Each reservoir also has its own “water window” that allows you to keep an eye on how full the tank is. This makes it more efficient to check instead of having to open the top of the coffee maker to check how much water is left inside. The two-way brewing is the primary feature that gives the FlexBrew its name. Automatically having two options for brew sizes makes hamilton beach it more adequate and easier to get your desired amount of caffeine with just the push of a button. This button allows you to select the current time to display on the FlexBrew’s screen. Selecting the time may not look like much, but programing the time will help the machine better perform brewing cycles that you’ve programmed several hours in advance.
The conference call will also be webcast live over the internet. To access the call, go to Please allow 15 minutes to register, download and install any necessary software. An archive of the webcast will be available on the company website.
The Cuisinart DCC-1200 Brew Central reliably brewed balanced coffee at a nice hot temperature (but slightly cooler than our pick, the Ninja CE251). The coffee lacked a little of the overall sweetness that was a hallmark of the Ninja’s brews, but finished at a higher temperature than many of the other coffee makers, at an average of 176°F in the carafe. While the hot plate can’t be switched off like the Ninja’s, the Cuisinart’s plate does have a temperature control with settings for low, medium, and high heat-holding. We liked the low setting as a way to keep the coffee warm without causing it to turn acrid. The Cuisinart brewed a bit faster than the Ninja, taking 11 to 12 minutes to brew a full batch, as opposed to 13 minutes, but the basket came very close to overflowing on several occasions.
According to the Specialty Coffee Association standards, the brewing temperature should be between 195 °F and 205 °F. A few downsides to traditional coffee makers is that you have to purchase paper filters or a reusable filter to brew coffee with. Likewise, most ground coffee comes in various sized bags that you might be stuck with if you accidentally buy a blend of coffee that you don’t really like. If you enjoy making a large batch of coffee all in one brew cycle to sip on throughout the day, then traditional drip coffee will become your best friend. Enjoy a cup at home or take it along in your favorite tumbler.
This also makes for a lower profile machine that’s easily tucked away. The Cuisinart DCC-1200 reliably brewed decent coffee, but the final product was not as good as the Ninja’s. It does have some of the most useful customizable features of the cheap coffee makers we tested, including user control of the hot plate’s holding hamilton beach air fryer temperature. The small-batch option is easy to use, but programming it on this machine is not as intuitive as it is on the Ninja. Of the models we tested, the DCC-1200 had one of the longest warranties (three years), but it has the hardest water tank to fill, with measurements that are nearly impossible to read.
For more information about Brands Holding Company, visit hamiltonbeachbrands.com. Hamilton Beach Brands licenses the brands for Wolf Gourmet® countertop appliances, CHI® premium garment care products, Clorox™ True HEPA air purifiers, and Brita Hub™ countertop electric water filtration appliances. All of the coffee makers we tested exhibited some level of discrepancy between the brewing water in and the brewed coffee out. The Ninja CE251 had a moderate loss of 5 to 6 ounces of volume per batch—a full “serving” of coffee based on the manual instructions—likely due to its higher brewing temperature. But we found that the consistently good flavor overrode the decreased final quantity. We timed each batch and used a thermometer to record the temperature of the coffee in the carafe immediately after brewing.