Cuisinart 14 Cup Brewer
Kevin Sinnott
I was excited to try a Cuisinart which has definite curb appeal. And, fourteen cups? WOW! That’s a lot of coffee. I’m sure Cuisinart was proud of the engineering triumph of putting so much yield into a fairly small size footprint. Ever a value champ, the Cuisinart adds a permanent filter, which I used. Not only does Cuisinart brew the largest size brew, it offers a special 4-cup setting. Cuisinart’s fit and finish is not quite up to Saeco’s — I had to jimmy the filter door to close properly. Its brewer intuition is user friendly, however. The charcoal filter is easy to insert. You literally drop it in and it places itself properly into position. The instructions counsel using SCAA measurements, 85 grams for a full fourteen cups. It’s like having the babysitter show up with a Bible in her hand. Everything looks good.
Nice touch…disappearing power cord!
Cuisinart’s got a good seal, good sprayhead, and good extraction.
Temperature — The unit takes its time to reach a credible brewing temperature. It took nearly three minutes to reach 180 degrees F. This is like a Boeing 747 climbout, which is slow. Worse, it never gets to altitude — the brewer, not the plane. It stays there through much of the brew cycle, rising to the bottom official brew temperature some ten minutes into the brew cycle. It peaks at 195 F at the eleven minute mark.
Contact time — The cycle takes a very long 13 minutes start-to-finish. That’s a long time to subject any coffee grounds to hot water, even when the water isn’t very hot.
The V-shaped filter means there’s a concentrated bottleneck where some coffee grounds are overexposed to hot water to begin with — which only increases bitterness.
Extraction — The grounds basket inspection revealed a good extraction of all the grounds to all the water. Too bad the other variables were poorly met, because the water flow design is obviously a good one.
Taste — The resulting brew reflects their attempt to temper long brew times with substandard hot water. The coffee was overextracted; bitter, and totally lacking in the refined flavor notes that should be present, especially given the healthy amount of grounds used. It was full-flavored but devoid of anything special. I tried a sack of Colombian coffee from Dunn Brothers in Minneapolis. This coffee was super fresh, which was an acid test of the brewer’s ability to not foam up due to Co2 degassing. No problem there, but the flavor was still bad. A Mocha Java from Salt Lake City’s Caffe Ibis, a great blend by the way, was just lost on this brewer. I know what both these coffees are capable of, so it was doubly disappointing.
CUISINART 4-CUP SETTING
I repeated brewing using the four cup setting. I put twenty-four ounces of water and 36 grams ground coffee and then pressed the four-cup button. The instructions promise “double heated” water. This double heated concept may work on paper, but it seems to generate just slightly earlier hot water, and the water never gets hot enough, reaching just short of 192 five minutes into brewing. The four cup setting gives a seven minute brew cycle, still long for manual brewing, but within reason for contemporary electric drip. Due to the very low early water temperature there was not evidence of bitterness in the final brew. It was actually decent tasting, but again with very little cup sparkle that a fine coffee maker would resolve. I used the same two coffees and each was better, but still far short of their potential.
Conclusion — Who tasted coffee from this machine before they brought it to market? Did they really bring this to a conference table, the executives tasted the coffee and they all shook hands and high-five’d each other. It just goes to show there’s no brand consistency. The grinder is great. Get a different brewer. If you do own one, I’d always try to use the four-cup setting, where at least a decent cup is possible.
Great write up. I bought this coffee maker, because it was 14 cups. We drink a lot of coffee. I didn’t notice the things you mentioned about water temperature etc. But it didn’t last long in our house, maybe 18 months. I think there’s another flaw in this design. The condensation that forms in the filter cover eventually seeps into the clock mechanism. I don’t think the clock is as sealed from the condensation as it should be.
Eventually, ours would lose time and the display was not right and eventually just wouldn’t power up. Once the display started going wonky, it was a matter of days before it gave up the ghost entirely. I think Cuisinart is generally a good brand, but they missed the mark on this unit. I won’t recommend it.
Thank you Pamela. I was disappointed by the Cuisinart and even more by the inconsistency between Cuisinart models. They always look great, but so far I have not found a good value or any guiding product brewing philosophy in place. I am one week away from visiting the annual International Housewares Show in Chicago. I will visit Cuisinart and see if anything new has happened to restore my faith in them.
I’m looking forward to your comments after this years’ International Housewares Show in Chicago. I purchased a Cuisinart (DCC-1200 ?) brewer years ago but returned it as I wasn’t happy with the results in the cup. I had used Krups thru the 90’s and was very happy with it using major brand pre-ground canned coffee from the grocery store. It seems that marketing to the consumer plays more here than actual performance inside coffee brewers across the board. They all look great on the outside BUT what’s inside is what counts. That being said, using fresh coffee beans ground just before brewing in a typical mass marketed brewer would not turn out a satisfactory cup of coffee, I would think. I remember years ago buying fresh ground coffee from a local roaster then brewing it in my Krups machine….. didn’t turn out well so I went right back to my major brand from the grocery. Seems the opposite might be true brewing pre-ground canned grocery store coffee in an SCAA approved type brewer, or similarly close—would not have a great turn out either. I often wonder WHY these mass marketing brands don’t make a brewer that falls within proper guidelines where temps and brewing time are so important—many of them have decent spray heads. Does it have something to do with typical department store brewers and the typical grocery store coffee those consumers put in them? I’m curious, especially due to my personal experiences.
Hi Kevin,
seems like the only way I can find to contact you is here through the comments. I love the book, have it and use it as a reference all the time. I’m having a serious roasting problem!! I am using a Caffe Rosto roaster, and I am the only one in the house who drinks coffee so I like to roast smaller batches, between 50-80g. Beans would fly into the chaff holder with these smaller batches and I would lose half my batch. So I added a piece of tin foil over the mouth of the opening to the chaff holder.. Then it was keeping too much hot air in the chamber, lifting the lid, so I added some more holes and changed its location a bit. Doing that, which allowed air to leave again, still brought beans into the chaff holder. So I cant get a good mix of letting air leave and keeping the beans in the chamber with a smaller batch. Then the most weirdest thing happened: I roasted a Nicaraguan bean, 80g. Was flowing around nice and it seemed to me, by sight and smell that things were advancing pretty quickly with this roast. At about 7 minutes, the beans pretty much stopped moving and were kind of popping upwards instead of around and very few first cracks happening. Then at 8:30 I could see they were extremely black and smelled smoke so I opened the lid and tons of smoke billowed out. The result was beans in the chaff holder and scorched beans in the chamber, all while I had the opening to the chaff holder partially covered with the foil.
So my confusion is:
-if the transfer of air was still decent enough, due to the fact that beans were in the chaff holder, why did the beans in the chamber stop circulating and burn.
– these beans also expanded super fast. Is that because they were exposed to alot of heat in a short amount of time??
-would adding a piece of wire mesh to the chaff opening give me what I’m looking for?? (which is air transfer but no beans in the chaff holder?
-even after adding the mesh, will i ever encounter a situation where beans burn/scorch/cook like that??
Im sad cause I lost a good batch of beans, but I am learning through the process. I am desperate to upgrade to the Behrmor!!!
any help would be appreciated, thanks for your time and expertise Kevin!!!!
Hi Carmen,
Every fluid-bed roaster depends upon a mass of beans to create the float. I used to try to roast a small batch, enough for one pint Chemex (29 grams) in a Sivetz heat gun roaster, but they’d just fly away. Not enough mass. My first thought is you need to increase the mass. I recall this machine did best with 140-150 grams. Otherwise they would end up in the chaff collector. Once they block the airflow, they heat will have no where to go and singe the coffee in short order. As it is the Caffe Roasto is a bit tricky even if you get the optimal weights. I have gotten some good roasts from it though. You can always post here or reach me through my email: kevin@coffeecompanion.com
No figure but the first one shows up, on Windows or Mac; IE or Safari or Firefox. Trying to link to them gets a 404 error (“Gnarly, dude” it says). This has happened on some of your other reviews, too.
Are the Technivorm and Bonavita coffee makers BPA free? I am looking for a 12 cup glass carafe coffeemaker, BPA free, and will pay a bit extra to assure good quality and longevity. What would you recommend?
Thanks!
Pam
Hi Pam,
Yes, both Technivorm and Bonavita are BPA free.