In the world of coffee makers that brew a simple cup of black coffee, the Balmuda coffee maker, “The Brew,” is expensive. It feels important to address the $700 price tag right out of the gate, because for a lot of people, it will (understandably) be a turn off. But Balmuda’s “The Brew” is the only push-button coffee maker I’ve ever used that produces a consistent cup of coffee that tastes like it costs $9 at my neighborhood Blue Bottle location. All it asks of me is to walk twenty feet from my bed to my Fellow Ode grinder, grind some beans, pop them in the Balmuda’s dripper, and press a button.
In the five or so years since I started down the dark path of brewing specialty coffee at home, I’ve owned every kind of pour-over coffee maker from the classic Hario V60 to an Aeropress to a chic ceramic Le Creuset situation. I’ve bought temperature-controlled electric gooseneck kettles and ones with built-in analog thermometers that you heat on the stove. Grinders, scales, filters, insulated carafes—it adds up. And that’s before we get into my $25-a-bag bean habit.
Did all of that fancy equipment make a cup of coffee as good as the brews I’d get at my favorite speciality cafes? Sometimes! And sometimes I would get sour, watery coffee that instantly curdled if I put a jug of milk in its general vicinity. And of course, if I wanted to brew even two smallish cups of coffee at a time, I needed two drippers, two scales, etc. etc.
At the end of the day, I was spending a lot of time, money, and mental energy on coffee that was wildly inconsistent. Because, despite my passion for coffee, I am not a barista. I am a novelist with a nine to five who wakes up at six o’clock in the morning to crack out two thousand words of high fantasy before shifting gears to edit kitchen product reviews. In order to make that work, I need a cup of coffee that sparks joy in my creative soul to be on my desk within ten minutes of rolling out of bed.
The machine makes pleasant tick-tocking sounds, emitting dramatic little bursts of steam. I can walk away, brush my teeth, get my pens and notebooks in order. When the brew time is up, the machine chimes a cute little song, and I know it’s time to pour my coffee and get down to writing.
The Brew combines some of the ritualistic elements of pour over with the ease of a drip machine. It does not matter whether I push the start button or my husband pushes it, whether I’ve gotten five or six or ten hours of sleep the night before: The coffee tastes exactly the way I want it to, every day, without fail. The 17-ounce carafe makes exactly the right amount of coffee for my husband and I to each have a reasonable 8.5-ounce cup. The entirety of my cleanup involves popping the dripper and the carafe in the dishwasher and composting my leftover grounds. And at 5.5 x 11.7 inches, it cuts a trim enough figure that I’m not sacrificing precious counter space to have it in my house.
I understand why some pour-over obsessives are suspicious. If you are a coffee nerd who needs to hyper-analyze every element of the brewing process or fiddle with bloom times and water temperature, well, you can’t with this.
But I’ve learned there is a difference between a coffee nerd and a coffee snob. A coffee nerd might relish the act of documenting every flawed Chemex creation in a little grid notebook so they can tweak and tinker their way to perfection. A coffee snob just wants the butterscotch and ripe mango tasting notes of their favorite beans to come through in the cup.
If you fall into the latter camp, and have also found yourself consistently (or worse, inconsistently) disappointed with the quality of your at-home pour over, the Balmuda coffee maker is worth the splurge. To put it another way: if you’re the type of person who regularly spends $8-10 on a fancy hand brew at a specialty coffee shop, this machine will pay for itself in two or three months. And while I’m not attributing this entirely to The Brew, I turned in my last manuscript ahead of deadline. Coincidence, or a side effect of effortlessly perfect coffee? You decide.