Need a New Coffee Maker?- OXO 8 Cup Coffee Maker Review

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When oxo approached me about sending me their new 8-cup coffeemaker to check out, I was a little leery. This is a crafting blog, after all, and I’ve been advocating crafting methods for the past six years. After some deliberation, I decided that a sponsored oxo 8-cup coffee maker review might be fun. The automatic drip coffee maker scene has seen a few changes since I last visited the topic in 2014. Let’s see what this new wave of automatic coffee makers is all about.

Reading: Oxo 8 cup coffee maker filter size

pros and cons of the oxo 8-cup coffee maker

The oxo 8 cup coffee maker is a lovely looking coffee machine. I had the brief (fleeting) fantasy of filming an unboxing video on my youtube channel when it arrived, but I refrained. The make and the machine itself are beautiful, a nice appearance upgrade to many of the automatic coffee makers out there.

I spent a month testing and evaluating this coffee maker. I made coffee for the office* with it, made lazy Saturday morning coffee, and made one and two batches of cups with it. My overall impression is that it is a well made and carefully designed machine.

I didn’t prefer coffee brewed from the oxo 8-cup coffee maker to my usual pour-over ritual, but if you’re looking for an automatic coffee maker, you should seriously consider this one. here are the pros and cons of this automatic coffee maker:

advantages:

It looks great. As I mentioned earlier, this coffee maker is beautifully designed and there’s no need to hide it in your kitchen appliance garage (if you have one of those).
it can brew a single cup (pretty good too) – this is a very nice feature. The Achilles heel of many “golden cup” automatic coffee makers is that they make their best coffee with one full batch. The Oxo 8-Cup Coffee Maker makes a great cup of coffee.
sca certified brewer: I’ll talk a bit more about this feature later, but this basically means it’s been tested by the specialty coffee association and meets their standards.
Insulated Carafe (No Hot Plate) : Sitting on a hot plate is bad for your coffee, this coffeemaker includes a thermal carafe that keeps your coffee hot without burning or ruining the flavor.
Good size (not too big): Compared to some of the coffeemakers in its class, the oxo 8-cup coffeemaker is a reasonable size (14.8″l x 9″w x 16.125”h) . It fits neatly under upper cabinets and leaves counter space for other things.
reasonable price (compared to other sca coffee makers): although the price of this coffee maker will vary, this coffee maker is on the lower end of the price scale for sca certified coffee makers. (you can check the current price here).
more convenient than manual brewing: if you’re looking for convenience, brewing coffee with an automatic coffee maker like the oxo 8-cup coffee maker is certainly a bit less time-consuming and intense than manual coffee brewing .
Can make good coffee at full capacity: This coffee maker makes a good cup of coffee at full capacity with golden ratio dispenses (coffee to water ratio of 1:16.6). This is important because a common “trick” with automatic coffee machines is to brew at about 75% full so that you can fit all of the ground coffee into the brew basket without it overflowing.

cons:

small capacity: oxo 8-cup coffeemaker holds a maximum of eight 5 fl oz cups of coffee or about 4 ounces of coffee. this is an amount that can be reasonably prepared in a large chemex.
limited filter options: this coffee maker is a flat bottom coffee maker. It also comes with an insert for brewing smaller batches with a kalita 185 filter. It would be great if they made a v60 insert that could be sold separately. I was able to use my bairro alto air without the filter basket (took a bit of a struggle).

what filters does the oxo 8 cup coffee maker use? The oxo 8-cup coffeemaker uses standard-size flat-bottom filters for larger batches and kalita 185 filters for smaller batches. For large filters, I recommend using Melitta’s Latte Basket Filters.

Not a manual brewer: It can be hard to give up the control and ritual of manual brewing for the consistency and ease of an automatic brewer. I enjoy hand-brewed coffee over coffee made with this machine.
You need a little intervention to prepare the best cup. I have found that this coffee maker makes its best coffee when I stir the coffee bed between the bloom cycle and the brew cycle. (maybe that’s just the manual brewer in me wanting to participate). this is quite common in both automatic drip coffee makers and manual coffee makers.

oxo 8 cup coffee maker review: key features

There are two key features that deserve a little more analysis. These features make the OXO 8-Cup Coffee Maker stand out in a field of ordinary coffee machines.

sca certified coffee maker

The oxo 8-cup coffeemaker is one of the few coffeemakers sca certified to brew within sca gold cup standards.

what does that mean?

means that oxo has sent your coffee maker to be tested by sca and it meets the requirements for water temperature and brew time, as well as some extraction criteria. To learn more about the sca certification process, you can read about minimum certification requirements and uniform extraction evaluation procedures.

what’s the short and sweet thing about all this? coffee scientists who have more equipment and experience than me have tried this and have given it their stamp of approval. The Oxo 8-Cup Coffeemaker is capable of brewing great standard “golden cup” coffee.

the coffee pod challenger (k-cup)

One of the best features that makes this coffee maker stand out from many in its class is its ability to brew smaller batches of coffee. this means you can ditch the k-cup machine and upgrade to a more functional coffee maker. makes great coffee in single cup batches up to a full carafe.

Despite the appearance that pod coffee machines try to give you some level of brew control, you really have a limited number of variables to increase in a pod coffee machine. You can control the dosage by adding more or less water, but you can’t make a full pot or two cups at a time.

replacing a k-cup machine with an automatic coffee maker comes with some caveats. To get the maximum effect from this coffee maker, you may want to consider grinding your coffee fresh. You’ll also need to get some good coffee and make sure you have filters on hand. (by the way, kalita 185 filters aren’t cheap, expect to pay 13 cents per filter).

I don’t own a k-cup machine, but I have no doubt that a carefully brewed cup of coffee from the oxo coffee maker will be far superior.

How does this feature of the oxo 8-cup coffee maker compare to a hand-brewed cup of coffee? I found it held up tolerably well. although I preferred a cup of hand-brewed coffee, the coffee from this machine turns out excellent. perhaps with some personal tweaking and experimentation you could come up with a cup of coffee that rivals (or betters) your hand-poured kalita.

oxo 8-cup coffee maker review: final thoughts

Perhaps you are looking for a coffee maker to make coffee in the morning or to stay. Maybe you like to make your coffee by hand, but your spouse would prefer a coffee machine. there are many reasons to have an automatic coffee maker.

Although I prefer to brew my coffee manually, I often appreciate the ability to “press the easy button” and spend my time on something of a higher priority.

If you’re looking for a new coffee maker, the oxo 8-cup coffee maker should be on your favorites list. In addition to its solid construction, design, and price, this coffeemaker meets SCA certified standards and can brew a variety of batch sizes. It’s a versatile coffeemaker that can bridge the gap between meticulous manual brewing and “dump and run” drip coffee.

if you have an oxo 8 cup coffee maker, what do you think? Are there features I should have noticed? Are there drawbacks I haven’t considered? Would you be interested in a v60 style filter basket accessory? let me know in the comments below.

*Since I don’t exactly work in an office, I’m using this term loosely.