Best Automatic Pour Over Coffee Makers – Coffeeology’s Picks
If you’re a coffee addict, and you prefer to make it at home, then you have probably tried several different brewing techniques. One popular brewing technique among people is the pour over method, which takes a lot of practice to fully master. And the best way to save yourself time in case you seek to make some pour over coffee is to get an automatic pour over coffee machine.
To help you pick the best automatic pour over coffee maker for your needs, we’ve included a quick buying guide concerning pour over coffee machines. Additionally, we’ve cited what we think are the five best automatic pour over coffee makers out there right now.
Table of Contents
Best Automatic Pour Over Coffee Makers – Our Picks
#1 – OXO On Barista Brain
- BetterBrew Precision Brewing controls water temperature and optimizes brew cycles for rich, flavorful coffee – whether you’re making two cups or a full pot
- Fully programmable and easy to use, a single dial lets you choose cups, program the time and set the automatic wake-up timer
- Temperature-controlled brewing keeps the water between 197.6–204.8°F /92-96°C – the ideal range for drip coffee
First up on our list of the best automatic pour over coffee makers is the OXO On Barista Brain. This coffee machine gains the title of the best automatic pour over coffee maker for a multitude of different reasons. First and foremost, this coffee maker is equipped with a microprocessor that replicates the brewing process of a skilled barista.
Secondly, this coffee maker has firm control over the temperature of the water (usually around 200°F), which is perfect for brewing.
Thirdly, the coffee machine’s showerhead, nicknamed ‘’the rainmaker”, ensures an even extraction for an optimally brewed coffee, it even has an SCAA certification.
Fourthly and finally, this coffee maker comes with a programmable timer that offers you numerous possibilities for brewing coffee such as having it brewed and ready once you wake up each morning.
All the aforementioned features, including the unit’s excellent extraction, firm temperature control, and smart microprocessor make this coffee machine our number one pick for the best automatic pour over coffee makers in the market right now.
Pros
- Keeps coffee hot for extended periods of time
- Easy to use and programmable
- Effortless to clean
Cons
- Relatively Large
#2 – Cuisinart CPO-800 Pour Over Coffee Brewer
- Note: 1)Too coarse a grind, too little coffee, or insufficiently tamping the grounds before brewing can all lead to inadequate pressure for a proper brew. 2)It is important to note that the amount of espresso extracted will vary depending on the grind size and amount and reprogramming may be needed when the size and amount are adjusted
- SCAA CERTIFIED: Meets the Specialty Coffee Association of America's rigorous technical requirements for exemplary home brewers
- FULLY AUTOMATIC COFFEE BREWER: 24-hour programmability, auto on/off functionality, and self clean
Our number two pick of the best automatic pour over coffee makers is another SCAA certified coffee maker, Cuisinart’s advanced pour over coffee brewer, which produces one of the tastiest cups of coffee you can get your hands on. Like a skilled human barista, this coffee maker allows the coffee to “bloom” by pre-wetting it.
This coffee maker also offers you the ability to control both the strength and the temperature of the coffee itself, giving you more oversight over how your drink tastes. Additionally, this brewer comes with a carafe that’s made out of glass, but you can always upgrade to the much superior thermal stainless steel carafe.
Pros
- Iconic design
- Good tasting coffee
- Easy to use and clean
Cons
- The display keeps getting dimmer over time according to many users
#3 – Bonavita 8-Cup One-Touch Coffee Maker
- One-touch brew operation with auto-off
- Carafe lid, filter basket, and showerhead are dishwasher safe
- Powerful and precise 1500-watt heater maintains optimal brewing temperature of 195°-205°f (91°-96°c)
This coffee maker’s manufacturer, Bonavita, is renowned for making reasonably priced high-quality coffee machines, and this model most certainly belongs to that category. One of its main features is its powerful 1500 watt heater that precisely controls the temperature of the water, and it also features the option of pre-wetting the coffee to help mimic the work of a skilled barista.
The unit also comes with a showerhead delivery system that, with the help of a hanging flat-bottomed basket, produces the best extraction you could ask for. Not to forget the thermal carafe, which keeps your coffee warm and tasty for hours and hours after its brewed. All of these features make for a strong contender for the title of the best pour over coffee maker in 2020.
Pros
- Affordable
- One-touch on and off
- Keeps coffee hot for long
Cons
- The pre-infusion mode can be a bit confusing
#4 – Behmor 5393 Brazen Plus
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The Behmor 5393 Brazen Plus is capable of precisely controlling the brewing temperature of your coffee, keeping it at the range of 190-210°F, which helps produce a fine cup of coffee. It also features a somewhat oversized showerhead system that’s aided by a pulsing delivery, allowed for a guaranteed full extraction and a tasty coffee.
Additionally, this coffee maker will enable you to adjust the pre-saturation times. These features helped this brewer to become certified by the SCAA, and gained it a spot on our list five best automatic pour over coffee makers in 2020.
Pros
- Efficient temperature controls
- Excellent thermal carafe
- Autostart feature
Cons
- Small carafe
#5 – Technivorm Moccamaster KBG 741 Coffee Brewer
- Perfect Coffee Every Time: This pump-free coffee maker heats water to the correct temperature for coffee extraction
- Easy to Use: The Moccamaster brews a full 40 oz pot of coffee in 4-6 minutes using one switch
- Quiet and Safe: The Moccamaster KBG quietly brews your coffee and automatically turns off after 100 minutes
Recognized by many for its elegant design and amazing features, this drip coffee maker is our fifth pick for the best automatic pour over coffee makers in the market right now. Like most of the coffee makers above, this brewer is capable of heating the water to around 200°F, which is the optimal temperature for brewing.
This model also only takes about 6 mins to fully brew a 40oz carafe of coffee, which is then maintained at a temperature of around 180°F for almost two hours, preserving both the flavor and quality in the process.
Pros
- Elegant design
- Makes tasty coffee
- Efficient water heating
Cons
- A bit pricey
Choosing the Best Automatic Pour Over Coffee Maker – Our Buying Guide
Now that we have briefly presented to you la crème de la creme of automatic pour over coffee machines, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty of this field and show you how to make the right pick.
Drip Coffee Machines & Their Advantages
Since the appearance of the original Mr. Coffee® electric drip coffee machine back in the 70s, drip coffee makers have been the go-to brewing machines for most Americans. And although automatic pour over coffee machines are considered to be a kind of electric drip coffee maker, the opposite is not always true. And to help you distinguish between the two, we’re going to take a thorough look and how each one of them works.
Drip coffee machines are brewers that work by filtering heated water through coffee grounds, usually found in a basket that’s into a jug or carafe underneath it. The whole process of extracting the coffee is called percolation, and the final product is usually kept hot in a hotplate or a carafe. But before the original Mr. Coffee models, there was no such thing as drip coffee makers; people instead used a method that relied on what’s known as a percolator. It was a sort of pot that sat on a stovetop, and it continually recycled the coffee until the user chooses to remove it from the heat.
With the invention of drip coffee machines in the 70s, came several advantages. First, the ability to pass water through the grounds of a percolator in a never-ending cycle meant that it was somewhat easy to over-extract coffee. In other words, if you unintentionally forget to remove the percolator from the heat, there is a high chance that your coffee will become very unpleasant to drink.
Second is an obvious advantage, as is the case with most inventions, the new drip coffee machines were both easier and quicker to use, which is the main reason that they gained so much popularity so fast back in the 70s. Instead of having to assemble all the different parts of the percolator, you would put some ground coffee in the filter, fill your water reservoir and press ‘’on’’, and the rest is history. Thirdly and finally, for someone in the 70s, these machines looked modern and fashionable, which consequently made them more exciting than the percolator.
The Automatic Pour Over Coffee Maker
Much like their predecessor, the percolator, drip coffee machines also had the issue of the coffee becoming bitter and undrinkable if you leave it on the hotplate for too long. Additionally, these machines depended on gravity and diffusion on the process of coffee making, which most of the times, led to an uneven extraction and an overall bad cup.
However, we are not neglecting the fact that there are a lot of skilled baristas out there who are more than capable of making some of the finest cups of coffee using the manual pour over method. And this is where the automatic pour over coffee maker steps in; it attempts to replicate the skills of a barista in the form of an automatic machine, to produce a superior cup of coffee.
What to Look for Before Buying
Many of the best automatic pour over coffee makers that are available in the market right now share a couple of features. First, they come with a powerful heater that can quickly bring up the temperature of the water to 195-205°F, which is the optimal temperature for brewing coffee. Next on the list of features is the water delivery. In the case of the old coffee makers, the water just dripped down into the center of the filter, which meant the coffee located in the middle of the filter was over-extracted while the coffee around it was under-extracted, resulting in a spoilt flavor.
On the other hand, modern machines use a system known as ‘’showerhead” which ensures that the water is evenly delivered to the grounds and that its interaction with every bit of the coffee is fair and square, guaranteeing a good flavor as a result. Further, the best automatic pour over coffee makers feature a pre-brew function that creates a coffee “bloom,” which is similar to the brewing techniques of a skilled barista. Last and not least, some of these coffee machines come with special hotplates or carafes that can keep your coffee warm for hours without it stewing and gaining a bitter taste.
Picking the Best Pour Over Coffee Maker – Frequently Asked Questions
How do Baristas Produce a Superior Cup of Coffee?
The best automatic pour over coffee makers out there is more than capable of producing a fine cup of coffee, similar in quality to that produced by a professional barista. However, the question still stands: how do baristas do it?
Well, for one, the recipe of the perfect cup of coffee is a combination of many things that should all be present at once. First and foremost, the quality of the coffee itself, it should be made of top-quality beans.
Second, a skilled barista knows how to grind the coffee correctly, how to have an accurate dose, and how to control the water temperature and the extraction time perfectly.
Failing to do one of these steps will result in the coffee being spoilt, and although the barista might end up with a decent cup in his hands, it most certainly won’t be a good one. And while coffee brewers do not have control over all of these precise steps (like the quality of the beans for example), the best automatic pour over makers you can get your hands on are designed to regulate and control most of the steps accurately. This, of course, means that you can still get a bad cup, it’s just that this time, you know that the issue is the quality of the coffee itself and not the brewer.
Verdict
If you’re looking for a coffee maker that is capable of producing a hot shot of caffeine for you daily, and you don’t care about the flavor that much, then there are plenty of cheap drip brewers to pick from in the market.
However, for people who care about having a tasty cup of coffee, investing a decent amount of money in one of the best automatic pour over coffee makers in the market right now might be a great move. Because at the end of the day, if you want your day to start great, it should be based on a great-tasting cup of coffee in the morning.
Finally, we hope that we helped you with your pick through our short but detailed buy guide, and our list of what we think is the best automatic pour over coffee makers.
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