Capresso 455 CoffeeTEAM Therm Stainless Coffeemaker/Burr Grinder Combination
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Capresso 455 CoffeeTEAM Therm Stainless Coffeemaker/Burr Grinder Combination
Customer Review: A fantastic coffee maker.
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to say, I'm more than a little confused by the negative feedback this coffee maker seems to be receiving as we've had quite the opposite experience with it-- in fact, we've been nothing short of ecstatic with its functioning. It's a bit counterintuitive at first, but once you get a feel for its system, this is a nice little pot.
My wife and I were committed to buying a suit-all-our-needs coffee maker right after our wedding, and after substantial research, we came up with this unit.
After witnessing my brother and his wife with their grinder/brewer combination, I was filled with envy-- I hate grinding coffee. The CoffeeTEAM combines a burr grinder with the brewer, grinding into a filter basket (with an included conical permenant coffee filter) on a spring mechanism which then swings to allow hot water to be forced through the beans.
Both the beans and water are top loaded into their chambers-- the bean chamber holds enough for about 18 cups of coffee, the water reservoir holds enough for 10 cups and has a cover that flips up that rests on top of the filter basket when it's used for brewing.
The grinder has a handful of sizes you can adjust the grind to-- I've kept mine fairly large as I've been using fairly oily coffee. The beans are ground and deposited into this little chamber. This next triggers a series of springs that push the grounds into the filter basket and swings the basket to receive water.
A few points about this process-- some residual beans are left in the little chamber after the grinding. These are used for the next pot of coffee-- I discovered early on if you clean this out, the next pot will be noticably weak (they warn you the first pot will be weak in the manual, but forget to mention this-- I suspect this is why one of the other reviewers had trouble with coffee being too weak). There's a thin piece of hard plastic with a rubber washer in the middle that fits over the top of the filter basket-- this MUST be fitted evenly and the rubber washer MUST be snugly attached. Additionally, the water reservoir must be down when you push the basket to the grinder. Not doing any of these will result in the spring mechanism not swinging the basket properly-- it took me a few tries to get this right, but there was no mess made and it was more a learning curve than anything else (the good news is that if the basket doesn't swing back, a fail-safe stops the brewing process).
The coffee is brewed into a thermal carafe which must be lined up carefully to prevent spillage-- I've yet to have this spill due to line up problems and I'm pretty impatient, it's not a hard process. We haven't tested to see how long it keeps coffee hot for, but it's at least 3-4 hours. My wife takes her coffee a couple hours after brewing and has no complaints about temperature or degraded taste.
Controls are pretty straight forward, there's two buttons and a knob that serves as a third button. The knob is used to program everything-- for both on-demand and timer-triggered brewing you can set number of cups to brew and strength, the clock, and the time to kick off brewing. The top button starts the brewing process immediately, the bottom button sets the timer-trigger brewing.
You can override the grinding by not swinging the filter basket over in case you want flavored beans, etc. I've not done this. Additionally, removing the carafe during brewing allows you to pour yourself a cup from the carafe, saving those goofy slide-the-carafe-out-and-cup-in games. I just revised my review concerning this functionality as I used it for the first time this morning-- it is flawless-- carafe comes out, coffee stops, carafe goes back in, coffee restarts. Finally, the last feature of the coffee pot is a "descale" warning to indicate when you need to clean the coffee pot. In a previous review, I said this was missing, but it just came on for our maker.
All the coffee we've made tastes superb-- admittedly, I've been starting with good beans, first what we brought back from our honeymoon in Hawai'i and then from a favorite coffeehouse near where I grew up, but it's as good as any coffeemaker I've used.
Cleanup has been pretty easy so far-- we've had the maker maybe six weeks and the carafe has a wide mouth when you remove the lid so it's easy to clean (something I've hated in other carafes). The filter basket and associated components all come out and are easy to wash. I do wish the bean container could be removed, but so far, I've just been wiping oil deposits down per recommendations. The burrs are not accessible, so there's no way to clean then other than grinding no beans per recommendations.
Things I wish the maker had: a large bean container-- I'd love to have a unit that could just fit a half pound or a pound of beans-- I'm constantly having to pour more beans into it. This is a minor annoyance. Somewhat more lacking is a water filter-- my last coffee maker had this and it was a nice feature-- I've gotten around this by pouring filtered water into it, so again this is a small complaint.
None of these shortcomings are big enough to make me regret purchasing the unit, even at its price, it's served us well for the past several weeks and the coffee it makes it consistently fantastic.
Customer Review: Could be better, could be worse.
Summary: 3 Stars
REVIEW UPDATE Feb 13, 2010 (~2 months later):
I'm no longer brewing coffee in this unit. Instead, I use it to just grind my beans, brew the coffee in a french press, and then transfer the substantially better tasting result to the Capresso thermos to keep it warm. So, in short, this is an expensive grinder/thermos combination (at least for me).
P.S. What motivated this "switch" was forgetting to put in a paper filter one morning. Every other coffee maker I ever owned would have simply made a very dirty pot of coffee. This one, however, managed to throw nearly all of the mess on to my kitchen counter and floor -- presumably because the grounds clogged up the themos opening. See that ... there's a silver lining to every cloud. I wouldn't have known how superior the coffee would taste in my french press if I hadn't been disgusted with the coffee maker to begin with.
Upshot: I'm not sorry I purchased this largely because I paid $139 including shipping (refurbished). Had I paid much more than that I would have been less inclined to leave the mixed review below. I'll try to make this short and sweet:
THE GOOD
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1) Very good burr grinder.
2) Thermal carafe keeps coffee hot (but that's really just a given).
3) Clever mechanism that swings the coffee grounds into position for brewing.
4) Never leaked a drop (if yours is leaking, try pushing the basket FIRMLY down until its fully seated).
5) Coffee tastes *a little* better than my previous grind and brew (a Melitta).
6) Relatively quiet and quick to brew a pot.
THE BAD
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1) Received a defective unit. The Customer(No)Service Lady at first told me that it was "normal" that the grinder spout didn't line up with the basket opening. "Even though nearly half the coffee grounds wind up on the counter?," I asked. "Oh yes," she replied. "I guess you've never used a grind-and-brew unit before?" [Following that complete waste of a conversation I sent an email (with photos of the defect) to Capresso support, got a phone call a day later apologizing and offering to send a new unit. Had it in two days. Works fine now. Kudos to Capresso for getting right what they originally got terribly wrong. How that woman got that job is beyond me. Absolutely refused to hear anything I was saying.
2) Although the grinder generally works well and produces a very even grind, my oily beans -- which I roast myself in a popcorn popper, btw -- won't consistently feed down into the grinding chamber itself so I find myself lightly pressing down on the beans whenever I start a pot of coffee to ensure the grind is continuous. I'm used to it now and really don't mind the inconvenience (versus the risk of having an undrinkably weak pot of coffee if I don't). Should it do better? Perhaps; I really don't know.
3) I can only make a measly 6 1/2 cups of VERY STRONG coffee at a time; or my more typical 7 cups of MODERATELY STRONG brew. This seems really lame to me. Why am I unable to adjust the grinder to get 10 CUPS of VERY STRONG coffee if I want to?? Just increase the grinder time ... and instead of calling it 'cups' have the dial set from 1 to 10 (where 10 would be ridiculously strong and 5 might be moderately so). Regardless, it's just dumb that I can only make 7 cups max of good coffee in a unit that retails for more than $200.00.
4) The unit is unecessarily large. Lots of literally wasted space. Why?
5) A final annoyance I recalled after posting my original review: The grinder doesn't completely "empty" at the end of the grind cycle. Instead, a significant amount of ground coffee remains in the "chute" not to be discharged until the NEXT pot of coffee is made. In other words, when we went away for Xmas and came back four days later, there was four-day-old ground coffee waiting to start my next pot. I don't mind my beans sitting for several days (and there is a lid to cover them and minimize oxidation) but I've got a problem with coffee grounds sitting and getting stale ... even for as little as 24 hours come to think of it. How much is the quality of the brew affected? I can't say for sure, but that the first back-from-Xmas pot was definitely sub-par.
6) Wait ... one more annoyance (and this is REALLY nitpicking) ... the important visual markings such as the grinder setting and position of the decanter top (to ensure smooth pouring) are very hard to see due to an almost complete lack of contrast between foreground and background. If you purchase this until you'll see what I mean. No big deal; just bothersome.
All in all, this grinder/brewer is "okay." It seems well built and that it will last. Perhaps it's a lot better than okay since I don't have much to compare it to. The fact that I can't make a full pot of strong coffee is what brings my rating down from an otherwise generous 4 to three stars ... for whatever that's worth.
Customer Review: CoffeeTEAM Therm--VERY good!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
I was a prior owner of this machine's predescesor, a glass carafe model, which I liked very much. After a two year hiatus without it, I was ready try this new one out! I had high expectations, and I was not dissapointed.
The unit ships in a sturdy box and it's a pleasant out-of-box experience. There's a DVD to get you up to speed quickly with how the machine works.
The initial programming is a little cumbersome. You'll need to pay attention to the instructions on how to program the time of day and it's a little challenging to navigate through the menus to the correct area. You essentially program three separate things with twists and pushes of the black knob: the time of day, #cups/strength for program start and #cups/strength for coffee now.
If you make the same number of cups each time you use the machine, it's a cinch after that to just make a pot of coffee. The machine remembers your last settings and all you do to make a pot of coffee is hit the top button and go. Likewise, if you always get up at a certain time and need the same size pot of coffee ready, that's a cinch, too. Just prepare the machine and hit the bottom button. It glows green to let you know that it's on program mode and will start automatically.
The grinding and brewing process is very good! The grinder is a burr-type which is preferrable for a smooth, even grind which shouldn't burn the coffee. It's adjustable but only over a range of four settings. The grinder is not quite, but isn't offensive either.
The Capresso folks have improved the design of the grinding chute and swing-over filter basket immensely from the previous model. This one swings easily and has a manual release as well (if you have an older one, you'll know what I'm referring to). The chute is shorter, less prone to getting clogged and easier to clean out. I've used mine for over 3 months and it's never clogged and I've not cleaned it.
There are a few grinds that will leak out during the process after the grinding when the basket releases and returns to the brewing position under spring tension. It's not enough to cause a little mess on the counter top sometimes. But not a big deal. The grounds do end up piled against the side of the filter basket after it swings back. If I'm there I usually shake the basket to redistribute and level them off just in case. I don't know that it would affect the coffee taste, though if you didn't. I regularly find a few grinds in the water reservoir that fly in there from the basket swinging back. They can be hard to get out as my big hand barely fits down there!
The brewing process is fairly quick and very hot! Both are good traits for drip coffee. The longer the hot water is in contact with the grounds, the more bitter the coffee will taste. It's a little noisy, but much less so than many coffee makers I've had. When it's done, it sputters a few times but not for ever and ever like some machines.
The thermal carafe design is wonderful. It keeps coffee piping hot for as long as any insulated carafe I've ever used. Probably not as long as well-designed thermos. It's easy to pour without dribbling. There's a small bump on the screw-on lid you must align with the spout to pour, then turn to close again when finished to keep the heat in. I like to preheat the carafe before brewing to insure the coffee stays as hot as possible. Obviously, you cannot do that it you use the program feature to have it ready when you wake up. There is no heating pad! I think they recommend you take the carafe off at the end of brewing and keep it off the machine.
It comes with a gold-tone filter. I don't like them, so I bought paper filters instead.
The memory seems to have a very good tolerance to minor power outages. I've not had to reset the time once in spite of having to do so with the microwave a couple of times.
Overall the unit seems well made. It's relatively classy with the stainless steel accents, but don't kid yourself. It's still a plastic coffee maker. It's a tall unit, but it fits underneath our cabinets and we have extra-height countertops. The bean hopper is small! (Probably to not make it any taller). I have to refill the hopper each time after making 10 cups "strong". It's worth it for ease of operation and the capability of automatic programmable operation. There are few compromises here unless you are a real coffee afficianado, in which case you should be using a French press!
Customer Review: I'm very, very pleased
Summary: 5 Stars
Cliffs: A really nice coffee maker that makes great coffee and has terrific convenience features. People who don't read instructions, don't like anything with more than 1-step processes or who use oily or flavored beans shouldn't buy it.
After reading the negative reviews, I've come to the conclusion that most of the negatives are from people who didn't read the instructions or watch the very helpful and concise DVD video tour. The only one I can't argue with is the priciness of this product.
I'll start by addressing some of the negatives noted in other reviews:
- Complexity: Compared to the Melitta Grind & Brew this unit replaced, the process certainly has more steps. I don't think it is anything that a normal person can't master after one pass through it. Yes it is multiple steps, but worth it for the results.
- Thermos pot leaking: We just got it, but honestly I think this is the result of people not fully closing the top or ensuring the pot is fully under the brew basket. No issues there for me so far.
- First batch is bad: It is. The instructions should just tell you to run one set of beans and water through and dump it. I never trust stuff like this the first time anyway.
- Cleaning complexity: I'm just going to disagree that this thing is hard to clean. It is more complicated than a "regular" maker, but...
- Not good for small batches: The instructions admit that the water doesn't get as hot for batches less than 6 cups (which is really 3 larger coffee cups). I'm sure that isn't much different for most coffee makers. If we're doing small batches, we use the french press.
- Oily Beans: The instructions note that oily beans and flavored coffee shouldn't go through the grinder, and recommends you use pre-ground beans in the basket. Maybe it is something that should be disclosed more directly, but if you are griping about the performance of something that is directly mentioned as not optimal in the machine in the instructions and DVD, I'm struggling to justify it. If I were an oily-bean guy I'd either buy them ground, grind them separately or return this machine for a different one. I'm thinking that any grinding coffee maker is going to have this issues - oily beans clump. Unless you get something like the Melitta that grinds the beans in the brewing basket (which isn't a burr grinder), oily bean grounds clumping are going to be a problem.
- Weak coffee: Hasn't been a problem. I'm wondering if people READ THE DIRECTIONS and haven't noticed the four-position setting for the burr grinder.
- Not hot: So far, ours is producing hot coffee. Not boiling, but much hotter than the Melitta
The positives:
- Great tasting coffee: This is a huge step up from the Melitta. Same beans are giving us much better results, presumably because of the burr grinder and better temperature.
- Hot Coffee: Maybe I'm just a pansy. The coffee is plenty hot for me. We'll see what my mother-in-law says next time she visits.
- Thermal Carafe: Hate heating plates you have to clean and that turn off, leaving your coffee cold when you come back for that last cup? Not a problem here. Big fan of the carafe.
- Settings for Auto and Manual brew: If one member gets up early using the auto brew, and one is later that will be brewing another pot, this machine can have separate settings for each.
- Simple to use: One simple knob vs. and array of buttons. I found it really easy. You don't have to measure beans, the settings you choose will use the right amount. I'm thinking this will save me a lot of money since I've been surprised how few grounds are in the basket. I think I've been wasting beans.
- Aesthetics: Looks great sitting on the counter.
My Negatives
- Price: This is a pretty darn expensive coffee maker. For the net of features, I'm willing to give it a shot.
- Sturdy? This thing doesn't seem like it is built for life, and for the money it costs, I was expecting something that felt more substantial. I guess we'll have to see. To be honest, our Melitta didn't either, and it lasted for at least five years and is only getting replaced because they have discontinued the carafe.
-Size: Big, but less big than it sounds like from the dimensions.
Customer Review: Pleased overall: Recommended for coffee geeks in a hurry
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased my 455 CoffeeTEAM because of an upcoming schedule change; I had been using a separate burr grinder and a press pot to make coffee, but my new schedule won't allow time to do that. Having become used to good coffee, freshly ground, I'm a bit spoiled. I use only light roasts, so I can't say anything about how well this unit works with oily roasts that I don't like anyway.
My search was limited; I was looking for a combination burr grinder / coffee maker with automatic start and good control of water temperature. That narrows the field; almost all the automatic (timer-based) coffee makers use blades rather than a burr grinder, and many heat the water too hot.
The reviews I read were good; Capresso made me much more comfortable with interpreting the reviews and determining if I personally would be happy with the unit by providing the manual at their web site as a PDF file.
I am a geek. I like complex toys. The user manual makes it clear that this is intended as a precision instrument for people who care about coffee. I am pleased that they chose to optimize for high quality coffee rather than trying to make a piece of fool-proof hardware. If you like toys that don't provide you with choices, and you prefer convenience to quality, this might not be the unit for you.
It took me about two weeks of experimentation with different settings to be confident that I was getting the taste I most prefer.
Things I like:
* Coffee quality is good -- in my opinion, not quite as tasty as coffee from a press pot (no surprise), but very good.
* Keeps the grinder away from the steam, so the beans stay dry.
* Does not spew coffee grounds on the counter -- even when I forgot to install the collar that is intended to contain the coffee grounds in the filter, it still didn't make a mess.
* Operates faster than promised in the manual -- the first cup is ready so fast that it hardly matters if I forget to turn on automatic mode before going to bed at night.
* Caraffe is excellent at keeping the coffee hot.
Things I dislike:
* I doubt that any competing product is quieter, but I still wish there were a way that the grinder could be quieter so as not to wake up the baby.
* Sharp edges on the threads of the caraffe mouth, combined with an opening more narrow than my hands, make washing the caraffe uncomfortable. (I have larger hands than average, so this may not apply to you.)
* Half the time saved over the press pot is lost in the more extensive cleaning required. At least I can do it after I have my morning coffee instead of before, so I'm more awake to do it.
* Adjustments are available only by two-cup units.
* Single-knob programming reminds me of the user interface disaster BMW puts in some of their 5- and 6-series cars ("iDrive multifuntion knob", ugh, not for me, thanks). Clearly designed with a preference for looking good sitting on the counter, and the wording in the interface seems to have been selected by a programmer rather than a user interface expert.
Things I wish I had known:
* I wish I had ordered at least one extra goldtone filter; it clearly won't last forever.
* I think the initial washing instructions are insufficient; the first pot of coffee had a bitter, almost rubbery taste that disappeared after the first use.
* Having tried a few times, I have come to the conclusion that it's just not possible for me to make all ten cups in one batch and be satisfied with the taste. Better to make two smaller batches. I doubt that this is unique to this unit; I'm sure this is my learning about drip coffee makers generally, since I had previously been using a press pot.
Overall, if you are a coffee snob (I mean that in the best possible way!) and feel the need to wake up to fresh, high-quality coffee, I recommend this unit. I am pleased with my purchase and would make the same decision again. The things I like about this unit are the important things when it comes to good coffee, and the things I dislike are minor irritations at most.