The Best Drip Coffee Makers for Mornings When You Can’t Even

It hits the perfect temperature and quickly brews a perfect pot. Buffy Maguire, founder of Lady Falcon Coffee Club, uses the Moccamaster at home and recommends that you opt for the one with a thermal carafe and not the one with a hot plate, which can degrade the quality of the coffee faster. “I appreciate that the machine is powerful enough with its copper heating element to reach a high enough heat to produce a well-extracted coffee,” she says. “I also appreciate that the water dispersion is even, [unlike] other drip coffee makers where that’s not the case.”

It’s a little bit less flexible than the Oxo 9-Cup—for example, you can’t schedule it to brew in advance—but it’s still pretty hard to mess up a batch. Maguire likes how quickly it brews coffee (around 2.5 minutes for her) but she actually says that she would prefer it brewed slower “to allow for an initial bloom of coffee and even better extraction.” In a category where aesthetics are on the back burner, it actually looks pretty cool (a little laboratory-esque, but cool). It’s high-end—and you’ll need your own grinder—but with a five-year warranty, it’s an investment worth considering.

The Best Single-Serve Drip Coffee Maker: Oxo 12-Cup

A few years ago, Oxo released the 8-cup coffee maker, which was more than just a petite version of its already-winning Oxo 9-cup—the smaller brewer touted a pod-less single-serve coffee function, meant to be a direct shot at Keurig coffee makers. We really enjoyed the 8-cup brewer, but we always felt it was lacking a little in design and features.

Oxo has since upgraded it with a newer, larger 12-cup coffee maker, and we were glad to see the addition of a larger carafe, as well as a feature that lets you program your morning coffee up to 24 hours in advance. Its rainwater head ensures coffee grounds and uniformly and evenly saturated, while brewing either a full carafe or a single cup of coffee. There are two filter baskets, one for brewing into a carafe and a smaller-sized one for brewing directly into a cup, and we found that the single-serve brew option actually does deliver a nuanced cup of coffee, similar to if you had brewed with a pour-over dripper. We wish it had a removable water tank and that the brand closed the gap between the coffee spout and where you’d place your cup to avoid a splashy mess, but we still think the 12-cup is a wonderful brewer worthy of your precious counter space. (Plus, the SCA’s golden seal of approval helps).

The Best Dirt-Cheap Coffee Maker: Black + Decker 12-Cup

For a bargain basic, consider the well-reviewed Black+Decker Programmable Coffee Maker. Coming in at less than $30, it’s definitely the price to beat. It brews up 12 cups, has a two-hour auto shutoff, a 24-hour programmable clock, and its washable brew basket eliminates the need for paper filters. This workhorse of a coffee maker boasts nearly 47,000 glowing Amazon reviews, with multiple reviewers giving props to the brewer for pumping out quality cups day after day.

Why drip coffee makers?

Compared to using a manual method of brewing like a French press or a pour-over dripper, Perry says you’re still going to get a great cup of coffee either way, so your choice will boil down to preferences and how precious you want to be about your coffee rituals.

Some coffee snobs might prefer the pour-over method because, because as Han explains, “it typically offers more nuanced and delicate flavors, with more clarity and brightness in the cup due to the controlled pouring technique and shorter brew time.”