Bonavita5 Cup Drip Coffee Maker Machine, One-Touch Pour Over, Auto Pause Brewing with Stainless Steel Double Wall Thermal Carafe, SCA Certified, Dishwasher Safe, BV1500TS

Some of the negative reviews almost caused me to pass on this brewer. I am glad that I decided to buy it, anyway.I am experienced with coffee and brewing methods. I have been drinking specialty coffee for years, have all the equipment, used to roast my own beans, blah blah. I have pourovers, vacuum brewers, and French presses. My go-to brewing method has always been French press. But I was always a bit envious of my son-in-law's Technovorm, which makes a great cup of coffee. I finally decided to break down and get a Technivorm, but when I checked the price I learned that it has gone up by nearly $100. So, I came across this device, and bought it. Here is my review:Coffee quality is excellent, as good as the Technovorm, in my view. One of the criticisms is that this brewer is not SCAA sanctioned, and this concerned me because I was afraid that the brew temperature would be inadequate. Not so. This brewer gets to 200 deg. F. Great cup of coffee.An advantage of this brewer, for me, is that I can make a small pot with no loss of brew quality. I can made 12, 18 or 24 ounce pots and all are great. A lot of times I want just one cup, and because I can make a great 12 ounce pot, I don't waste beans.One complaint I read was that it is confusing to put the brewer into the special, pre-infusion mode. I found this claim to be false. With the machine off, you hold the switch down for five seconds. Now you are in special mode (which I haven't used much), and you stay there until you exit the mode (another five second push) or until you unplug the machine. Nothing could be simpler. In fact the entire operation of the machine is simple, an advantage.Another complaint was poor quality. To me, this device is no better or worse, quality wise, than the Technovorm. Yes it's light weight and has a lot of plastic. So does the Technovorm. This is a good looking machine that will not embarrass you counter top.Another complaint was about how the carafe pours. I think this complaint is fair. The carafe is hard to empty completely and does a poor job of pouring unless the top has been installed. My solution is to use the top whenever I pour. It takes five seconds or less to install (it has a one-turn thread).A final complaint is that there is no warming plate and that the carafe dies not keep the coffee warm long enough. Well, no and yes. No, coffee should never be kept warm on a burner because it creates bitterness, and it does this very rapidly - don't do it, better to microwave it, if needed. Yes, the carafe loses some heat, as it has a lot of surface area. It keeps the coffee plenty hot for me, but I would say that an hour is about it.In summary, this brewer makes an outstanding pot of coffee. The brewer isn't perfect. It is merely great. If there is a better option to brewed coffee at a hundred bucks I don't know what it is.

I got this on an "open box" deal for $66, and for that price it's impossible to beat. For the list price it's still quite good but possibly more difficult to justify. I would say for what I paid, it's a five star product. For the over $100 list price, it's closer to four stars. Read on for my detailed thoughts.I've worked at a few coffee shops, done cuppings with roasters, tried many different brewing techniques, roasted my own beans, etc, so I've definitely tried plenty of good coffee. This coffee is good. When you pay more for a drip machine, you're essentially buying consistency -- water temperature, volume, brew time, where the water is distributed over the grounds, all of these things matter, and make a difference in the flavors that end up in your cup. So while a $10 walmart dripper just indiscriminately dumps some moderately hot water over your precious coffee, a more expensive maker will control these variables with greater and greater precision. It's possible a moccamaster is more precise, but I don't have experience with one. I can say that the coffee the bonavita produces compares favorably with the extremely expensive, top of the line fetco machines (with proprietary spinning showerhead drippers and all the other bells and whistles) we had at the last coffee shop I worked at. I've changed cities since I worked there, so it's difficult to compare apples to apples, since I don't have access to the same beans, but using fairly middle of the road beans I've gotten pleasing results. It's not as good as the godly-est pourovers I've ever had, but it's fairly consistently quite good, doesn't require you to stare lovingly at your hario for 10 minutes, and can brew several cups at once, unlike an aeropress. Changing the volume of beans used and the fineness of the grind yield relatively predictable results, which is a wonderful encouragement for experimentation in search of your personal perfect recipe.To address some of the common complaints:I find the coffee plenty hot when the machine is finished brewing. It's very important to preheat everything before you start brewing, especially since it's a comparatively small volume of hot coffee. I run a two or three cup "blank pot" through the machine to rinse the filter and heat everything up before I brew.It's true, the pot does not keep the coffee hot all day, however I have to say it's just a little ridiculous to expect it to. It's a relatively small volume of liquid (less liquid=less heat retention) in a pot that has a fairly large surface area, including that big, plastic, heat sucking lid. This is part of the reason for the tall, skinny design of the moccamaster, to minimize the surface area of the lid. I've found the bonavita carafe keeps my coffee reasonably hot for a couple hours, which is plenty for me. It might not be the world's best thermal pot but it's also not terrible, and the wider lid makes it easier to clean. For what I paid it's fine.It's got a few plastic parts but what coffee maker for around $100 or less doesn't?I don't know if they changed the design of the carafe since the previous reviewers bought theirs, but I don't experience the problems they've had with pouring without the lid. I wouldn't call it a great pouring experience but it also doesn't make a huge mess as others have complained. It definitely pours better with the lid but if I pour a cup without I don't have any problem. Maybe a drip or two but nothing out of the ordinary. That being said, the complaint about there always beings about a tablespoon of liquid remaining in the carafe is totally true. It doesn't make me crazy, but it is kind of mystifying how I can leave the thing upside down for hours, come back, and there's still a tablespoon of water rolling around in there. I don't think the volume of liquid is enough to affect the quality of the coffee, and if you wanted to you could just dry it out with a towel, but it is a very strange design problem.Bonavita offers a double walled glass carafe replacement that looks beautiful and is probably better than the stock one on most counts, but is rather expensive given the cost of the machine itself.Overall, if you want something approaching consistency and quality from a drip brewer, this is a good choice. Maybe not the world's best, but also not the most expensive. Since I got it for 66, I'm quite happy. But if I had bought it for list price, I might have felt like I would rather have saved some money and just worked on my chemex technique. So at 66, five stars, over 100, four stars.