What exactly are drip coffee makers, anyway?
Types of coffeemakers available for use in the home include a French press, a percolator or an automatic drip coffeemaker. For the French press, ground coffee beans are measured and placed in a special pot before scalding hot water is poured over grounds of coffee. After between four to eight minutes, a plunger made with a steel mesh is pushed down upon the coffee to filter out the beans from the water. This gives good flavor but lacks all the advantages you get from a drip coffee maker.
Percolators, on the other hand are heated to a boil, causing water to rise through an aluminum tube and fall on a basket where the grounds of coffee are. However, the disadvantage of percolators is that the water temperature is so high that it damages the real flavor of the coffee beans that have been ground. Drip coffee makers are the most common type of coffee makers used by most households in the United States of America.
A drip coffee maker is also called a dripolator. It works by taking in water from another container in through a hose at the base of the water container which leads directly to an aluminum heating chamber where a heater which is around the metal tube heats water. Heat induced pressure uses the siphoning effect to move the heated water through an insulated vinyl hose into a spray head and finally to the coffee grounds contained in a brew basket under the spray head. The coffee passes through a filter and drips down into the little carafe coffee pitcher. For a standard ten or twelve cup drip coffee maker, a heater with a larger wattage can heat a large amount of water quickly which produces more coffee at a shorter amount of time.
Features of most common drip coffee makers include its size, the filters it uses, the timer, automatic shut off features and pause and serve features among others. Size is important to consider because if you choose a size that is too large, it results in a lot of wasted coffee. An ideal choice for someone living by himself is a single-serve drip coffee maker. This brews coffee n about three minutes and it usually brews coffee right into your waiting mug, resulting in a freshly brewed cup of piping hot coffee.
An eight cup size is the size that most households in the United States get, as it is perfect for an average family’s coffee needs. Ten and twelve cup sizes are most ideal for offices, parties or big families who need more coffee than what the eight cup can produce.
Some drip coffee makers come with permanent rather than paper filters which is a really environmentally conscious decision. Also, paper filters have a tendency to cause the taste of coffee to lighten. New styles of filters for automatic drip coffee makers are called coffee pods. Pods are circular paper filters with coffee already pre measured inside it. This eliminates the need to pre-measure and saves time.