The best coffee maker

By Cale Guthrie Weissman

This post was done in partnership with The Sweethome, a buyer’s guide to the best things for your home. Read the full article here.

After putting in 41 hours to do research and interview experts over the past two years and brewing hundreds of cups of coffee in 12 machines, we think the OXO On 9-Cup Coffee Maker is the best. The OXO makes better-tasting coffee than the vast majority of drip coffee makers, and it’s much easier to use than the other high-end machines we tested.

How we picked

Many coffee makers produce terrible coffee because they don’t heat water to the right temperature, or they over- or under-steep grounds, or they don’t use the right water-to-bean ratio. Because flavor was the top priority for the 1,354 Sweethome readers we polled (with ease-of-use and speed tying for second as the most important feature), we looked for machines that could deliver the best taste quickly and without fuss.

To narrow down the field, we turned to the experts. The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) offers a paid certification program for coffee makers that meet the association’s criteria for excellence, including not just temperature but also time, volume, extraction, carafe, and machine performance. Right now nine machines have the certification (up from six last year), reflecting a huge shift in the coffee-making industry. For our latest round of testing, we included five SCAA-approved models.

We also checked out Amazon reviews and formal product reviews and talked to coffee professionals who are looking for the best thing on the scene. From there, we decided which models warranted an in-house Sweethome test.

How we tested

Four of the machines we tested in late 2015. Photo: Michael Hession

Our test panel consisted of three roasters from Brooklyn-based roasting company Lofted Coffee and two Sweethome employees. Using a digital scale, we weighed out six 60-gram batches of whole-bean Ethiopian coffee, freshly roasted by Lofted, to make one liter for each of the six coffee maker models we brought in for testing. We then ground the beans, brewed them in all of the machines simultaneously, served coffee to the tasters in numbered cups, and had the tasters write down their thoughts about each cup.

Once the tasting was complete, the experts from Lofted used a VST refractometer to determine the percentage of total dissolved solids (TDS) in each sample to see which came closer to the 1.15 to 1.35 percent ideal range.

We used a refractometer to measure the percentage of total dissolved solids in each coffee sample. Photo: Michael Hession

Finally, we took the best-performing machines back to The Sweethome’s test kitchen to perform more extensive usability tests and to measure how well each carafe worked.

Our pick

Expect great-tasting coffee from the OXO On 9-Cup Coffee Maker, a machine that’s easy to use and clean. Photo: Michael Hession

The sleek steel-and-black OXO On 9-Cup Coffee Maker proves that good coffee and good features don’t have to be mutually exclusive. It’s very simple to operate: Once you’ve ground your beans to the correct particle size (which is extremely important) and weighed the grounds so they extract just enough, all you have to do is spin a dial on the OXO to indicate the number of cups and press a button to start the machine. Wait about six minutes and your coffee will be ready.

The OXO also produces the second-best-tasting coffee we found, and it’s a better machine than its competition in every other respect. It has a five-port showerhead that disperses water evenly throughout the coffee-brewing basket, good temperature stability, and an automatically activated pre-infusion mode (a crucial step that heightens flavor clarity). Though other coffee makers we tested have the option of activating pre-infusion, the OXO just does it automatically. It also offers smart features that make it more convenient than the competition, like a timer that lets you know how old the coffee is and a scheduler for auto-brewing in the morning.

What really sold us on the OXO was its exceptional carafe, which pours well—it takes only an easy tilt to get a steady stream from carafe to cup—and stays hot for hours on end. After two hours of sitting, it was still 168 degrees Fahrenheit. Plus, the entire machine is easy to clean—the connected plastic parts in the actual machine are detachable and dishwasher-safe, but you’ll have to wash the carafe by hand.

For the best-tasting coffee

If you can’t immediately discard your used filter from the Bonavita 1900TS, you have to leave it in the sink so it has a place to drip until you can deal with it. Other coffee makers don’t have this issue. Photo: Amadou Diallo

The Bonavita 1900TS brews coffee faster than any other machine with pre-infusion—it made a full batch in a little over five minutes—and consistently makes some of the best-tasting automatically dripped drink you can find, thanks to a flat-bottomed filter and powerful water-heating mechanism.

Not only did tasters love it, but, according to our refractometer, it also came the closest to the ideal range of 1.15 percent to 1.35 percent total dissolved solids as specified by the SCAA. Plus, it’s among the easiest systems to operate—just fill the right compartments and flip a switch.

However, that ease of operation translates to fewer features that people want, like programmability. It also has a poor carafe that’s prone to spilling, making it nearly impossible to get the last drops out and requiring the lid to be fully screwed on just to pour a cup of coffee. Also annoying is that the brewing basket sits directly atop the carafe, so you need to find a place to put it when you’re pouring the coffee (we leave it in the sink to catch drips). We were willing to overlook these flaws when even the next best machine was a big step down in terms of flavor. But now that there are machines that address these issues and make coffee that tastes almost as good, it’s not really worth the sacrifice unless balanced flavor is your absolute highest priority.

The larger upgrade pick (that also makes tea)

The OXO On 12-Cup Coffee Brewing System has a removable kettle that can heat water for tea in addition to making coffee. Photo: Michael Hession

The OXO On 9-Cup Coffee Maker is plenty for households with two or three coffee drinkers. But if you have four or more coffee drinkers, or if you want a machine that can do tea and coffee at the same time, the OXO On 12-Cup Coffee Brewing System is the way to go.

Keep in mind that it brews much more slowly—it took more than eight minutes to make a normal eight-cup (1-liter) batch of coffee—and the coffee isn’t quite as flavorful. We recommend it only if you need the larger capacity or the tea kettle functionality.

This guide may have been updated by The Sweethome. To see the current recommendation, please go here.