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Cuisinart DGB-300 10-Cup Coffee Maker Product Technical Detailsdgb300 Key FeaturesTypeCoffee MakerBuilt-in Water FilterW...

The Quest for the Perfect Cup of Coffee Cuisinart DGB 300 10 Cup Coffee Maker After working the midnight shift for 22 years, I would like to say that I am a connoisseur of fine coffee. Unfortu...

Where it all began

Coffee to me is one of the few true pleasures in life. Who could guess that a dark brown liquid could bring so much joy? When we get our daily cup of coffee, the innocuous looking cup downplays what is actually involved in making a good cup. The beans have to be roasted a certain way, the temperature just right, even the time of water contact to coffee grounds is important. It”s actually a small miracle, a good cup of coffee.

I have gone through great lengths to try to make a good cup of coffee: buying a coffee grinder, ordering freshly roasted beans, even started using a French press because I heard you get better flavor extraction from it. It was all well and good the first few months. I was happy with my cup, but the hassle of going through the motions of grinding the beans, bringing the water to the right temperature, and washing all the instruments afterward was getting to be too much. That was when I decided to buy the Cuisinart Coffee Maker/Grinder in one unit, hoping that it would ease this complicated process. It”s certainly a neat machine, but ultimately, not one I can recommend, read on to find out why.

FEATURES & COMMENTARY

Some features on this unit not found on standard coffee makers include:

Coffee Temperature Monitor - You can set (qualitatively) the temperature of the coffee in the carafe. It keeps the coffee in the pot at a certain temperature regardless of how much coffee is left. This is actually a very good feature and certainly a plus.

Auto Shut Off & Timer - You can set the coffee maker to automatically shut off anytime between the end of the brewing process to four hours afterwards. The timer allows you to set the time at which the brewing cycle starts.

Self-Cleaning - There is an LED that goes on informing you of when the coffee maker needs to be cleaned. This means that there is a calcium metal buildup in the coffee maker. There is a button that initiates a cleaning cycle. I honestly don”t think that this is an important feature as in all the years I”ve used coffee makers, I”ve never had that problem. I can see the usefulness of this if you live in an area with hard water, but it is recommended that one use spring water to make their coffee.

Low Cups Setting and Flavor Selector

Both these features are advertised to enhance the flavor of your coffee by changing the time the water is in contact with your grinds or changing the proportion of the water that is in contact with your grinds. The mechanism of the “flavor selector” is actually interesting. All it is is a plastic screw that controls the opening of a shunt from the water source into the grinds. The higher the setting, the larger the opening that shunts water away which bypasses the grinds - the net effect being more dilute coffee. From my experience, these features change flavor extraction so minimally that it doesn”t make a difference. The major problem with the extraction process in this case is actually the grind size, but I”ll get into more detail about that later.

Attached Grinder - the reason I purchased it, but ultimately, the reason I hate it.

The main feature of this unit of course is the attached grinder. The grinder is a standard blade grinder. It is situated on the side of the unit above the coffee filter. There is a steel grating with holes in it that only allows grounds of a certain size to get across and into the filter (I”ll call this the grinder shield). Though this was a neat idea, there are two major flaws that were overlooked:

The first is that since there is a direct connection between the brewing system and the coffee grinder, steam from the hot water will get into the coffee grinder during the brewing process. This makes cleaning very difficult and time consuming. There are actually many parts that have to be removed and cleaned after every use. This certainly doesn”t make my life any easier. Cuisinart went through so much trouble to add so many features to this machine, why couldn”t they have some sort of barrier that comes up after the grinding is done to separate it form the brewer?

The second is the size of the perforations on the grinder shield. The sizes of the perforations are quite large. They are about a ¼ of a centimeter in diameter. This yields a grind that is slightly larger than a traditional medium grind. For those who like a strong cup of coffee, the large sized grounds yields a weak cup of coffee for the amount of coffee used. This unit would be great if the perforations were half the size. The solutions I”ve found for this so far is to increase the amount of coffee beans used by about an extra scoop per 3 scoops (of course this depends on your taste). You could also double up on the paper filter instead of using the gold tone filter. This increases the contact time between your grounds and the water so that it extracts a little more of the flavor. Be careful though, some of the more bitter coffees aren”t suited for that.

Final Thoughts

I purchased this machine for about $70. For the number of features, it”s not a bad deal. However, considering that most people buy all-in-one units for added convenience, this unit will certainly disappoint. The poor architecture of the grinder and brewer makes cleaning a definite chore.

Why you should buy it:

It”s a good machine from a good company. It is chock full of features and is an eye catcher. If you can find it for a reasonable price, say around $50-$60 than consider it. The only other unit that has both features right now is the Capresso unit. It is $250 but does not suffer from the grinder/brewer connection problem. It is $250 though - somehow, I can”t rationalize spending that much on a coffee maker.

Why you shouldn”t buy it:

It makes weak coffee if you don”t add more coffee beans than usual. It is very hard to clean, somehow I feel I can”t stress that enough. Honestly, I don”t know if my disappointment with this unit was related to the fact that I expected a lot. For what I got, I don”t think I wasted the money, but if I had to do it again, I wouldn”t have purchased it. The time it takes to clean the unit equals the time it takes to have a separate grinder and separate coffee maker do the same job.

Why is it still getting 3 stars?

Other than the flaws associated with cleaning and grinder shield, it”s a good machine. It really depends on what you are looking for in your coffee maker. This makes a good very hot cup of coffee. The carafe design as well as the temperature control keeps your coffee piping hot for a long time. I”m not recommending it because it just didn”t suit my needs and what I was looking for in my coffee maker.

Looks like my quest to find the perfect coffee maker continues… In a related essay, I look into some features one should look for in a coffee maker:

Choosing the Vehicle that Transforms My Coffee Beans - How to Buy a Coffee Maker

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