Cuisinart DGB-600 10-Cup Coffee Maker

The man of the house always amazes me with the "high class" tastes and preferences that he claims to have--none of which I've ever seen exhibited during our four years together. He prefers non-stick pans to stainless even though he never cooks dinner. He prefers a toaster oven to a toaster even though he eats neither toast nor anything else that comes out of either machine. On Thanksgiving he announced to the family that he really prefers freshly-ground coffee to the usual Folger's that I make for him each morning. "Really? You like freshly-ground? We don't own a coffee grinder and you've been drinking pre-ground coffee for four years." My sister seized the Christmas-present opportunity and warned me not to buy him a coffee grinder because she was going to buy him the Cuisinart Grind & Brew Thermal 10 Cup Automatic Coffeemaker. I had read really bad reviews of it here on Epinions which is why I chose not to buy it for him myself. My sister was so proud of herself, though, so I couldn't bring myself to tell her that it was supposedly a horrible product. I wish that I did.

Product Description
Well, this coffemaker is aptly-named. It grinds the beans immediately before brewing your coffee and then dispenses it into a pretty brushed-stainless steel thermal carafe. If you are into freshly-ground coffee, this sounds like your dream machine, doesn't it? Don't be fooled!

Out Of The Box

My boyfriend opened up his Cuisinart Grind & Brew on Christmas Eve and was brewing coffee within about 10 minutes. It comes with the main machine body that houses the coffee grinder and brewer. It also, obviously, includes the 10 cup thermal carafe. We were surprised to find both paper filters and a permanent gold filter within the box. Finally, this coffeemaker comes with a coffee scoop so you can measure out the proper amount of beans per cup of java desired.

The only thing that the package was missing was whole coffee beans but a little birdy told Santa that we were getting a Cuisinart Grind & Brew so he had already filled the man's stocking with various bags of whole beans.

The instructions tell you to run plain water through the machine prior to brewing your first batch of coffee so he was playing with coffee beans about five minutes later when the water was finished.

Putting My Nose To The Grindstone

This machine demands thorough cleaning in between each use. There's no getting around it or skimping on it. Trust me, I've tried.

I had some difficulty in figuring out how to open up the grinder. Apparently it was simpler than I thought--you just pull it straight up. You have to rinse out the coffee residue and oils from the top and bottom of the grinder. I always wipe/dry them out afterward with a paper towel. The gold filter also has to be thoroughly rinsed out which makes me miss paper filters. Cleaning the thermal carafe is quite a challenge because the opening is far too small to allow your sponge-carrying hand in to scrub it out. I have been getting along with a generous squirt of dish soap, lots of hot water, a lick and a prayer for the past week. I will have to buy one of those detergent-containing dish brushes in order to thoroughly clean out the carafe.

Unfortunately, I usually have to perform this cleaning ritual each morning at 4:30am before I make a new pot of coffee. We shower, dress, and rush out of the house to work in the morning. When I get home, 99% of the time I am distracted by animals, cleaning, grading papers, etc. and I never think to clean out the Cuisinart Grind & Brew... which is why I find myself cursing bright and early almost every morning.

Grinding and Brewing

To make coffee in this machine, you first have to add the appropriate amount of water for the desired number of cups. You cannot measure the water out in the carafe as it is not see-through nor does it have markings. You cannot simply plunk the entire body of the machine inside the sink to fill the water tank. Our sink has a retractable hose so I add water to the tank that way. Others who don't have that feature will have to use some kind of pitcher and the pour the water into the reservoir.

After adding the water, you need to lift off the grinder lid, add coffee beans to the grinder and replace the cover. A couple of times I wondered what would happen if you didn't put the grinder lid back on prior to starting up the machine. Eventually, I forgot to replace the lid and got my answer: the machine beeps at you and refuses to turn on until you put the cover into place and press "start" again. The Cuisinart Grind & Brew comes with a scoop. You are instructed to use one scoop of beans per desired cup of coffee if you are making five or more cups. If you are making fewer than five, you are supposed to use one and a half scoops per cup and also press the "1-4 cups" button on the machine prior to starting up the brew cycle.

When you have filled up the water reservoir and coffee grider with the appropriate amounts, you simply press the "on" button to set the machine into motion. This coffeemaker also can be pre-filled and programmed to automatically start the grinding/brewing process at a specific time.

There is an incredible amount of noise when the coffee grinder starts working on the beans. It is so loud that I won't start brewing coffee until the man gets out of bed which means that I wind up jonesing for my caffeine around 10am on a Saturday when he's sleeping late and I'm pacing the house trying to subliminally get him out of bed. If we were to pre-set it to start brewing before the alarm goes off, the noise definitely would wake us up. On Christmas morning I woke up and blearily started to clear up the disaster created by our raging party the night before. Just as I finished wiping down counters and settling my mind/stomach, the grinder started up and almost made me wet my pants. It's THAT LOUD! We live in a three-bedroom ranch so there really is no escaping any kind of sound in this place. If we had a second-story bedroom, I believe that we wouldn't even notice the Cuisinart Grind & Brew starting to do its thang.

Once the beans are ground, the machine starts to brew your coffee. The brushed-steel carafe is opaque so you must wait until you hear the machine beep to know that the coffee has finished brewing and is ready to drink. A pot of 8 cups seems to take longer to brew than my former, cheap coffeemaker even if you exclude the grinding time. I haven't timed it so I can't say that for certain.

When the brewing cycle is completed, you can pour your freshly-ground, freshly-brewed coffee from the thermal carafe into your mug. The first time that I tried to fill up the mug, I inverted the carafe in the usual 45-or-slightly-more-degree angle. The coffee dribbled out so slowly that I thought that the carafe was locked into the "off" position. I read the directions on the lid and turned it counterclockwise to "unlock" it. My next pour resulted in the lid falling off of the carafe and coffee dumping all over the counter and floor. Fun times. Apparently, the slow-dribble action was completely normal and the maximum performance when the carafe was set into the "pour" mode. I usually drink from a 10 ounce tall latte mug and it takes me about 15 seconds to transfer coffee from the carafe to the mug. You'd never think that such a short time could be so frustrating, but it is.

Ground & Brewed Coffee

I have never been one for weak coffee. When I was using my cheesy Black & Decker coffee maker, I often used 1.5 heaping scoops of grounds per cup of coffee. Grind & Brew coffee is very strong in my opinion, probably a 9 on a scale of 10. It is a bit stronger than I would prefer. I will play with the amount of beans that I use in the future but freshly-ground is just a bolder, stronger flavor.

What I DON'T understand is the gross layer of extra-brown film that I've found at the bottom of every single cup of coffee from Grind & Brew that I've drunk. It may not affect the flavor but it definitely diminishes my enjoyment of the drink. If this sediment layer is a by-product of the brewing process, then Cuisinart needs to create some kind of double-filtering system or something.

Cost and Availability

The retail price of the Cuisinart Grind & Brew in this area is $150.00. It is sold in home stores like Linens N Things, Kohl's, Macy's, Target, etc. You can also find it online on various sites. It isn't difficult to find one of these machines for sale but finding it a reasonable price may be more challenging.

Overall Opinion

I am sorry that we have the Cuisinart Grind & Brew Thermal 10 cup Coffeemaker here in the house. That means that I have to use it. In my opinion, grinding the coffee just prior to brewing it doesn't do anything other than create more parts to clean and leave a nasty sediment in the bottom of my mug. If I could, I'd bust out my simple $30 well-used coffeemaker--but *someone* threw it away when the Grind & Brew came into our lives. I don't recommend this machine.