DGB-500 12-Cup Coffee Maker Product Technical Detailsdgb500 Key FeaturesTypeCoffee MakerBuilt-in Water FilterW...

I always struggle when reading reviews because you never know what kind of person is writing them, or what their frame of reference is for their remarks. I will try to do a little better…

After reading the reviews of the Grind and Brew I concluded that most people either loved it (one reviewer even wrote she would save it from a burning house) or hated it. Considering the list price, I was willing to be in the former group, but not the latter. As it turns out, I am actually in the middle. I use it, but I wouldn’t buy another one. Here’s my story:

I used to have an old Proctor-Silex programmable coffee maker, which I used with a Krupps blade grinder. I dutifully ground my own beans every night and programmed the coffee to start brewing just in time for breakfast. As part of the grinding process, I would use by grinder brush and brush out the grinder to prevent buildup of old coffee dust.

I used a paper filter in the coffee maker and got good, but not spectacular coffee. I tried metal filters after hearing that they make a big difference and could never tell a difference.

When the carafe broke one morning (after a dozen years of use), my wife agreed to get the Cuisinart we had been eyeing. We bought it in August 2005.

The first thing we noticed is the size of the thing—it really barely fit under our low kitchen cabinets—make sure to measure first!

The grinder is as loud as people say—and I’m used to the sound a grinder makes—the whole machine acts as an amplifier for the grinder and the sound easily carries up to the second floor of the house. It is a lot louder than my Krupps and also has to run longer to make sure it gets all the beans into the brew basket. It is a blade grinder for those of you who are grinder purists….

When the machine starts, the only visual cue you have is the red “on” light is on and the green “program” light is off (if you had it programmed). The brew cycle itself is rather quiet (compared to my old moaning Proctor-Silex) and the machine makes a nice (although somewhat quiet) beeping when done brewing.

The frustrating thing is that while you can set the length of time the warmer plate stays on (I think from 0,1,2 hours), you have no count-down to when it goes off—you just have to remember when it started, and then add 10 minutes for the brew time before the counter starts counting down. [Incidentally, we considered the stainless version, with the thermal carafe, but couldn’t justify the 50 dollar price difference and the 2-cup smaller capacity. For us, the coffee seldom stays around that long and even though I know it’s bad for the coffee to sit there and “cook”, I have never lost sleep over it.]

Another thing (that I would not have really thought about if it weren’t so different from my old machine) is that the clock is a small LCD display, which means you have to have light to read it, and the angle at which it is set mans you cannot read it from across the room (like I used to be able to do with my old machine). But then, since it doesn’t do a countdown, then why would you need to read the time—it really only helps when you are programming it or to see how long before liftoff to warn the kids so they are not scared to death when it takes off!

If you do a dishwasher cycle every day after you make coffee, then you can just put all the parts in and let the machine do the work. You can probably skip the next section about cleaning.

There are 4 (or 5) parts to clean after each use. Since each is moist after the brewing process, there really is no option to not wash them.

1,2) There is the basket and basket lid. If you have already have a coffee maker, you are already at least rinsing (I hope) a basket (the think that holds the filter) every day. The lid in this maker gets coffee grounds on it and also probably harbors bad flavors if not rinsed every day. I usually give these a good rinsing with running water and then let them air-dry. About 8 seconds of rinsing is usually enough for these. This is just about 6 seconds longer than I was already doing with my old machine.

3,4) Then there is the grinder body and grinder lid. Because of the design of these, steam from the hot water rises into them and saturates the coffee dust (just like is in a blade grinder). I also use just running water on these—no soap, but there are several nooks and crannies that require a small brush (like an old toothbrush) to get all the coffee bean residue out. These together typically take me at least a minute or more of washing with water to get everything out. This is cleaning time I would not normally have had to do with another ‘traditional’ coffee maker. Also, these 2 parts must be dry before putting the coffee in, so if you forget to clean them until right before you set up the machine at night, you also have to carefully hand dry all the nooks before re-assembling.

5) The optional piece is the metal filter. Again it’s a simple water rinse of about 15 seconds—the same as you would use with another coffee maker. [We have gone back to paper since the grinder makes some fine grinds that managed to slip through the metal filter and get into the carafe.]

Lastly, the carafe and its lid. I don’t like that the lid is not simply hinged, but must be removed with 2 hands. Again, this is the same process you would have to follow with any other maker, so the time is not really different.

Granted, I don’t have to do the grinding myself (which takes about 30 seconds or more, including the brushing), but overall, I spend more time making coffee with this machine than I did with my old one. It may not sound like a lot of time, but the time spent to make sure that it is really clean is longer than I used to spend the ‘old’ way. Perhaps you could get by without being quite as fastidious as I am, but if you’re using a machine like this to grind your coffee right before brewing, then you probably will be the type to be fastidious…

My bottom line would be that it is a good machine, but I don’t like the extra washing I have to do on all the parts. If you can run them through the dishwasher every day and not have to do them by hand, it would probably be a net time saver.

The real kicker though is that I can’t really tell a difference in the coffee made by this machine and the coffee made by my old machine that sat overnight between grinding and brewing. I really expected it to taste richer or fresher, but it really is about the same.

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