So 2017… what a year. Many were happy to see it go. Many wish it never happened! But regardless of other things going on in 2017, one thing’s for sure – there were lots of great innovations in the world of coffee brewing! We already covered 2017 – The Year in Grinders, and even though we’re rolling into April 2018, we still wanted to take a look at the 2017 year in coffee brewers, both manual and electric.
In the past fifteen years, we’ve seen some amazing innovations in coffee brewing technology for the home; we’ve seen “Grind and Brew” systems grow up from cheapo blade grinders that clogged up, to sophisticated devices that use high quality burr grinders and ingenious systems to keep the coffee dry until it needs to be wet. In terms of actual brewing quality, for the longest time we had a total of one brewer with Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), (now Specialty Coffee Association (SCA)) certification — the Technivorm lineup — but now we’re up to well over a dozen now with the SCA certification (and four certified last year!). We’ve seen brewers with brains and connectivity show up, and not just for the “wow” factor, but for real usability.
Most importantly, we’ve seen a wider variety of brewers capable of brewing coffee at proper temperatures, and with proper water dispersion over the bed of ground coffee, SCA certification or not. And that’s a good thing – these kinds of brewers simply didn’t exist 15 years ago when Braun, Krups, and other mainstream brands were the leading coffee brewers on store shelves. What this means for you is, simply put, better coffee in the home, automatically.
2017 saw some continuing innovation in the automatic coffee brewing market for the home, from mainstream companies like Bunn, Cuisinart and Breville, and from niche makers, like Behmor and Wilfa, to name a few. We’ll take a look at a few of these products in our year end review.
Breville’s Swiss Knife Coffee Maker
Breville, based out of Australia, is absolutely determined to become the mass market leader in quality coffee and espresso. Their head of Beverages department, Phil McKnight, is a complete geek for great coffee. A few years ago, Breville absolutely killed it with the Grind Control Brewer, setting an extremely high standard for a grind and brew coffee maker: it had a quality burr grinder, an innovative grind delivery system that left very little grinds behind (and kept the grinds dry from the brewer’s steamy vapors), and while not SCA certified, we tested it at CoffeeGeek, and it met or exceeded all the SCA standards for a Gold Cup capable brewer.
n 2017, Breville envisioned a new kind of automatic brewer. One that not only would brew to the exact SCA Gold Cup Standard, but feature five additional brewing methods and a “My Brew” function to let you super-fine tune how your coffee is brewed.
I’m talking about the Breville Precision Brewer. This brewer is almost literally the “swiss army knife” of automated coffee brewers. On top of having six brewing methods built in and a “My Brew” uber customized brewing mode, the machine even has a dripper adapter so you can eschew the brewer’s filter holder and thermal carafe, and brew directly into your favourite pour over dripper. The Precision Brewer features a full PID control for exact water temperatures, a controllable pump to select 3 different flow rates, and even has some ingenious designs for brewing smaller batches, even down to one cup, by controlling the steep times in the filter basket for small volume brewing.
The machine even has a cold brew function!
We had the chance to put a prototype of the Precision Brewer though extended paces last year, and the machine brewed an amazing cup, every single time. I found it nearly impossible to brew a better cup manually, and believe me, I tried in some head to head testing. It’s not cheap ($300), but really, it is one of the most advanced, and customizable coffee brewers on the planet today.
Bunn Gets Serious About Home Coffee
For the longest time, Bunn kept old standard home brewers and didn’t do much with them. In the 1990s they developed a system that would heat all the water at once (instead of a flow through system)… and that was about it – the end of their innovation. The way they dispersed water over coffee wasn’t great. Their brewers had heating plates (not a good idea). They used the cache of their commercial brewers to get sales of home brewers. They weren’t bad brewers (in fact, they were some of the better ones in the early 2000s), but they weren’t… great.
In 2017, Bunn decided to do something in the home brewing market and shake things up. They introduced the Bunn HB Programmable Coffee Maker, their first machine to get SCA certification. So what makes this brewer special? First and foremost, it brews at SCA Gold Cup temperatures – 200F. Second, they fine tuned the water dispersion system so the bed of coffee is better saturated. Third, the machine controls water flow to give the proper contact time required to get SCA certification. And fourth, they paid attention to a ton of details, from the aesthetics of the machine (it’s easily the most visually striking Bunn home machine) to how the carafe pours (they guarantee it’s drip free). There is, however, one problem with this brewer. It still has a heat pad to “keep the coffee warm” which is a bad thing. Coffee doesn’t like continual cooking. But other than that, this $170 (Williams Sonoma exclusive, for now) brewer is a solid bet, and also comes with a 3 year warranty, something unheard of for drip brewers. Once WS loses the exclusive, I expect this to come down to the $120 price range or less.
Cuisinart Gets SCA Certification?
Yep, it’s true. Listen; I’m not going to mince words here. I am not a fan of companies that were formerly great, innovative and inventive, but these days, the brand name is worth more than the innovation, and “holding companies” that now own the brand slap their name on just about anything. Think Braun, or Kodak, or Polaroid, or Commodore. Cuisinart’s kind of like that too. Sure, they bring out some fantastic products to this day, but they also slap their brand on absolute shit products found on Alibaba with a myriad of branding identities.
So I was surprised (and pleasantly so) to find out that Cuisinart got a coffee maker certified by the SCA in 2017: the Cuisinart PurePrecision Brewer. And I even got a chance to use one for a day last summer. The build quality is fairly good, the dispersion pattern over the bed of coffee gets the job done, and the cup taste is definitely up to Gold Cup standards. The brewer even does a “preinfusion” to first get the bed of coffee blooming before moving onto the full brew mode. The machine looks good, feels solid, and meets all SCA standards, and at $167 for the thermal carafe model, is a good choice if you want a fantastic, consistent brewed coffee each morning.
The Wilfa Brewer
Now… this next brewer isn’t technically an innovation in 2017 for coffee brewers, since it was introduced in 2013 in Europe, and 2015 in the USA through an exclusive Williams Sonoma distribution. So why is it on my list of 2017 innovative coffee brewers? Because this past year, this brewer was released from the proprietary, expensive shackles of Williams Sonoma and became more broadly available, and for $150 less than the WS price.
I’m talking about the Wilfa Coffee Brewer. It was $360 when launched at Williams Sonoma, but now costs $209 (or even less, $190 for the Black model). This massive price drop, paired with how special this coffee brewer is, are the reasons it’s a big part of my look back at 2017 coffee brewers.
The Wilfa is an innovative, absolutely stunning brewer – a work of art for your kitchen counter. And it’s not just about design – there’s thought out function to the design in every aspect. The vertical tower water tank is detachable for easy refilling. The design encourages you to use the right ratio of coffee to water. It has brewing water flow control to match the volume of coffee brewed (slower flow for lower amounts of coffee). The dispersion pattern over the bed of coffee is well thought out. And did I mention it’s absolutely stunning? This is how coffee makers would look in a Star Trek set.
And the cherry on top? It too is SCA certified to Gold Cup brewing standards.
OXO’s Barista Brain Brewers
Oxo introduced several products as prototypes at the 2015 SCAA Trade Show and got them SCAA Gold Cup Standard certified, but it wasn’t until last year that they saw mainstream rollout. I’m talking about their “Barista Brain” line of brewers. There’s the beautiful and capable 9 Cup Barsta Brain model that has been around for a couple of years now, and then there’s a newer model, one with some serious home use innovations.
That would be the 12 Cup OXO Barista Brain Coffee Brewer. Why is it so special? It incorporates a removable temperature-controlled glass walled kettle, and a scale to measure the brewing water by weight! On top of that, it has one of the best water dispersion systems I’ve ever seen in a home brewer, and it looks drop dead modern-gorgeous as well.
The killer feature of this 12 cup model, besides the full SCA Gold Cup certification, is the removable, fully temperature-controlled kettle. It can be set to heat water between 175F and 212F for a wide variety of tea brewing (or manual pourover coffee use), and when used to automatically brew coffee, the water it dispenses is weighed by an internal scale to deliver exact water to ground coffee ratios. There’s many other innovations as well, including a “brewing flute” to fully mix the brewed coffee in the thermal carafe, the aforementioned dispersion system, and of course, variable pump-controlled water, for controlling brew times for smaller batches. An amazing, multipurpose coffee brewer, for sure.
(ed.note 2021: sad to say OXO discontinued this a few years ago. It’s too bad, it was an amazing product).
Other Coffee Brewers
There are several other coffee brewers on the market that weren’t introduced in 2017, but got some minor tweaks and improvements. They include:
Behmor Connected Coffee Brewer: Rolled out in 2015, this coffee brewer has been getting subtle upgrades and tweaks to it’s iOS and Android apps, and is, of course, SCA Gold Cup certified. It’s an amazing deal too, at only $139, for a brewer that will rival anything else in this article, in terms of cup quality and customization.
Bonavita rolled out a few new brewers, all based on their 1900 line, which is SCA certified (though they did not apply for certification for the newer brewers), and they hit a few nice spots, and bonus, you can brew directly into a Chemex or a Hario filter with carafe, directly, using these brewers.
The Bonavita Metropolitan is aimed to deliver a sub $100, SCA Gold Cup level brewer, and it does so in spades. Costs are cut in the materials used for the outer housing of the brewer, and the carafe is a simple glass one (with no heating element), but otherwise, it’s the same inside as the 1900 series, SCA certified models.
The Bonavita Connoisseur is an update on the 1900 model, with improvements to the filter design, and a much better thermal brewing carafe (it stays warm longer). The price also drops a bit, making it a capable $150 SCA Gold Cup standard brewer.
Manual Drip Coffee Makers
Seems like everyone and their dog is coming out with a manual pourover brewer these days, and 201 was no exception. Some were incredibly expensive and not worth it (like the Snow Peak Barista Pourover Filter Holder ($70!!!), others were ornate and featuring titanium (!!), and still others were weird and not well thought out. There’s just… so… many. Honestly, my advice? Buy a Melitta Porcelain Manual Pourover System for under $17. It, along with Melitta’s FlavorPore Bamboo Filters, will do every big as great a job as any expensive Hario or other system will. Save your money for buying better coffee.
That said, let’s look at what the big boys did in 2017.
Hario… not much
I was sad to see that Hario didn’t actually roll out any truly innovative new products in 2017, at least as far as pourover coffee goes. They did roll out a new grinder, which is a rebadge of a Sunbeam (Australia) grinder, and probably their most innovative product in 2017 was the temperature probe mod they rolled out for their Buono Kettles, the VTB-1B thermometer. It’s also quite pricey at $45. Other than that (and also their updated hand grinders, which we talked about in the 2017 Grinders in Review article), everything else they rolled out were small refinements on their V60 lineup, including the introduction of more olive wood, used in the drippers and carafes in the V60 lineup. Hopefully, we’ll see more new things from the company in 2018.
KitchenAid Has New Stuff!
So KitchenAid… they seem to be taking coffee very seriously again. On top of SCA certified brewers rolled out in 2015 and 2016, the company is also taking pourover coffee much more seriously.
In 2017, they announced a new lineup of pour over kettles, but they’ve been delayed until launch this summer, in 2018. Why the delay? Because they added a new key feature that kinda kicks butt. The lineup is called the “Precision Gooseneck Kettles” and will come in three flavours: a manual stovetop version under $100, an electric version under $120, and a “digital” version (meaning programmable temperatures) for around $150.
So what’s the killer feature? These kettles have an adjustable flow rate! Three setting in fact. I struggle myself maintaining a good constant flow when I use a Hario Buono Kettle or similar when doing manual pourover coffee. I can’t wait to see this feature in practice in 2018.
OXO Pour Over Kettles
Oxo rolled out a lineup of pour over kettles last year that will definitely give Hario a run for the money in their Buono territory. Remember above that thermometer add-on for the Buono that costs $45? Well for just $5 more, you can get an entire gooseneck kettle with a built in thermometer (and one that looks a lot more elegant too). At the budget end, there’s Oxo’s $35 Good Grips Gooseneck Kettle, and at the higher end, the (very reasonably priced) $100 Adjustable Temperature Gooseneck Kettle. My favourite of the bunch is the $50 temperature probe manual kettle – that’s a bargain.
Conclusion
2017 was a pretty innovative year when it comes to automated brewed coffee systems, there’s absolutely no doubt. We’ve moved further than ever into the realm of machines with proper brewing temperatures and excellent water dispersion systems being the norm instead of the exception. There are now brewers you can buy that meet SCA exacting standards, for under $100. There are machines that are literally trying to be the swiss army knife of automated coffee brewing, doing everything from manual pourover automation, to iced coffee brewing, to single cup brewing and super big batch brewing, all in one device. Coffee brewers are not only getting more capable, but they’re getting more and more beautiful, some looking like pieces of architectural art on the countertop.
In the manual pour over coffee world… not so much. New colours? Sure. New woods used? Yep. New materials? Why not. But actual innovation? Not so much. The KitchenAid selectable flow pourover gooseneck is probably the biggest innovation in 2017, and that was delayed for a 2018 release.
Hopefully, 2018 will see more innovation and cool things happening in the manual pourover world. Until then, buy the Melitta Porcelain Pour Over System I mentioned at the top of the article. That will do you just fine.
