Breville - the Luxe Brewer Thermal Coffee Maker - Brushed Stainless Steel

This is my new favorite coffee pot. I've tested it for over 2 months now and absolutely love it. It makes it very easy to brew high quality coffee and I use it daily as my single cup brewer. For brews under 600ml it automatically detect the water level and switches to an immersion mode which steeps the coffee for 4 minutes before opening the drain gasket to release it. The flavor is extremely similar to my aeropress but slightly more delicate, perhaps because of the larger Melita #4 style filter. The thermal carafe keeps coffee hot hours (when I work remotely from home I've brewed a cup in the morning and I'm still getting hot coffee out of it at the end of the work day). It is well built and pours 100% of the coffee out unlike many other brands that have a lip on the inside of the carafe that never lets you fully empty it. I've seen some confusing reviews that say you cannot brew into the carafe with the lid on. That's only true when you're doing single cup immersion brewing because the added height of the carafe lid will lift the gasket in the brew chamber and cause the liquid to drain as it brews. I only ever use the carafe when I'm doing 6 to 12 cups of coffee and you can absolutely brew with the crafe lid on. I only have a few criticisms about it. The first is that the removable water reservoir never dries out and tends to hold in condensation and always has a little bit of water left over. This style coffee machine is supposed to brew with all the water it has in the reservoir. You have to fill the reservoir every time so it could be annoying to some that the reservoir maintains a few tablespoons of water at the bottom at all times. It's not a big deal if you're going to use it often but if you're going to use it infrequently then you're going to want to put the reservoir on a drying rack to get it fully dried out. The second is that, while you can do some custom programming, there is no way to make a custom program that does immersion brewing. No matter how you program it, it will never seal the drain gasket in the brew chamber like it does for a standard brew. The end result is that you're always doing percolation brewing which leads me to my third criticism. Breville makes a pour over adapter for the previous generation of this coffee maker and it is not compatible with this newer model. Why is that important? Given that this has programmable water temperature and it's a steady brewer, it would be awesome if paired with a pour over v60. I'm hoping that they update the pour over adapter and release it again for this model. I probably wouldn't use it most days but it's always nice to have options and a v60 filter seems more appropriate for smaller brews. With all that said I'm still giving this coffee maker five stars. It's the best automatic drip machine I've ever had, and I've had many. Perhaps this is due to the rock solid temperature control. If you put in the quantities of water and coffee everyday you will get the same cup of coffee every day. This makes it as simple as a Moccamaster, except this unit is way more customizable and does fully automatic brewing whether you are brewing for one or 12 cups for the whole family.

Amazing coffee, definitely noticeably better than other coffee makers. Easy to use. Bought it to complete my breville coffee bar.

Easy to use and makes great coffee! Video instructions for setup are very helpful.

Absolute the best coffee we have ever owned, Superior quality.

Excellent coffee machine. Biggest issue: 1. SHOWERHEAD RING POPS OFF EVERY FEW BREWS. 2. THE TRIM ON THE SHOWERHEAD IS STARTING TO WARP.