[boar_d_laze]

Abe,

It would help if you could either narrow this down a little or say you have no idea what you want and are open to the world of coffee makers.

The basic types include pour-over drip automatics (like Mr. Coffee, etc.), pour-over drip manuals (Chemex, Melitta, etc), vacuum pot, cafetiere aka French press, moka pots, Turkish coffee set ups, and more.

My guess is you're looking for a pour-over drip automatic. There's one maker that's head and shoulders above the rest, and that's Technivorm. Buying a $250 Technivorm is pretty reasonable compared to the $1,500 tariff it costs to get into serious espresso, but it's sick expensive compred to the scores of other almost as good automatic setups. At the end of the day, a Technivorm is just an autmoatic drip which is only that little bit better. I suspect that if you were the serious type of coffee drinker who'd be interested in a Technivorm you'd already know about it. It's the Cigarette boat of drip coffeemakers, faling into the "if you have to ask you can't afford it and don't want it anyway" category.

DeLonghi, Krups, Braun, KitchenAid, Mr. Coffee, Bunn, etc., all make excellent pots. To be quite honest it doesn't matter a heck of a lot which brand you get. They all brew in very much the same way at the same temperatures. Largely, you're shopping for programming features.

Linda has a Cuisinart with a built in grinder we use instead of our espresso machine or cafetiere when we want plain, ol' 'merican coffee. We chose it becuase she really liked the looks of the red one, but bought a white one because it was on sale.

For whatever reason the Cuisinarts tend to make an especially mellow and somewhat weak cup. We remedy this by using darker roasts or sometimes just adding a couple of tablespoons of "cafe latina" style coffee (La Llave, Legal or Bustelo, e.g.) to the basket to give the coffee some chest hair. The "trick" for machines which include grinders is to remember it's pretty humid in there, and the grinder and path from grinder to basket clog. So you have to clean. Fortunately, the Cuisinart's grinder motor is separate from the blade and bean holder assembly and you can put the blade and bean holder in the dishwasher. Still, you do have to wipe out the pathway every few pots.

Still, definite thumbs up for the Cuisinart. Before the Cuisinart we had a Bunn which I took from my office when I closed the office and eventually got lost in a move. I also had a small Mr. Coffee for quite a while. Thumbs up to both of them.

If you go through a lot of coffee you might want to look at the semi-commercial Bunns.

Why not visit a "big box," and try to find something you like on sale? Considering that they're all pretty much of a muchness -- that's probably the best strategy.

BDL