The Audi Roadjet with coffee maker. What's worse: Useless coffee makers or useless coffee maker features?
The review of the Speak and Brew coffeemaker will depend upon the willingness to send one to me because I actually test coffeemakers. This is true for the Audi Roadjet a concept car with built in coffeemaker too. I put measured ground coffee in them, press the button and brew. While it’s brewing, I take the water temperature as it cascades down through the grounds. I time it to make sure it brews for the proper amount of time and, yes, there is an ideal time, or at least a range of times.
My purpose if writing of this is there are so many coffeemakers that try to achieve greatness by doing everything imaginable… but brew good coffee. I’m not against these features. The ability to speak to me might be important. Let’s say I’m married to a very chatty spouse and I never get a word in edgewise (I’m not, but we’re just “let’s say’ing”). Or let’s say I’m single and want a little conversation. Well having a coffeemaker that speaks to me might be pleasant. Of course I start thinking of the machines that speak to me in my life: my GPS speaks to me. But, it rarely says anything except barking orders at me, or correcting me if I make a wrong turn, more often a turn it doesn’t know about that involves a shortcut.
A coffeemaker with a clock in it seems like a good idea, but is it? The coffee isn’t as good if you grind and set it up the night before because flavors are released into the air, but I agree it might still be worth it. Of course I can do all this except press the on button the night before with any regular coffeemaker.
But, there are legitimate conveniences I truly wish would work, such as on-board grinders. These almost never are good grinders, even the burr grinders. And, they are difficult and sometimes impossible to clean. And still, the brewing needs to be right.
I’ve been looking over reviews for the past years. I can’t find a single all-in-one coffeemaker that is in the top rank. If it did, I’d almost guarantee it would be a bestseller. But, there isn’t and that’s the truth. Is it that they don’t know? Has the SCAA and various authors and coffee experts done such a poor job of teaching the brewing basics?
I suspect the answer is the manufacturers of such machines automatically presume the enduser of such gear has no interest in anything but the gimmick or feature. Or they feel that by being the single player that satisfies this particular need they no longer need to try to do it all.
But, I wish otherwise. I genuinely like gimmicks. I like extra features. I simply wish a machine with extra features would also make good coffee.
The Zojurushi 5-cup coffeemaker attracted my attention at a previous International Housewares show. I’d been trying to find a successor to the legendary Kitchen Aid 4-cup. Could this be it? My appetite was whetted when I ran into it again at Oren’s Daily Roast. I practically begged him to let me try it, but I’m already into him for so much coffee, he put me off. Finally I got the courage to scarf one from their sales rep at this year’s Housewares show. I was pretty excited to see it. It has the second most important virtue of any coffee gear, good looks.
The 5-cups are to me really four, but that’s what I’m looking for.
Number one, though, can it brew great coffee?
I finally scarfed one off Zojurushi’s PR people who I met at the International Housewares Show. One showed up on my doorstep a few days later.
It uses a number 2 Melitta filter. It has a removable water chamber and an inline charcoal filter. I was surprised that the filter appears to be located after the water is heated. As I use mostly low-mineral no-chlorine water I hardly need such a filter. No mention is made in the instruction book as to where to buy replacements.
Using the Zojurushi is easy. Fill the water tank up to the line. The instruction book may be light on the water filter replacement but it is excellent about its suggested formula, specifying 35 grams of fine grind coffee for a full pot. That works out to the industry formula. This might not seem astounding but recipes are almost never mentioned in coffeemaker instruction manuals, and when they are, they are usually wrong.
Monitoring the brew temperature showed me what I wanted to see. It really gets hot, not quite as instant on as the Technivorm, but very close, 200 degrees Fahrenheit for most of the brew cycle, even a little above towards the end. Best of all, the water gets all the grounds nicely wet. It’s a little appreciated fact that the biggest advantage manual drip has over auto drip is your hand always knows where to pour hot water. I found the best way to ensure this is to remove the top during brewing; I presume this is because the lid must be located precisely, but it’s easy to try it once and see if you agree. With minimal futzing, this coffeemaker just works almost perfectly.
Result? After years of searching I’m done. The Zojurushi does a stellar job, almost the equal of the Technivorm in temperature and actually, gasp, a little better in its drip performance. You almost can’t do better yourself.
Recommendation? Place 35 grams fine grind coffee for a full pot. Flip it on and in seven minutes, you’re ready to enjoy. Seven minutes may seem overlong to American drip aficionados, but trust me you will like the coffee. I ascribe the slightly longer contact time to Japanese fascination with European standards (I’m half-kidding) and the fact that during the first minute the water is just under ideal brewing temperature.
I brewed several batches of Bridgeport Coffee Company’s El Salvador Finca Las Nubes – Ernesto Lima. They charge for heirloom bourbon coffee grown by the kind of farmer who walks around dusting his plants every afternoon and, using this brewer, I could taste it. I then brewed some very different Oren’s Daily Roast Viennese Blend, which is make up of two stellar Colombian coffees, one light and the other French roast. It’s my favorite summer after-dinner coffee. I get a lot of local produce during the summer months and this coffee is able to add to a meal already chock with rich flavors. This brewer actually made coffee virtually identical to what I could do with a Hario V60, no mean feat.
This review has a simple ending: Zojurushi is top rated, the current five cup champ.
There is hip and there is hip. The Hario V60 is definitely what the doctor ordered for the new slow coffee movement, that is brewed coffee done by hand, one cup at a time. I heard some marketing guru state the other day that the single-cup coffee market was going to be big. Really? That would have been big news a few years ago. Frankly, I’ve been using one-cup brewers for a dozen years, but I’m not claiming to be psychic.
Recession Chic: You already own a cup, half the coffeemaker.
They are just what the doctor ordered for upscale expensive beans, and my desire to drink a brewed cup par excellence. Manual drip brewing is a superb extraction method. Realize that brewing 10 cups at a time is difficult for drip because it takes so long for hot water to get hot, and get through the grounds without over-extracting and becoming bitter. One cup? No problem.
Let’s look at what’s different about the Hario and why it’s getting such a buzz.
Brewer – the power of this brewer is the bottom, where the coffee exits. Usually it’s a tiny hole. This allows the brewer to regulate the water to help control how long the water is in contact with the grounds. If the water goes through too fast, you just get hot water. If it’s too slow, you get bitter coffee. The Hario hole is so big, it hardly controls the flow at all. This allows you to grind super fine and that is mostly a good thing. The Hario presumes you will grind your own coffee. If you use preground drip grind, it the water will likely run through too fast. The key to grinding is to grind fine enough to slow the drip, ending up with between four and six minutes contact between the water and grounds. In this way, it is similar to the Chemex, which also has a large gap at the filter bottom.
Negligee-thin filter
The filter is an extension of the philosophy of the exit hole. The filter appears designed to encourage flow, not hold it back. Again, this will encourage you to grind fine. The filter paper is designed to be practically transparent, quite different from Chemex’s, which seems thicker and slower in comparison.
Grind – so what grind you should use? I said between 4 and 6 minutes is the ideal contact time. But, why such a large spread? Well, this allows for your personal taste, but also when you grind finer for drip, there’s a double effect. The finer grind slows the flow, but it also increases contact area between the water and grounds, so trial and error is necessary. I found when brewing four cups, which this brewer is capable of, I ground slightly coarser, still a fine grind, but just a bit less fine, so that my entire batch was ready in six minutes. When I only needed to brew one cup, I ground superfine, but it still took less time because there was less water to run through the grounds, so I had to grind very fine, almost a powder, and due to the increased ground surface exposed to hot water, I got the same strength in about four minutes. Is that clear? I hope so.
Oversize Hario coffee exit means use fine grind.
The Hario has these swirling fins inside. One colleague of mine was just overwhelmed with this brilliance of this innovation. I must just be different, but I fail to see how important these are. They add a nice visual design touch, but I seriously doubt if they really encourage a specific flow in any significant way.
The Hario V60 is available in plastic, glass and ceramic versions. I tested the least expensive plastic version. I would expect the ceramic version to be allow the water to cool fastest, and glass perhaps slowest, but I’d reckon the water travels through the grounds so quickly that it won’t be an issue.
Nice brewing view of first pour. Note channels peeking through filter.
Here’s my method: Boil some good tasting water. Place one 10gram scoop of coffee per 6 ounce cup. I used Counter Culture’s Peruvian Valle de Santuario for my tests. Grind fine, finer than for auto drip, but definitely not espresso grind. As grind is so important to this brewer’s performance, expect to do some futzing to get the taste you like. Also expect to alter your grind if you change the batch brew volume. For four cups, I weighed 40 grams coffee, and backed off to almost an auto-drip grind. Then the contact time between grounds and water was just shy of 6 minutes. This particular coffee has vanilla, fig and chocolate notes in it and the Hario brought out all the noble acidity and richness I could ask for. I suspect the filter paper webbing has a lot to do with the extraordinary success of the Hario V60. The filter is the closest to a glass or fine mesh filter with all the flavor and oil you could ask for, yet absolutely no sediment.
The Hario rinses clean, but the plastic version I tested is not dishwasher safe!
The Hario V60 is a fine brewer, far from being overpriced and it is not just geek gear. If you want jewelry or high end kitchenware, you can buy a glass or ceramic model. It does not displace either the Melitta cone nor Chemex, but it offers a fun and good tasting option to manual brewing, and places a healthy emphasis on grinding fine, rather than counting on the exit hole or filter to regulate contact time. With its innovative filter paper that offers the best in flavor transparency, the Hario V60 is a winner.
People keep telling me that they can’t afford a Technivorm, Capresso, Bunn or any decent long-term automatic drip maker. Meanwhile, pod machine one-cups encourage you to buy
prepackaged brands, hardly a key to thrift in these times.
I got this interesting coffee maker from Oren Bloostein. Oren suggested this might appeal to some folks as an alternative to the French Press or press pot as it’s becoming more widely (if generically) known.
And, it is innovative. It features an attractive ceramic pot, and a patented inner cylinder. You simply place grounds in the cylinder, (more…)
