Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Annoying to clean, spotty operation, March 25, 2006
I've been using this coffeemaker daily for about 9 months. I'm not completely satisfied with it.
The positive: It does what it's supposed to do, most of the time.
Cons:
- It's a real pain to clean. There are six parts to clean after every pot of coffee. The worst is the two-piece grinder assembly. Due to the complete absence of venting and valving, by the end of the brew the entire grinder assembly is soaking wet from condensed water vapor. This means it is coated with a fine mud of pulverized coffee. The grinder assembly has plenty of annoying nooks and crannies; cleaning it means standing there with a few paper towels, jamming them into the crevices to get the old coffee out. After that, you have to clean the filter holder, the filter holder lid, the pot itself, and the pot lid. The pot lid is annoying, requiring two hands to remove - I usually drop it once a day or so.
- Fit and finish. Once you've passed the plastic parts through the dishwasher once, they never fit quite right again. About once a month, the filter holder pops out during brewing, spilling hot coffee all over my kitchen counter and floor; the cleanup from this invariably scatters wet grounds everywhere.
- The machine ships with one tiny charcoal filter. Once it's done, where do you get another one? I don't bother; I just use Brita-filtered water to begin with.
- The hot water jets out onto one spot, drilling a hole in the grounds, and then quickly fills up the flat-bottomed filter holder, floating the grounds and making a soup which then slowly drains. This isn't the optimal way to extract coffee.
Bottom line - it does what it's supposed to, most of the time. Bad design, however, shows itself in the areas of cleaning, brewing, and operation (including occasional kitchen disasters.) I'm in the market for a different unit.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Makes excellent but weak coffee, February 9, 2006
This is a great machine if you enjoy weak coffee. My wife prefers a strong cup however, and she seems barely satisfied with the results I am getting by filling the hamper with dark-roasted beans to make only eight cups of coffee. In theory you can make 12 cups of coffee with this machine, but they are 12 rather weak cups, which is fine for many people, myself included.
There is a bit more cleaning involved in setting this contraption up every night to produce freshly ground beans in the morning than there is when you grind your own beans the night before. Although I am not a particularly fastidious person I find I enjoy the process however. At the risk of stating the obvious: the reason you buy this machine is so the grinding happens automatically immediately before the coffee is brewed, first thing in the morning, before you've had your first cup of coffee. If that isn't worth a little extra effort each evening before going to bed, or if you don't mind getting up and grinding beans and brewing your coffee first thing in the morning, then there is no reason to buy a "grind and brew" machine in the first place.
You certainly would not want to buy this coffee maker for use in an office kitchen, for example, or anywhere else where you might want to make more than just one pot early in the morning.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My Third Cuisinart Grind & Brew and the Best Yet!, December 29, 2002
I just bought this one, the third one of these I've owned but the first with this new design. And Cuisinart has definitely improved it.If you've never owned a 'grind and brew' type of coffee maker, there are several things you should know before buying: 1. They require additional cleaning. There are more parts to clean than a typical coffee maker, and you must wash out the grounds from the grinding vessel and shoot. But at most, it will add five minutes to your cleaning. 2. They will eventually wear out. Lots of moving parts all working together and contained in a single unit make it inevitable. I brew one two two pots of coffee every day with the unit; both of my first units stopped working after two and a half years of use. But since it comes with a three-year warranty, I simply returned the first one to Cuisinart and they replaced it with a new unit. Which means each purchase has lasted five to six years, not bad given the constant use it gets. 3. No coffee maker produces better coffee. I couldn't imagine using a regular coffee maker after using this one. Many friends and family who have visited and tried my coffee consistently remark on how it's the best coffee they've had. Cuisinart has made many improvements with this new design: (a) smaller footprint, so it takes up a lot less room on the counter; (b) easier to clean and easier to keep the kitchen clean, since the pieces are separated and drip less; (c) built-in water filter, eliminating the need for spring water to make great-tasting coffee; and, (d) buttons on top, resulting in fewer accidental starts when cleaning around the unit. To name a few. And what's more, the price has actually gone down from when this first came to market. What's not to love?!
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