Welcome to another 2020 Best Of article! ‘Tis the season for our content team to come together and bring you our picks for the best coffee gear of 2020. Today we’re taking a look at our favorite drip brewers of the year!
In case you’re new to the world of coffee, a drip brewer is your classic “coffee maker.” These machines are usually pretty simple. Generally, you’ll put ground coffee in a filter, which you’ll then place in a basket. Next, you’ll fill up a water tank with water to the desired coffee volume you’re brewing. From there, you’ll turn the machine on, and it’ll begin to heat the water and pour it onto the grounds. The water will filter through the grounds and into a vessel as delicious coffee.
The key to brewing the perfect pot of coffee is temperature stability. You need water heated to 195-205 degrees fahrenheit. The thing we love about Technivorm brewers is how rock solid the temps are in their machines. Because they use copper boilers, you’ll get quick heatups and a 5-6 minute brew cycle with hot, delicious coffee every time. Like the other brewers on this list, the SCAA certification here confirms that the Specialty Coffee Association of America has confirmed that this machine keeps its water in that ~200 degree fahrenheit range.
Another key part of the brewing process is proper saturation of the coffee grounds. You want even spray of water around the brew basket to ensure that the water spreads correctly through the grounds. Many cheap brewers will drop water through a narrow spout right into the middle of the basket. This wastes all of that coffee around the edges of the basket and leads to less flavorful coffee. The Moccamaster features a spray head designed to evenly apply water to the coffee.
We couldn’t talk about Technivorm without talking about that look. The KBT741 features the same industrial design that other brewers in the Technivorm lineup offer. While it won’t be the perfect fit for every kitchen, we love the stark modern aesthetic that Technivorm’s designs offer. The model featured here comes with a thermal carafe, which we like for heat retention. Some users will prefer a glass carafe with a heating plate, which Technivorm also produces.
The cherry on top is the Moccamaster’s longevity. The high quality components that produce such great coffee also have the added benefit of being long lasting. In fact, with appropriate cleaning and maintenance, we’ve heard stories of Technivorms lasting decades. While your mileage may vary here, these are incredibly solid drip brewers. It’s this durability paired with the high quality coffee that the Moccamaster produces that has earned it a spot on our list.
If we had to pick ONE favorite drip brewer, it’d have to be the Precision Brewer from Breville. This brewer delivers many of the features of the Technivorm mentioned above. A high degree of temperature stability and excellent sprayhead design provide the same brewing quality that you get from machines like the Moccamaster. The Precision Brewer alse offers extensive programming.
This programming is really where the value of the Precision Brewer comes into play. A robust menu system gives you a wide range of brewing options. From simple combinations of parameters like a “Gold Cup” option, which adheres to SCAA Gold Cup settings, to more exotic and unique settings, this brewer can do a lot. We love the Precision Brewer’s iced coffee and cold brew settings, which are programmed specifically for cold copy. It also has single cup and pour over options (which work with the adapter included in the Tribute Edition).
The best part of all this programmability? You can also build your own settings. You can control volume with water in just like any machine, and the menus allow you to manually set temperature and flow rate. This is the kind of control you can usually only achieve with manual brewing methods like pour over. The reason these kinds of options are so great is the experimentation you can do with the Precision Brewer and a tricky single origin that has flavors a standard set of drip brew parameters won’t quite tease out.
The Precision Brewer also hits other bullet points offered by premium drip brewers. From solidly built components like a sturdy thermal carafe (also available in glass), the Tribute Edition’s pour over attachment, and a brew basket that can accommodate multiple types of filters to a long lasting internal pump and heating element, this machine is built as well as it performs.
It’s really difficult to point to a better drip brewer for the coffee enthusiast who wants the widest range of brew options. The only potential turn off with the Precision Brewer is that there can be a learning curve as you come to understand its menu system. We feel the menus are intuitive, but they’re a little more complicated than the push button operation of other drip brewers.
The Ratio Six is another brewer that makes the list based purely on its incredible quality. While it doesn’t feature the programming of the Precision Brewer, it’s just a really solid machine that brews great coffee. This, of course, starts with its incredible output. This machine makes some of the best drip coffee we’ve had. A stellar heating element and sprayhead produce heat stable water that properly saturates the coffee grounds. This commitment to quality components stays true inside and out as well, with stainless steel casing giving it the most premium feel of any of the brewers on this list.
One of our favorite unique features of the Ratio Six is its optional heat shield. Most drip brewers have at least a very small gap between the showerhead and the filter basket that can release some of the water’s heat. The Ratio Six helps to ensure heat retention by including an optional silicone gasket that sits between the sprayhead assembly and the filter basket. While this can seem a little awkward to use at first, it helps produce extra hot coffee.
None of this touches on another key part of the Ratio Six: Looks! While we always value function over form, the Ratio Six has performance covered already. In the looks department, this one’s a keeper. From gorgeous angles to that stainless steel finish, this brewer is a bit large, but it’s quite the art piece too. It’ll look great alongside a similarly stylish grinder, and it’s neutral color should make it a great fit in a variety of kitchens.
All of these features come together to make the Ratio Six a really excellent brewer that we’re happy to include among our 2020 favorites!
And there you have it! Three of the very best drip brewers money can buy in 2020. Stay tuned for more Best Of 2020 content here and on our YouTube channel!
