Café Specialty Drip Coffee Maker

So after reading some reviews here I was hesitant to buy this machine due to some reviews saying how messy it was. We’ll let’s just get this out of the way. I have yet to see a mess from this machine and have posted photos showing how good the coffee bed actually looks. In the photo, that is 69g of fresh roasted beans ground right before brewing using a Fellow Ode grinder. Not even close to a mess!

Now getting into the actual review. My have to haves for this machine were a timer for auto brewing for the weekdays, SCA approved and a thermal carafe. I have owned other SCA approved machines in the past like the Breville Precision Brewer, the Bonivita 8 cup and the latest was an SCA approved Ninja Machine. If the Ratio 6 had a timer that would have been in the running this time around. Unfortunately it does not and this machine checked all my boxes so I decided to give a it a try and so glad I did!

Without touching on all it’s options yet, the one thing the machine needed to do in order to make it a keeper was make a great cup of coffee! If it couldn’t do that, then it wouldn’t matter how high tech this thing was and all the fancy stuff it could do, it was going back. Well I am happy to say, this machine makes one delicious cup of coffee! My first reaction to my first brewed sip was WOW, this cup is smooth! It was super smooth, sweet and delicious! An 8 cup pot finished brewing in just about 5 minutes which is pretty fast.

The thermal carafe definitely kept the coffee hot for an hour after brewing and was even drinkable 2 hours later. Some reviews mentioned they were upset there was no hot plate. No thermal carafe machine comes with a hot plate! That is the reason for going with the thermal carafe. So your coffee doesn’t cook and continue to change in flavor. If you want a hot plate, you need to buy the glass carafe. That goes for any coffee machine. If you want your coffee to stay the hottest in the thermal carafe, run hot water in the carafe so when you brew your coffee, you won’t be brewing into a cold carafe which will cool the coffee down quicker. Also, the more coffee left in the carafe the longer it will stay hotter for. If you only have one cup left in the carafe, it will cool down quicker then if you have say 4 cups sitting in there.

The machine allows you to choose the gold standard setting which sets everything to the SCA approved cup of coffee and no settings can be changed when set to this but for those who like to tinker, the machine also allows you to set the exact temperature of the water from 185° to 205°. You can also change the brew strength between 3 settings, light, medium and bold. I am not sure what this setting actually adjusts as it’s separate from the temperature setting. I haven’t brewed on anything besides the gold setting so far but I am definitely going to test the other stuff out but the Gold Setting brews a great cup.

The wifi option is such a bonus on this thing! It makes setting everything up super easy. Being able to set a schedule for weekdays means I don’t need to program the machine every night. If something changes, can just go into the app and change what I need. Have grinds and water in the machine but don’t want to brew yet, can just start the brew from my phone when I am ready. It’s great. Also hooked up to Google Home with no problem. Like I said though, if the machine didn’t brew a great cup of coffee none of this other stuff would have mattered!

Bottom line, yes the machine is expensive but if you are reading this review around the time it’s posted, it’s $100 off right now putting it much closer in price and even better then some of it’s competitors! And it make a great cup of Joe!

*8 Month Update – Machine is still working great! Have not had any issues and still producing a great cup of coffee. I basically have kept it on the Gold setting and found there is really no need to play with the temp and strength as the Gold Cup produces a great cup. I have been using an 18:1 coffee to water ratio based on the ounces listed on the water reservoir. Fresh roasted whole beans and weighed out. During the week I prep the night before and have a schedule setup in the app for weekdays. In the morning the coffee still comes out great even with grinding the night before. I have yet to experience any mess with grinds overflowing as others talk about and have made pots using up to 74 grams of coffe. Still recommend this machine.

I purchased this to replace an older pot that had started leaking. I was attracted to the SCA approval, as well as some reviews by magazines that rated this as one of the best drip pots out there. I got the one with the thermal carafe, as we usually leave a pot going all day, and the insulated carafe does a better job of keeping it warm without affecting the flavor than a hot plate, which my old one had.

After a few weeks of using it, I have to say it’s great. It makes a really good cup of coffee… noticeably better than my old drip pot, which was also expensive when I bought it. No mess at all. Everything is well sealed, and the carafe pours neatly, which was an issue with my old one, which spilled when full. Likewise, my old pot spewed steam everywhere while brewing, so I’d have to pull it out from under the kitchen cabinets while brewing to keep the underside from getting soaked. This one doesn’t do that. The carafe keeps the coffee warm for hours, and I like that it can make partial pots while maintaining the flavor profile, which my old pot struggled to do – it was either make a full pot or get watery coffee. As a result we’d keep a Keurig around for the occasional single cup. It hasn’t gotten used since we got this one.

A couple of minor nits to pick:
1) The sealed carafe is great for keeping the coffee warm, but as the pot and carafe are both well sealed, there is no coffee smell while it’s brewing. That’s a bit annoying since the smell of the coffee helps wake me up in the morning. It also means that since the carafe isn’t see through and is cold to the touch even when full, it’s hard to tell if the coffee has been made. My wife usually wakes up well after me, and there have been a few times where she didn’t realize I had made coffee for her.

2) Note that this is a ’10 cup’ pot, which means it makes 5 mugs of coffee. If you have two people splitting it, you’ll be fighting over the last cup. Most older pots, including the one we had, were 12 cup.

3) Not the end of the world, but the water container isn’t removable, so you have to use another container to fill it up.

4) It would be nice if there was a cheaper version without the WiFi connectivity, which I honestly can’t think of any use for. I have to stand in front of the pot to put water and coffee in it, and it has a timer function that I can set while I’m doing that if I chose to use that feature. I see zero advantage in the WiFi and will never use it. Just one more thing to add cost and to eventually break.