Many people wake up every morning and have a cup or two of coffee to help them get moving. You can drink your coffee at home or put it in a thermos or a travel mug. It’s much cheaper to make good coffee at home than hit the coffee shop every morning. You can make a great cup of coffee in an automatic drip coffee maker. An automatic-drip coffee maker is one of the easiest to use and most versatile style of coffee makers.
Despite all of the features that you may see, automatic-drip coffee makers are relatively simple devices, all of which function in a similar manner and brew coffee. Water is first added to a reservoir, where it is heated and then dispersed over a pre-filled basket / filter of grounds. As the heated water travels through the grounds, it extracts flavor before it drips into your mug, coffee pot or carafe.
A somewhat new option with automatic drip coffee makers is the “coffee-on-demand” style machines. They brew coffee directly into an internal holding tank where the coffee is kept hot and ready for dispensing one cup at a time.
More than any other style, automatic-drip coffee makers offer many features:
- water reservoir
- filter holder
- screen filters
- built-in warming plate
- carafe
- carafe stand
- dripless carafes
- indicator lights
- cord storage
- automatic shutoff
- swing-out or lift-out filter baskets
- brew-pause feature
- digital control panels
- clocks with timers
- automatic shut-off
- water filtration systems
- flavor systems
- built-in grinding
The most popular feature on automatic-drip coffee makers is a digital clock/timer to allow you to preset a brew time – like in the morning. You can add water and ground coffee the night before and wake up to a freshly brewed pot of coffee. What a nice way to wake up!
Full-size automatic drip coffee makers can brew up to 14 cups but other, smaller machines make from a single up to four cups at a time. They work best when set to brew a full pot of coffee. A full pot is 8-14 cups of coffee and takes from 5-12 minutes for a complete brewing cycle.
Some popular brands of automatic drip coffee makers are:
- DeLonghi Drip Coffee Makers
- Saeco Coffee Makers
- Mr. Coffee Coffee Makers
- Hamilton Beach Coffee Makers
- Krups Drip Coffee Makers
- Bunn Coffee Makers
- Sunbeam Drip Coffee Makers
Online stores as well as local department stores are good places to look for the best automatic drip coffee maker.