Need tips for making better electric drip coffee

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I just bought a Bonavita BV1800 with the glass carafe. The coffee's been a disappointment, though it's not vile like the "Taste Nastier" machine it's replacing. (The right name's a bit rubbed out.) The Tastes-Nastier's not mine, but a family member brought it over and I won't have that thing in the house even if it meant buying a replacement. For the record, I chose the Bonavita for simplicity. Otherwise, I haven't used an electric in years, and use a variety of manual pour/press or a moka or vacuum pot.


I've played around with presoaking, changing the grind size, and adjusting the amounts of coffee and water, trying to aim for the right brew time. I'm at a medium-fine grind around the 5-6 cup line, with a presoak manual pour just before starting. The cup's certainly better than the stock method, but I haven't been able to dial it in to get anything approaching good manual-method coffee. The only other thing I've heard about is to stir the grounds during the brew cycle--not an easy task, but the Bonavita clearly needs that bit of help.

Is there anything else to try?


On a related note, I broke 2 Chemexes in the last 3 months. Both developed a hairline crack near the top. I'm pretty sure it's thermal shock. I haven't changed my method in years, and only ever cracked one like this from a physical shock, and neither of these sufferred that way. It makes me wonder if they're using inferior glass lately or doing something wrong. All I know is I've bought my last Chemex. So I picked up a ceramic Hario V60-02 to replace it.

If the machine can't produce water at the correct temp, I think your hope to make better coffee will be very limited.

204F. The grounds vary between 195 - 204F, but stays mostly at the higher end of the range. That might be hotter than what I'm used to with manuals which typically range between 190-200 due to heat loss.

Steve,
I have no insight into the electric drip mystery of yours but am interested in the answer if/when it gets solved.

As for the Chemex cracks, glass manufacture requires ridiculously high levels of purity to get things right and it may just be that you got some bum carafes. I'd return them. There's simply no way a Chemex should crack under the temperature differentials of making coffee. Unless, of course, you have a process which involves storing them in a freezer at -10 C.

Hmm, I have the Bonavita (with a stainless steel carafe) and I get delicious coffee (and hot). Using the presoak setting makes it a bit better tasting, but usually I am in a hurry so even the "regular" setting provides a strong, well-balanced pot of coffee. My only complaint is I wish I had two coffee makers.

I tend to make the same size pot... right at the six cup mark, with 9 level tablespoons of coffee. I like a strong coffee... if my wife is also drinking I reduce that to 8 level tablespoons. If I make a second pot or smaller pot of four, I reduce the tablespoons to six (most times my wife is drinking too). I always preheat the carafe, and I always use cold filtered water.

Is it perhaps the coffee (ground or whole beans)? If I am lazy I generally go for "whatever is on sale" bag of ground (usually Community Dark or Peet's Major Dickinson but in a pinch I will settle for Seattle's Best Dark and Intense since its always on sale ) but my favorite is Ruta Maya Organic Dark Roast I can get at Costco.

Both Chemexes came from Gregory's Coffee--two different nearby stores. Perhaps it's just a bad batch.

No good, fresh coffee beans on hand, so I ordered some green beans to roast. Still, the coffee's coming out much better in the aeropress. We seem to use the same settings: 8 tablespoons is half a cup, which is how I measure it--a slightly heaping half cup measure.

I didn't notice until now that there's a 1900 model that has a presoak option. My 1800 lacks it. It might be useful when brewing 1/2 pot, but not for a full pot which already brews for too long.

I'm taking notes and will report further when there's something interesting. Here's what I have so far.

I measured the water flow at 1 legitimate cup (8 oz) per minute. It takes roughly 20 seconds for water to start flowing and another 30 seconds to empty the basket after the water stops flowing, though this probably depends on the amount of coffee and the grind size. Let's call it a minute of overhead. So a full 40 oz pot (5 cups or 8 coffee "cups") takes 6 minutes. A 5 "cup" pot (about 24 oz of water) takes about 4 minutes total. More or less.

You lose about 4 oz of water (depending on the amount of grinds) to wet the grinds. So a 40 oz pot yields about 36 oz of liquid.

Grind size has important effects. A fine grind drains more slowly. This gives a longer brew time, and a higher water level in the basket. The higher water level in the basket saturates the grounds quicker, and also maintains a higher temperature for the wet grounds in the basket.

With a coarse grind at 5 "cups" (a low water level in the basket), the temperature in the basket varied between 199F and 204F. With a fine grind in a full pot (a high water level in the basket) the temperature in the basket was pretty steady at 204F.

Brew time is an important parameter in making coffee. You control the brew time primarily by how much water you load into the reservoir. Let's measure this from the time the grounds get wet, until the time you stop brewing. This unit can take 2 minutes to fully wet coarse grounds. Meanwhile, water begins to drip into the decanter well before the grounds are fully saturated. This gives an uneven brew time, with different parts of the coffee having different brew times. It also makes brew time a fuzzy concept. This is a big difference from manual drip, where you can quickly and adeptly pour in enough water to wet all of the grounds without dripping into the decanter at all. Presoaking allows us to get a proper measure of brew time, so I want to try that later. My unit doesn't have the presoak feature, so I can't test it. I have, however, tried manually soaking the grinds evenly just before turning the unit on.

Let's say I want to control the target brew time. The main way to do this is to adjust the amount of water in the reservoir. It takes 30 seconds to empty the basket, so a 4 minute brew time only needs 3.5 minutes of flow, which is 28 oz of water, yielding 24 oz of liquid in the decanter. But if I use a coarse grind, some of the grounds are still dry halfway through at the 2 minute mark.

Let's try presoaking the grounds manually just before turning the unit on. This starts the brew time just before I press the button--for convenience, let's call it 10 seconds. For the first 20-30 seconds, the grounds are soaking in the presoak water. Then water starts to slowly drip into the basket, and the liquid starts to drip into the decanter almost immediately because the grounds are already saturated. The total brew time is the sum of the time to presoak, drip, and empty the basket: 30 seconds of presoak time before water starts dripping, our target drip time, plus 30 seconds at the end to empty the basket. For a 4 minute brew-time target, that leaves 3 minutes of drip time. This requires 3 cups (24 oz or about 5 "cups") of water in the reservoir, and yields about 20 oz of liquid.

I'm going to track different pots to see if there's a pattern. Maybe I can find ways to improve this thing. My goal would be a quick guide where I know roughly how much water and coffee to use, and how coarse to grind for any amount of coffee. The variations I know of are grind size, quantity of water in the reservoir, and manually presoaking (for smaller amounts of water), and maybe whether or not to stir the basket and when to stir. I probably won't bother heating the basket because the water's already plenty hot--too hot if anything.

Here's this morning's pot:
Just over 5 "cups" (26 oz) of water with 1/2 cup + 1 heaping tablespoon of beans ground rather coarse
No presoak
@ 0:23 water starts dripping from the spout into the basket
@ 0:41 liquid starts dripping into the decanter
@ 2:00 the grounds appear fully wet around the sides
@ 3:40 water stops dripping from into the basket
@ 4:36 the pot is done
- Total (fuzzy) brew time of 4:13. Or possibly as low as 2:36.
- The temperature of the wet grounds in the basket measured 199-204F at various times throughout the brew cycle.
- Due to the low water level in the basket, some of the grinds around the sides didn't get wet at all during the first 2 minutes. I didn't stir the basket at all except for carefully dipping the thermometer into the basket.

SiBurning said:

The coffee's been a disappointment, though it's not vile like the "Taste Nastier" machine it's replacing.

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What's the issue with it? How does it taste? What's wrong with the flavor specifically?

michiganlover said:

If the machine can't produce water at the correct temp, I think your hope to make better coffee will be very limited.

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The Bonavita can definitely produce the right temp unless the specific unit isdefective.

Seems like it's something on my end I should be doing differently.

A full pot is overextracted and more gritty than I'm used to. Will experiment with coarser grinds when the fresh beans come in and also double check if my Baratza grinder needs maintenance. Also ordered some filtropa filters for comparison.

I'll reserve jugement for now on the smaller pots because my existing stock of beans might be off--they're not coming out that great in a manual pour-over except for the aeropress. Sometimes different roasts/beans need different methods.

I think you are on the right track in experimenting with a coarser grind, either a medium or medium-coarse grind. And by trying a different filter brand.

I have wanted to get some different brand filters to compare and better understand what differences they may have myself, so I don't have any specific recommendations. I only observe that my four different paper filters flow a little different from each other (Hario v60, V-shaped cone, auto-drip basket, Aeropress). The supermarket V-shape and drip basket ones are about the same weight so any difference may just be due to their shape and dripper constraints. Over time I have ran out of one style or the other and ended up folding a different style as a stop gap (e.g. V-shape in an V60, round auto-drip in a V-shape). The folds added unbalanced thickness and reduced the flow rate quite a bit sometimes, so I used a courser grind to compensate with acceptable results.

If all else fails you could consider a gold tone filter which I suspect would flow more quickly, but it may change taste in the cup too much for your liking.

I believe the older Bonavita uses a cone-type filter, while the newer one (that I have) uses a flat bottom filter.

Yeah, it's a sort of flat bottomed cone. I have Melitta filters with "taste holes" that let some sludge through, and a few brown Melitta filters that came with the machine. The Filtropa filters should be here around the weekend. And I have a swissgold filter of the right size on hand. The gold tone might knock 20 seconds off the final drain time, which is worth a try with a full pot and a coarse grind size.

We play with the variables in manual drip. Why not in an automatic?

Have you resolved your issue with the Bonavita?

I'm getting respectable results at 4 "cups" of water and a fine grind with the melitta filters, but only from some of the beans. That's good because that's I typically make 16 oz for myself, and this comes out just a bit over. Works out to about 3 minutes, which is about right for these beans ground fine. The green beans should be here tomorrow, so I'm hoping to get better results this week and continue working on a full pot.

I good brewer will show bad beans.....

Melita filter should be a med grind (grocery store kind of medium). Not as coarse as a Chemex grind but not as fine as a Hario grind.

Now this "rule of thumb" goes up in smoke if you are not using Melita branded filters.

You can (soft of) control your brew time by using different grinds so you sort of need to play it by ear

With the freshly roasted beans, it's been making quite respectable, if not great, coffee for most of the week. At just above 4 "cups" ground fine, and it does need a bit of a stir around 30 seconds in to wet all the grinds. The filtropa filters don't have "taste holes" so they don't let as much powder through, which is an improvement, and significantly cheaper than the holy brand. Wil take some time to work out how to do a full pot with coarse grinds because that's way too much coffee for one person.

I'll post if I find anything more. Seems like good results just takes a bit of getting used to, like any other method. I'm glad I got this thing. Can send that "Tastes Nastier" back to the bro's house. This should be simple enough, even for him.

Thanks for all the help.

Good to hear that the fresher beans and new filters improved the brew. As you know, even small tweaks can often be tasted in the cup. A good pot of coffee is essential to start the day.

Thought I'd follow up since there's another thread talking about these brewers.

I'm grinding on myBaratza Virtuoso set at 10 for 4 "cups", at 20-25 for 6 "cups", and at 30-40 for 8 "cups". Occassionally, the 4 cups get underextracted with certain beans, and the 8 "cups" usually verges on overextracted. I don't think a really coarse grind is a great antidote for such a long brew time--some good parts of the coffee just aren't getting into the cup,and some bitter parts are. Thankfully, I don't need to make a full pot too often.

It's turned out to be a decent little machine that makes a respectable cup, and is especially welcome in the morning when I can start drinking my liter cup of coffee within 5 minutes of waking up. With my manual methods, I'd still be waiting for the water to boil.

I'm used to making my manual coffee at 200-208F, so the steady 204F works okay for me. I do sometimes manually brew near 190F. SEems to me other people might prefer a little less heat, especially since you're stuck with whatever it does.

One big gripe... I keep meaning to find a cup the same diameter as the pitcher to have somewhere to put the top when the brew is done. This is the only coffee machine I've seen where the grounds basket comes off with the pitcher and you can't put it down anywhere, so it' a two-handed maneuver.

To me, the drip machine is like a cartridge razor, an over-complicated solution to a problem that was solved long ago. Have you tried a moka pot like the Bialetti? It takes about as much time as a drip machine to make coffee, but it brings out flavors that the best drip machines could only dream of.

Have plenty of contraptions... Italian stovetop, press, ibrik, vacuum, aeropress, several manual pourover thingies, several wizz-bang gizmoes, and a coffee sock. Also pour cowboys through a gold filter. And I agree that the moka pots make the richest tasting coffee. That and the ibrik.

As for mornings... 15 seconds late and it's burnt. I need to drink my coffee before I can use that thing in the morning.

SiBurning said:

I need to drink my coffee before I can use that thing in the morning.

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That was exactly my biggest fear about it before purchasing mine!. Fortunately, I have had good experience with it even if I had forgotten to turn it off at the right time (perhaps the 12-cup that I've got makes it harder to burn). Have you thought about trying the electric version? It's essentially a moka pot that turns itself off when it is finished.