Best Coffee Makers

A coffee maker is a culinary device that is used in the process of preparing a drink such as coffee. There are several main types of coffee makers that differ not only in appearance, but also in the mechanism of work, and in addition to functionality. 

Among the main types of coffee makers, the following can be distinguished: 

• pod coffee maker; 
• a drip coffee maker, differs from other types in that during operation the device does not create pressure, water flows slowly and literally drips through the coffee in the literal sense; 
• a siphon coffee maker is a device that consists of three main parts: a water tank at the base of the device, a filter that is located in the middle and in which ground coffee is placed, and also an upper tank, into which the ready-made coffee comes under pressure to drink coffee; 
• capsule coffee machine is a device in the process of which capsules with ground coffee are used; 
• espresso coffee maker is designed specifically for making this type of drink as a cappuccino, as well as classic espresso; 

We didn’t mention pour over coffee makers and electric ones as they are meant as additional types, not main.

However, scientific and technological progress made adjustments in the process of making the famous and beloved coffee. 

An electric coffee maker is much more convenient to use than a turk. This device itself does all the work for a person, it is only necessary to pour coffee into the machine and start the process of preparing the drink. 

One or another type of coffee maker varies depending on the set of functions that the device has. For example, one of the most expensive types of coffee makers can be attributed to specialized coffee machines, which not only make classic espresso, but also grind coffee grains. 

Modern coffee machines can prepare various types of drinks, for example, cappuccino, latte, mochachino and others. This advantage allows the use of coffee machines in restaurants, bars, and coffee houses. 

The household coffee maker differs from the specialized one in size, as well as in its coffee preparation capabilities. As a rule, a standard household coffee maker is not equipped with a design for grinding coffee beans. For this reason, the required amount of already ground or instant coffee is poured into the coffee machine. 

In addition, the coffee maker is equipped with a water tank. During operation, coffee is passed through the filter of the coffee maker using a free supply of water. Usually, pre-ground coffee is located inside a paper or metal filter, which is located inside a special funnel. This funnel is placed above a ceramic or glass container with water. 

The principle of operation of a household coffee maker is simple and consists of several stages. Initially, cold water is heated to a boil in a special container, and then, thanks to the structure of the coffee maker, it goes into a funnel. 

Experts say that coffee made with a metal filter can cause significant damage to the human body. A paper filter eliminates impurities and heavy compounds from coffee.

Types of Coffee Makers

Drip Coffee Makers

A drip coffee maker is an electrical device for preparing filtered coffee by spilling or percolation. Drip-type coffee makers have been available for a long time, but today they feel confident among the advanced coffee machines of the new generation. 

The drip coffee maker has a solid history. For the first time, a device that prepared coffee by filtering hot water through ground powder was offered to the public in the distant 1800. The inventor of the method is the minister of the church, the Parisian archbishop Jean-Baptiste de Bellois. The invention was modernized many times, redone, patented in different countries. But the principle remained the same. With the evolution of electrical appliances, the drip coffee maker acquired its own heating source and its familiar form.

Today’s drip machine is an electric apparatus with a heater in which hot water passes through a filter with ground coffee and enters the tank. The strength and aroma of the drink is achieved due to the slow passage of water through the coffee, during which it is enriched with the taste and aroma of ground beans.

The principle of the drip coffee maker

Its operating principle has changed little over the past two centuries, although the device has acquired a modern look and some additional functions.

• Water from the tank, which is usually located at the rear, enters the boiler.

• In the tank, the water heats up and rises up the tube.

• It flows dropwise through the thickness of the coffee powder and enters the lower compartment.

• When all the water heats up and drips through the filter, the coffee is ready.

The coffee grounds remain in the filter and do not get dirty cups, and the platform on which the tank with ready coffee is installed can have a heating function and maintain the temperature of the drink.

Despite the similarities, coffee makers from different manufacturers vary in design, volume, materials, power. Most of the differences are observed in additional functions: the presence or absence of auto power off, a delayed start timer, indication, mechanical or electronic control.

The device will prepare you only one type of coffee – natural black filtered coffee. Some people call this type “Americano”, because it will be offered to you in any coffeehouse in the USA. Neither an espresso, nor a cappuccino, nor an Oriental coffee drip coffee machine can cook. The strength of the finished drink is likely to be medium. Although you can increase the strength by taking finely ground coffee and a small portion of water.

Usually for a drip coffee maker, grains of medium and strong roasting of medium grinding are taken.

This appliance is very popular in North America, but in Europe it is much less favored, preferring coffee machines.

In terms of simplicity and reliability of use, it is the undisputed leader.

Pour-Over Coffee Makers

Pour over is a method of brewing coffee by spilling hot water through a special filter with ground powder. In the same way, sometimes also called utensils specially designed for this method of preparation of the drink. 

Japanese coffee brewing method

After coffee became more and more resolutely claiming its rights in Asian markets, the Japanese began to think about their own method of preparing the drink. At the very beginning of the 20th century, such a brewing method as the strait began to gain popularity. 

Its essence was a bit like making tea. Ground coffee was poured with a slow and even stream of hot water. The biggest trick was to choose the optimal pressure and flow rate of boiling water. The jet should be very thin, it must be poured in a spiral, and the entire spill procedure should take about 2 minutes.

It is not surprising that the Japanese themselves really liked this method. It is similar to the tea manipulations familiar to them and allows you to focus on the process of preparing the drink. This concentration is very much appreciated in Japanese philosophy and culture, as it helps to achieve a state of mental harmony.

For the time being, this method had fans only in the land of the rising sun. In the mid-50s, one production company adopted the idea and began to produce special utensils for making coffee using the pour over method. The assortment quickly grew to several dozen positions, and now the Japanese could quickly and easily prepare their favorite drink.

Catering enterprises actively began to use such dishes. It attracted the attention of tourists. The British, who witnessed this method, were delighted and immediately christened it a coffee ceremony. Then came the second, typically English name – pour over. 

About five years ago, the pour over penetrated the States and won the hearts of curious Americans, who are traditionally not indifferent to any exotic.

Around the same time, the pour over got to the European part of the continent and today it can be freely bought in many coffee shops in your country.

Coffee prepared in this way has a rich and strong taste. It is similar to European espresso. 

Siphon Coffee Makers

If you want to surprise guests with a small culinary show, then brew coffee in a siphon in front of the most respected public. Do you think this is another novelty? On the contrary, the coffee siphon boasts a fairly solid history, it is already over 170 years old.

Siphon for coffee – one of the devices for making coffee. It represents two flasks connected by a tube. Water is poured into the first flask and heated (usually with an alcohol burner), a filter is placed in the second and ground coffee is poured.

What happens in the siphon?

• Water, heating, expands.

• Increasing pressure forces hot water into the second tank.

• Ground powder is extracted under the influence of a hot liquid.

• Gradually, almost the entire volume of water passes through the tube from the heated flask to the coffee flask, and warm air is also forced out with it. It is he who causes the very seething of coffee in the second part of the device.

• After the heating stops, the liquid overflows into the first vessel under the influence of the difference in pressure and gravitational forces. The filter holds particles of the powder, and the flask contains a clean, aromatic drink.

The history of the coffee siphon

A rich trail of historical and geographical adventures stretches behind the coffee siphon.

The device was first coined in the early 19th century. The exact date of the invention is unknown, but the first patent was granted in Germany in 1830.

Immediately several options for the siphon were proposed by French inventors, it is still believed that the device comes from this country.

The first siphons consisted of two separate vessels that communicated with each other. 

In the mid-forties of the 19th century, the coffee siphon was perfected by the Frenchman L. Gabet. He suggested putting the cylinders one on top of the other and using the property of water to increase in volume when heated. 

This principle is still used in siphons to this day. The proposed design has become very popular and is still known in many countries under the name “coffee envelope”.

A drink in this vessel was prepared in the presence of guests, it was a fashionable entertainment. In France and Germany, many dinner parties in the 19th century ended with siphon coffee.

Today it is used mainly in bars and coffee houses, not so long ago the device “lit up” at the championships for barista. Siphon coffee is tasty and aromatic, so the growing popularity of the device does not surprise gourmets.

What is the modern version of the coffee siphon?

The design of the device is quite simple, it has improved over the years, but the general idea remains unchanged.

• The lower glass bulb is, of course, heat resistant. It has a round or droplet shape.
• A metal tripod to which the bottom bulb is attached. Below, under a glass vessel, there is room for a heating element.
• The upper part is a second flask of borosilicate glass. It can have a cylindrical or spherical shape, it is necessarily equipped with a long tube in the lower part. When the assembly is assembled, this tube reaches almost to the bottom of the first bulb.
• Cover for the upper tank.
• Rubber gasket between the flasks.
• The filter with small cells is placed in the upper vessel. It can be textile or metal.
• A heating element. In this capacity, an alcohol burner most often acts.

Electric Coffee Makers

With the help of electricity, we boil and heat, so electrical appliances have become indispensable guests in the kitchen. Even such traditional dishes, like a coffee pot, have acquired an electrical counterpart. 

Varieties of electric coffee pots

Devices that allow you to make coffee using electricity have been on sale for quite some time, but their range is not too large. Conventionally, all electric coffee pots can be divided into two groups.

• Electric Italian coffee pots, they are geyser coffee makers. This appliance is no different from a traditional coffee maker, with the exception of an additional heating source. For the rest, the geyser electric coffee maker looks and works just like the one designed for heating on the stove. 
• Geyser coffee maker. Traditional electric coffee pots. Externally, the devices resemble a small electric kettle, however, they have some functional differences from their volume counterpart.

Let’s get acquainted in more detail with the functionality of a conventional electric coffee pot.

Heat

• Most coffee pots are powered by a normal network.
• Some models may have autonomous heating, from batteries.

Functional

In addition to the housing, the heating pad with the control unit and the power cord, coffee pots have additional functions.

• Safety sensor. It does not allow the device to turn on without water.
• Response sensor. It is triggered if the coffee is preparing to escape. In this case, the power is immediately turned off.
• The choice of heating modes. Usually there are two of them – slow and fast. Depending on the selected mode, the amount of energy for heating the coffee is regulated.

Percolators

In the list of alternative methods of brewing, the coffee percolator is far from the first place. Even experienced coffee lovers are unfamiliar to this appliance. Meanwhile, both the history and the design of the percolator are very entertaining, and the resulting drink deserves a thoughtful tasting. 

What is a coffee percolator?

If you give an exact definition, then this is the kind of coffee pot in which the brewing of the drink occurs by passing hot water through a separate container with ground coffee. Even the name itself comes from the Latin “percolare” – seepage.

The method of percolation – dripping drop by drop – is the basis of the work of a whole group of modern coffee devices, both alternative pour over and classic drip coffee makers.

For the first time, the idea to create such a coffee pot in which the process of seepage would occur inside the device was born from the English nobleman, B. Thompson, the next Earl of Rumford. 

The American field worker – farmer H. Goodwich improved and patented the design. It happened in 1889. 

The American added a tube into the coffee pot, along which heated water rose, which made practical use much more convenient. Since then, the principle of operation of the percolator and its design has not changed practically.

How is coffee percolator arranged?

Outwardly, it looks almost like a steel electric kettle with a long spout. Its design includes:

• Body
• Cover
• Heating element (in electrical appliances)
• Water tank
• Ground coffee container
• Distributor (diffuser) of water. He covers a coffee tank.
• Filter
• Tube for lifting water

The principle of operation of the percolator is simple and universal.

• Ground powder is poured into the container, water is poured into the container.

• The percolator heats up, and water rises upward through a special tube.

• From the holes in the upper part of the tube, hot water enters the dispenser, from there it spills into the coffee container and passes dropwise through the powder. In the process of leakage, an active extraction process takes place.

• Water again falls into the main container.

• The process is repeated again and again – water rises, seeps through coffee, spills into a container, rises again.

The peculiarity of the percolator is that the brewing of coffee will continue until the coffee pot is disconnected from the power supply or removed from the stove.

The device was made of steel, it’s simple and effective design easily withstood decades of operation. Therefore, it is not surprising that percolators produced in the 70s of the last century, when such coffee pots were at the peak of their popularity, were preserved in some families.

How to Choose a Coffee Maker

First you need to understand what exactly you want to get as a result.

• What kind of coffee do you like? Espresso or Americano, coffee and milk drinks, and maybe also tea and cocoa? How often will milk be added? Should it be whipped?
• How many people drink coffee at the same time? Models with a boiler can heat up to 5 minutes and give out two servings of espresso, then you need to wait again – it is inconvenient for breakfast of a large family. The other model easily dispenses 4-6 cups in one go and after 30 seconds is usually ready to go.
• What kind of coffee will you use? If it’s a ground store, from a pack – it makes no sense to take an expensive machine that will reveal all the taste and aroma shades of freshly cooked grains.
• Do you have barista skills and are you ready to learn? Some models require proper ramming, temperature selection. But there are those who have an improved filter, and in any case they will give out a beautiful dense foam.
• Will additional consumables be required? All filters, capsules, pods, etc. require changing from time to time, and with capsules, it often turns out quite expensive, especially with milk flavors.