Once you discover the incredible, unique flavors of specialty coffee and start down the rabbit hole of making it yourself at home, there’s a point when you realize something important: automatic coffee makers aren’t actually all that good at making really good coffee.
Your typical auto drip coffee pot is designed for mass production, built with cheap materials and electronics, and is destined to end up in a garbage dump—only to be replaced a year or two later after being bought.
And we haven’t really gotten into the poor coffee quality yet…
Here’s the thing: if you want amazing, cafe-quality coffee at home, you’re going to have to ditch the low-end, cheap coffee automatic coffee maker.
Read: How Manual Coffee Brewing Can Change Your Life
Let’s get to the root of why.
Automatic Coffee Makers Are Designed To Be Trash (Literally)
We all like buying nice, quality gadgets that we know will last for years, but—I get it—coffee makers just seem like an easy way to save some money. Drop $30-50 on a coffee maker and boom, you’re good, right?
Well, not exactly.
You see, these cheap coffee pots are designed to fail. The manufacturers know they’ll stop working in the next couple years, and they know you’ll dish out another $30-50 for a new one down the road.
- The plastic is flimsy and flammable
- The electronic components are prone to disconnection and malfunction
- The construction just feels meh, rather than well-built
And you know what this ultimately leads to?
Millions of coffee pots in landfills.
Read: Is Organic Coffee Worth It?
So to summarize this first reason: regular automatic coffee makers tend to be cheaply made and destined for replacement (which means lots of plastic waste over the years).
Here’s what you can do instead to avoid contributing to more plastic pollution: buy a good french press ($30). The metal frame with last for years and years, and if you accidentally break the glass carafe, it can easily be replaced and the broken glass disposed of responsibly.
Automatic Coffee Pots Disconnect You From The Experience
Hopefully by now you’ve experienced the rewards of making a cup of coffee by hand, but in case you haven’t, let me explain the benefits:
Read: 3 Reasons To Avoid French Roast Coffee
Auto coffee pots can’t give you any of these benefits. Sure, sometimes you just need to get some basic coffee going fast, but that shouldn’t be the norm.
Build a few extra minutes into your morning routine for making coffee manually and I guarantee you’ll see how big of an impact it makes on your mood, your morning, and even the rest of your day.
Because when you start off taking care of yourself—making something you and are proud of—you gain the energy and focus to get things done, endure the struggles of the day, and be flexible through it all.
Standard Coffee Makers Just Don’t Make Very Good Coffee
Now, I’ll admit that I’ve had some decent coffee from a coffee maker, but it only came after my friend played with his coffee recipe every day for weeks.
So the end result was good, but it came with a lot of work (mostly trial and error).
What if you could put in far less work and have excellent coffee each morning?
You know what that friend told me a couple weeks later?
“It would have just been a lot simpler and far tastier to just use a french press instead of trying to make that low-quality coffee pot make great coffee.”
Read: 3 Reasons To Avoid Artificially Flavored Coffee
Let’s look at why most coffee makers can’t make cafe-quality coffee:
Now these next few things aren’t really the coffee maker’s fault, but they’re enabled (and often encouraged) by the device and its instructions. These bad brewing habits destroy coffee flavor, and auto drip pots make them far too easy to do:
- Using old water that’s already been heated up
- Using pre-ground coffee
- Keeping coffee hot on a warming plate for hours
And here’s the sad thing: these quality issues don’t get fixed until you spend $150 or more on a coffee pot. That’s the same cost as five different french presses!
If you’re determined to have a simple and delicious cup of coffee from an automatic coffee maker, definitely go with one of the SCAA Certified Brewers. These coffee pots really do a great job—but they’re not cheap.
My suggestion? Buy a french press. Buy a burr coffee grinder. Use them each morning to create not just a mug of coffee, but a rewarding coffee experience that helps transform your day.
You won’t regret taking the time (a couple extra minutes) to make your own coffee by hand…
- It’ll be more environmentally sustainable
- It’ll offer those day-transforming mental benefits
- And it’ll just taste so much better
Of course, it’s not the brewing habits that make the biggest difference in your coffee. It’s the beans.
Start off with freshly roasted, specialty-grade beans and you’ll never look back. The flavors will captivate you and make sure you never absent-mindedly down a cup of coffee without feeling gratitude again.
