Coffee Makers: What to Look for in a Great Machine

By Sirena Van Schaik

When I first moved out on my own, oh so many years ago, I decided that the first thing that I needed to purchase was a coffee maker. It was essential that I greet each morning with a cup of coffee and the better the machine the better the brew would be.

Of course, I was just on my own and I didn’t have much in the way of budget so I had to settle with a lower end coffee maker. Still, I made sure that I had a few features on my machine and in the end, it turned out to be a surprisingly good machine that provided me with lots of excellent coffee.

If you are looking for a new coffee machine, there are a few features that I would definitely recommend.

Wake up, it’s time to get going:

Over the years, I have found that I use this feature less and less but at one time in my life, I thrived on the automatic brew timer. When I was up early in the morning, it was such a treat to come down to the kitchen to find a fresh pot of coffee after my shower. If you find you have very little time in the morning, purchase a coffee maker with a automatic brew timer that you can set for about 15 minutes before you go down. You should plan for the coffee to brew while you are in the shower so it is just finishing as you step into the kitchen.

Everything’s gone digital:

With everything being digital, I would strongly recommend that you purchase a coffee maker that is digital too. It doesn’t need to greet you in the morning but it makes life a bit easier with its LCD screens, time displays, timer set, which I mentioned above, and the auto-off feature that many digital coffee makers have now.

A little bit of patience doesn’t always go a long way:

One of the biggest pet peeves that I had when my husband and I moved in together was the way he would pull the coffee pot off the burner during mid brew. Coffee would splash everywhere while he poured himself a cup of coffee. He never mastered the “slide the cup under the drip” manuever that I had mastered when I waited tables years earlier. For that reason, I have never purchased another coffee maker that does not have a pause and serve feature. This lovely feature cuts off the drip as soon as the coffee pot has been removed and you are able to pour a cup of coffee before it is finished brewing. The only thing to keep in mind is to return the pot immediately or it will start to spill out of the top of the filter.

A taste of clean water:

Some higher end coffee makers offer a wonderful feature called a water filter. These nice filters are used to filter out all those nasty things found in your tap water. Things like iron or the chlorine that they treat the water with. With a water filter in your coffee machine, you will find that your coffee is much better.

And there are some of the features that you should look for in a coffee machine. There are others such as ones with built in filters and water dispensers on the side but you don’t really need them. Again, it is all a preference thing for the add-ons but having the basic features is an important consideration for any coffee lover.