CUISINARTDGB-900BC Grind & Brew Thermal 12-Cup Automatic Coffeemaker

Grinder fixed and coffee is good again

Coffee maker arrived and doesn’t work

Es un muy buen producto a muy buen precio, solo le cambiaría el seguro que detiene el filtro ya que no es lo suficientemente fuerte y se bota, pero lo solucioné usando unas cuñas de cartón.

Cusinart took their previous model of this coffee maker and made it better! The burr grinder is critical for great tasting coffee and now it’s self cleaning! Brilliant!This is my third Cusinart grind and brew coffee maker and they keep making them better. It’s used daily and I get about 12 to 15 years out of a unit. That’s pretty reasonable considering so many products are junk these days.Highly recommended!

Great price, easy to use awesome machine!

This review is for the 10-cup DGB-850 with Thermal Carafe (stainless steel).After using this coffee maker for over 10 weeks, we are quite happy with it overall (after learning a few lessons). Perhaps this is an updated version of the model, but we have not had any of the issues some reviews mention, like problems cleaning the grinder burrs. In fact, this version does not even have user-access to the grinder parts, based on the videos and descriptions from others with problems. This model advertises that the grinder assembly auto-rinses all the grinds from the grinder - there is no disassembly to get to the grinder itself, and it appears to work fine without access. All we do to clean it after each use is rinse out the permanent filter itself (or toss the paper filter), and wipe moisture from the holder and the housing above the coffee carafe platform.PROS:* Coffee tastes very good - grind/strength controls allows pretty good control over desired taste, by adjusting the amount of water used with each grind range (see my grind testing chart image, and table below). My wife likes coffee a bit weaker, so we use 7-8 cups of water with a 6-cup Grind, for instance, adjusting Strength as needed for the exact amount of water used.* With the thermal carafe, the heating plate below the carafe warms the stainless steel carafe as the coffee is brewed, so there is no need to pre-heat a cold carafe (which we had to do with our previous coffee maker). Works well - the heater is turned off automatically after the coffee is brewed, so it does not over-heat the coffee. The thermal carafe keeps the coffee pretty warm for an hour or two.* At least so far, we have not had any issues with cleaning the grinder burrs - easy clean-up.* We really like the ability to use either the permanent filter basket, or a paper filter. With a septic system, we cannot rinse grounds down the drain, and it is sometimes a pain to dump grounds outside in bad weather (so the paper filter is handy in heavy snow). We did not have this option with our old blade-grinder coffee maker.CONS (Lessons Learned):* Pouring water into the reservoir is a pain with the coffee maker under a cabinet. You need access to the back of the coffee maker to pour from a bit behind, since pouring from the front can let water spill out the overflow slots at the back of the reservoir.* As some reviews mention, pouring from the carafe can be a bit tricky with the lid on, if you are not careful. A full pot pours fine, but steeper angles of pour as the carafe gets emptier can make a mess. I remove the lid for pouring as the pot gets emptier.* To get just the right coffee strength for your personal tastes, it helps to understand exactly how the coffee maker adjusts the grind for the settings (Grind and Strength). I could not find this information in the manual or any on-line reference. See my "Strength Notes" below - between knowing what each combination does, and adjusting the amount of water for each setting, you can get pretty much just what you want, without wasting coffee.STRENGTH NOTES:At first, we found it a bit limiting to have fixed settings for only 4, 6, 8 & 10 cups of coffee. And I could not find any good description anywhere about exactly what the Grind control and the Strength control do - does one adjust the fineness of the grinding mechanism, and the other the amount of coffee beans ground (based on the amount of time the grinder runs)? If so, which controls which? All the manual really says is "The burr grinder will grind the correct amount of beans, and automatically adjust the coffee/water ratio for low cup settings."So, I started experimenting with different settings to see what each does, based on the weight of the ground coffee put into the filter. I weighed the grounds after brewing each pot at different setting combinations, letting them drain quite a while first (wet grounds, but well drained). The chart in the image attached to this review (also shown in the table below) shows my results - not every setting available, but enough to figure out what is happening, I believe. From visual comparisons, I could not see any apparent differences in the coarseness of the grounds themselves with any combination, so I assume that the grinder does not change the coarseness/fineness of the grind itself, only the amount of beans ground, for both the strength and grind (# of cups) settings. But with the information in the chart, and by adjusting the amount of water you put in the reservoir for each brew, you can get pretty close to the strength you want. Ground Coffee Weights, Cuisinart DGB-850 Coffeemaker GRIND STRENGTH GRAMS (avg.) ============================= 4 Cups Extra Bold 75 6 Cups Regular 91 6 Cups Bold 102 6 Cups Extra Bold 120 8 Cups Bold 122 8 Cups Extra Bold 140So, for example, we brew a slightly weaker-than-recommended pot by setting the Grind (# of cups) to 6 cups, adding either 7 or 8 cups of water to the reservoir, and setting the Strength as a kind of fine-tuning adjustment to get just the strength we want for that batch (my wife likes it a bit weaker, I like it a bit stronger - we alternate!).Hopefully this will help you fine-tune your perfect cup of coffee. Happy brewing!

So I purchased this to replace my Cuisinart CHW-12 Coffee Plus 12-Cup Programmable Coffeemaker with Hot Water System, Black/Stainless. I was very pleased with the *coffeemaker* component of this latter (its hot water system being another matter), and was looking for a similar coffeemaker that also had a grind and brew function. I have had it now for just shy of a year, and am almost entirely pleased with it. Let me address the pros and cons, both as I see them and as they have been discussed in other reviews:Pros:(1) This coffeemaker is able to produce an excellent cup of coffee in very little time.(2) The grind function allows you to control precisely how much coffee you want ground. Other models - such as the Krups KM7005 Grind and Brew coffeemaker - essentially have a reservoir for beans that are ground according to your selection of coffee-strength. Effectively, this means it uses a timer to determine how much coffee to grind. In my experience, this resulted in an imperfect and - more importantly - inconsistent cup of coffee. This Cuisinart coffeemaker, by contrast, will grind precisely how much coffee you put in the grinder. I have been surprised to find no residue, or almost no residue, in the grinder after each use. This allows you to control the strength of your coffee, and produce a consistent cup.(3) You can easily turn the grinder off. I keep a stash of ground coffee at the ready for those days when I'm running behind and want to save a step. It doesn't save a lot of time - but it's a nice feature.Cons(1) A number of people have noted in their reviews that this coffeemaker is a lot of work to clean. While I don't find this in fact to be the case, it does require you to wash, in addition to the components common to any coffeemaker, the grinder after each use. The only systems with which I am familiar that do not require this are those with a coffee reservoir; the drawback of these systems, as I note above, is that it is difficult to get a consistently good cup of coffee out of them. So I think this is a have your cake or eat it predicament: if you want a consistently good cup of coffee from a grind and brew coffeemaker, you're probably going to need to buy one requiring additional cleaning.(2) I was surprised to find how much I missed the carafe temperature control function of my old Cuisinart CHW-12 coffeemaker. I find this grind and brew coffeemaker produces coffee that is slightly too hot for my taste. That said, it is a minor drawback, easily corrected by waiting a few minutes after pouring a cup before drinking it.(3) Unlike the CHW-12, there is no transparent window that allows you to see how much water is in the reservoir from the side of the coffeemaker. Instead, you have to look down into the water reservoir, at a series of steps marking 2, 4, 6, 8 and so forth. This makes it difficult to fill the reservoir to, say, 3 cups or 5 cups or 7 cups etc. Why? Because when you are looking down, you lose the perspective necessary to determine when the water is halfway between, say, 4 and 6. This is a minor inconvenience that can be worked around by trial and error.(4) I agree with those reviewers who say the grinder is not large enough to make an entire pot of strong coffee. This doesn't make the least difference for me since I only make half a pot per day. To make half a pot of coffee at my desired strength, however, I do need to fill the coffee grinder well more than 1/2 full. Upshot: a 12 cup pot of coffee is likely to be weaker than I would want it. So: if you want 12 cups every morning of strong coffee, this grind and brew coffee maker is likely to fall short of your expectations. If, on the other hand, you only occasionally make a full pot of coffee, I'd recommend that, on those occasions, you turn the grinder off and use the appropriate amount of pre-ground coffee instead.Overall, I would deduct a 1/2 star for cons (2) and (3). That not being an option, however, I have given this coffeemaker a 5 star rating since 4 stars would certainly not do credit to its many fine features.**UPDATE 05/12/2020**I have had this unit for just over a year. I stand by my original assessment. It is far and away the best coffee maker I have ever purchased, at least for my purposes.