It grinds, it brews, it also helps store my beans: My new coffee maker is the shit

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#My favorite things#appliances#coffee

71eFSSXZXdL._SL1269_Years ago I was gifted an awesome coffee maker for Christmas. That guy I married will never forget the moment I opened the gift, hugged the box, and exclaimed “It grinds AND it brews!” Well, seven years later that coffee maker died on me. It had been giving me warning signs of its impeding demise — stopping mid-brew, refusing to turn on, etc. — then one day I woke up, and my coffee maker didn’t.

Yup, it was sad day in the Finley household. That coffee maker had been with me for a long time. But it was time for a new one. And oh boy did I find a spectacular replacement!

See, it’s important to me to have a coffee maker that grinds and brews because I always buy my favorite coffee beans in a big ol’ bag, and I really don’t want to grind them all myself. So I asked my father, the patron saint of Consumer Reports, to do some research for me, and his results told him that the by far the best grind and brew was this guy: Cuisinart DGB-700BC Grind-and-Brew. Then he found it on sale on Amazon, from $305 to $135!

So I Amazon Primed that fucker, and had it in my shake-y caffeine-withdrawing hands in two days.

I was delighted to find that this coffee maker has a bin on top that stores half a pound (plus a little more) of coffee beans! That means I can store more beans in my air-tight container and in my coffee maker, and have fewer bags of coffee taking up space in my freezer!

Then you set the number of cups of coffee you’re making, and the machine knows how many beans to grind! Like a god-damned wizard.

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This coffee maker also lets you set the strength of your coffee — mild, medium, and strong. And strong is STRONG. I love it!

I’ve been using it for a week and I’m still playing with the settings, but so far this grind and brew coffee maker is helping me forget all about the loss of my old one.

If you’re looking for a grind and brew, get thee to Amazon. Now who wants to hear about my new toaster?

About the Author: Megan Finley Horowitz

@meggyfin @meggyfin

I'm a 40-year-old potty-mouthed writer with late-diagnosed ADHD and a shit-ton of anxiety. I live in my hometown of Los Angeles with a husband, a daughter I never planned on having, and a senior rescue dog. Anything else you need to know can be gleaned from my instagram and my TikTok.

Comments on It grinds, it brews, it also helps store my beans: My new coffee maker is the shit

  2. Sigh. We use to have one of these and it was fantastic. But we had to get rid of it because much of the interior housing, including where water was heated, was plastic–and heat is what releases the plastic chemical crap the most into your food. I don’t bring this up to rain on anyone’s parade but because I only realized this about my coffee maker YEARS after I thought I had totally BPA/phtalate-proofed my kitchen. It was stainless steel on the outside so I assumed the inside was too–or at the least that water wouldn’t be heated in plastic. Anyway, we drink coffee every day so it had to go. Now I use one of these: http://www.sweetmarias.com/brewinstr/brewing.inst.yama.php

        • Thanks for the information, and I agree that everyone has their own comfort level with such things.

          I think that choosing products that are BPA free minimizes my exposure, and that is good enough for my comfort level. Eliminating plastics that might get heated from my lifestyle entirely is not practical for me.

          For example, I tried using steel water bottles instead of plastic, but they made the water taste funny, heated up too fast on hot days, and dented too easily if I dropped them. (Dented metal bottles no longer stood upright, which annoyed me.) When I found that Nalgene, my favorite water bottle company, was making BPA free bottles, switching to their bottles made sense to me.

          Your coffee maker looks cool, and I bet it makes really tasty coffee! I like the convenience of mine, but other types are cool too.

    • I want to preface this with the fact that everyone is entitled to their own comfort level with environmental hazards and what they put into their bodies. After taking a toxicology class I was freaking myself out about EVERYTHING, so I really had to take a look at what I could control, what is actually a hazard, and what I just had to accept. So without being dismissive OR encouraging fear mongering, I want to say that I think that unless you are incubating a male fetus, you don’t have to be uber vigilant about BPAs for the endocrine disruption risk. And you are drinking a cup of antioxidants, so maybe the carcinogen aspect of BPAs is cancelled out. That’s my comfort level, anyway.

    • If you like Sweet Maria’s, you have to try their Javan coffee!!! (Maybe it’s out of stock right now? Message them to see when they’ll get a new shipment in.)

      I just spent a week out at the Sunda plantation (operated by Klasik Beans Cooperative) featured on Sweet Maria’s website and it was a.maz.ing. Breathtaking/mind-blowing/inspiring/etc… Seriously amazeballs.

      http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee/full-description/java

      (Photos from the plantations are on my Instagram: @skjviajkt and Blue Bottle’s Instagram: @bluebottle and Stephen Vick’s Instagram: @stephen_vick.)

    • Me too! Seriously, I realized the other day that I’ve had the same toaster for 8 years, and I inherited it when I was the last to move out of an apartment in college, so who knows how old it really is. My toaster makes me want a wedding registry.

      • Ooh ooh, okay! It’s a Bella toaster in ORANGE for like $30. And it’s rad. It even has a button for warming up your toast. You know, when you forget about it and it pops then gets all cold, but re-toasting it will ruin it. So this toaster will freaking just warm it up. Whaaaat!? I love it.

        And it comes in all these amazing colors.

  4. With wedding monies (thanks Grandma!) we purchased a Saeco espresso machine. It was probably refurbished because the husband is all about refurbished products (since it means a human probably looked at it and fixed whatever would break soon already anyway) and so much cheaper! It makes average coffee beans taste expensive and expensive coffee beans, well, let’s keep it PG here.
    I love it, but if we had seen your coffee maker we may have had a tough decision on our hands!

  5. I also have a Cuisinart Grind-n-Brew, with the thermal carafe! I never want to buy a coffee pot with a hot plate ever again. The carafe keeps the coffee hot for HOURS and I never get that burnt-coffee flavor.
    I am so disappointed that my living together apart situation with my husband means that HE has the Grin-n-Brew and I’ve got my dad’s 30 year-old Mr. Coffee. (Seriously, it’s older than I am!)

      • I know, and I struggle to find my favorite roasts pre-ground. And I’m always leery of the store grinder, I don’t want cinnamon-almond coffee in my dark & roasty Nicaraguan. *sigh* I usually end up buying pre-ground Kona or Sumatran.

  6. We looooove our coffee maker. It is by Zojirushi, and it is really simple (I don’t mind grinding my own beans every morning). The carafe is fantastic. It keeps coffee piping hot for hours. It is delightful 🙂

  7. We just bought this very coffee maker, with the thermal carafe. I’m never going back to a non-thermal carafe, and after the last month with this beauty, I doubt I’m going back to a non-grinding machine either. The only thing I’m not so fond of is the carafe lid: it’s a bit tricky to get off, especially if your hands are wet.

    A hack for those who (like us) prefer super-strong, melt your bones coffee: if even the strong setting isn’t enough, set the cup selector dial higher than the amount of water you put in. So, if you want six cups, pour in six cups of water, set the dial to eight, and you’ll get six cups of super-strong coffee!

    • I got all science experiment-y with this coffee maker and realized that strong (shockingly) a bit too strong. So I set it to two cups on strong, but pour in four cups of water. It’s working perfectly for me.

  8. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!! Seriously it stores AND grinds?!?! That is fabulous. Now trying to figure out what to list on Craigslist so I can afford it.

  10. We have this coffee maker and it is indeed amazing. It’s been going strong for years now with one caveat. When my husband went on a vanilla-flavored-coffeebean binge that lasted a few months the grinder started getting clogged and jammed up. Since he’s switched to regular beans and flavored creamer it hasn’t been a problem.

  11. Oooh oooh oooh, yanno what I love? MY BIALETTI.

    I don’t mind in the slightest grinding my own beans (actually, I love doing it . . . that smell . . . mmmmmmmmmmmm), and I vastly prefer espresso to drip coffee. But I didn’t want to spend $$$ on one of those counter-top models.

    I swear the Bialetti changed my life. I adore it so hardcore. It fits just right on the little simmer burner on my stove, and it makes perfect coffee every time. It’s a little thinner than a “real” espresso maker would do, but I think it’s about the same as a “long shot,” which is often what I order anyway.

    Love love love.

      • RED?! I love red kitchen gadgets! I wish I had found one when I was buying mine! Maybe I’ll hunt for one if I buy a second — I have a little three-cup one, but I kind of want the Party Size. 😉

  12. http://presso.co.nz/

    We have one of these and it’s brilliant! We have our own electric burr grinder which is amazing. Megan, does your one have blades or burr for grinding? I used to have blades and gawd, I just wouldn’t go back now. Burr is SO FREAKING GOOD.

    • Really? Mine are in a glass mason jar on the counter, and I have NEVER had them go rancid. I do buy them in small amounts (enough for a week or so) from the bulk bin at the natural foods store, and from a local roaster, too, so they can’t be too old by the time I get my hands on them.

      I don’t care to put them in the fridge because I feel they pick up the odors from the other food, and then don’t taste as good themselves.

    • You’re not supposed to store coffee beans in the freezer OR the fridge, apparently, because the cold and moisture ruin the natural oils that make them so awesome. You’re also not supposed to store ground coffee in the fridge or freezer for the same reason.

      You can store coffee beans that you buy in bulk in the freezer, but you’re supposed to thaw them at room temp and then use within two weeks. But opening and closing the package in the freezer/fridge every day to get beans out is what causes the moisture build-up that ruins the quality.

      Keeping beans or grounds in an airtight container in a cool dark place is just fine. I keep mine in an opaque canister with a tight lid and they stay mighty fresh. I used to keep my coffee in the fridge till I read about this and I have to say, my coffee does taste better now that I just store the beans in the pantry.

      • I store my bulk-bought coffee bags in the freezer. And the one bag that I am continually using is stored in an airtight container on top of my fridge. I have had a couple of freezer-stored bags go bad on me. That’s why I’m loving that I can store more beans in the airtight canister if a bunch of them are being stored in the coffee maker.

  14. We have one of these…a friend of ours got it for us for our wedding, and we continue his tradition of calling it “The Godmaker.” Thing does EVERYTHING. Well, except for the water…I’ve ruined a pot of coffee assuming the reservoir would know how many cups I’d set the thing for. I fail at coffee.

    • That’s EXACTLY what I did! The first time I made coffee I was like, “Oh, I’ll just fill up this thing and it’ll use water as needed.” Nope: I now have 10 cups of coffee made from two cups-worth of beans. Wah waaaaah.

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