Product Reviews & Consumer Advice

Zojirushi EC-BD15BAFresh Brew Thermal Carafe Coffee Maker Zojirushi’s EC-BD15BA 1.5 Liter Fresh Brew Coffee Maker with Vacuum Stainless Steel Carafe is gorgeous and functional and will look spectacular on your countertop.

Zojirushi EC-DAC50 Zutto 5-Cup Drip Coffeemaker The “Zutto” Collection is Zojirushi’s first collection of products that is designed and developed as a series of products.

Capresso MT600 10-Cup Programmable Coffeemaker with Stainless-Steel Thermal Carafe The Capresso MT600 coffee maker with stainless steel thermal carafe brews 10-cups of coffee in under 8 minutes for maximum flavor and aroma.

Anyone that’s shopped at all for consumer appliances knows that the competition is fierce, and nowhere is the more true than in the world of automatic drip coffee makers. If you don’t believe me then simply open up your web browser and type “small coffee maker” into the search field. Doing so will provide you with all the proof you need that consumer coffee makers are plentiful. Not only are there are variety of different types and brands to choose from, but there are variations within each type, meaning it’s not enough to simply go out and purchase any old machine. On the contrary, you need to ask yourself what you expect from a machine in terms of brew capacity, build quality and overall performance.

Anyone that knows anything about brewing consistently great coffee knows that doing so doesn’t happen by accident. In fact, even purchasing the most expensive or well reviewed machine will do little for you if you don’t have a grasp of how great coffee is achieved. Fortunately, there are only a handful of details that must be considered to get the consistency and quality that you’ve been looking for. If you follow these details then you are all but guaranteed to produce coffee that exceeds the quality of some of the major coffee chains, regardless of the type of machine that you use.

When brewing great coffee it all starts with the freshness of the beans, and ideally you should be using whole bean coffee that has been roasted no more than 2 weeks prior to using them. While this may sound impossible due to the availability of such beans, there are many online coffee retailers that provide freshly roasted beans of all types. The second critical step in brewing great coffee is to grind your freshly roasted beans using a burr style grinder. The reason that these types of grinders are superior to traditional blade or “whirly bird” grinders is that they produce an even and consistent grind, without producing dust that can lead to bitterness. The third and final step is to use water that has been heated to an appropriate temperature for brewing coffee. You want to use water with a  temperature range of 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit. Although many manufacturers will tell you that their machines are great because they heat the water to boiling, don’t believe the hype. Boiling water tends to extract tannins from the coffee grounds, will guarantee a bitter cup of coffee.

At this point you might be wondering how these details relate to Zojirushi coffee makers. The truth is that Zojirushi is one of only a handful of manufacturers that produce machines that properly heat the brew water. This is critical information, since it allows you to brew coffee without worrying about this aspect of the brewing process. Apart from the ability to heat the brew water to the appropriate temperature range, the two machines produced by Zojirushi (the EC BD15 and the Zutto) are both extraordinarily well built. It’s obvious that a great deal of thought has gone into the production of these machines, both in terms of their design and their performance.

The top seller among the two machines is the Fresh Brew EC BD15, which features a vacuum sealed thermal carafe and a programmable brew timer. The carafe option allows the user to keep their brewed coffee piping hot without having to resort to leaving it on the burner, which is a sure way to end up with undrinkable coffee. The Fresh brew is priced at around $80 and can be purchased from a variety of online retailers. Although many people may consider the price to be a bit much, it’s actually a bargain when you consider that you will own a coffee maker that can provide you with years of trouble free operation while producing spectacular coffee in the process.

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