Why “clever”? 

Why would a coffee dripper be called a clever one? 

Does it have artificial intelligence?

Pros and Cons

All the right questions. The Clever Coffee Dripper doesn’t look much different from any standard, plastic, Melitta filter cone drippers. The appearance isn’t original nor super-innovative.

The cleverness comes from the addition of a special valve at the bottom that blocks the water flow. When the dripper is over a cup to brew, the valve opens and the coffee flows out.

This makes extraction much smoother. Another pros of this solution means that you can much more easily control the brew time. If you need a stronger coffee, for instance, you can easily steep it for a half or a full minute more. With a normal dripper, without a valve, you can’t.

You’d need to add more ground coffee over the already extracted coffee grounds, over-extracting it and making your cup bitter. Or pour less water, producing less coffee in the end. The Clever Coffee Dripper allows you to simply prolong the extraction time without any intervention.

Second, with the Clever Coffee Dripper you may do without a fancy gooseneck kettle. Water doesn’t need to be poured over in a specific manner, with complicated rotations and extreme attention. You can pour in all water at once. Any kettle you may have will be sufficient for the task.

Filters don’t need to have a specific shape and consistency. Of course, different filters will make a difference but it’s not vital to use one over another. The immersion time will even out the variables.

Cheaper and simple paper filters at your nearest supermarket will do just fine in the Clever Coffee Dripper.

The post What Makes The Clever Coffee Dripper So Clever? Full Review appeared first on Guilded Coffee.

The world of coffee isn’t exactly friendly with the concept of flexibility.

The Hamilton Beach FlexBrew is an exception. It is flexible as it doesn’t force you to use a specific method for brewing but offers you two.

In the same machine: filtered drip coffee and single-serve pods.

This opens up a whole new world of choice for you. Single-serve K-cups are the pods used by the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew and are perfect to brew just for you, or a couple. When you are in need of a larger quantity of coffee or you have friends at home, switching to brew with the filter will allow you to brew up to 12 cups of coffee.

Flexibility, indeed! 

Both brewing methods have a designated water reservoir so the two are completely separated and work independently from each other.

Features

What you’re buying when purchasing the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew is essentially a double machine packaged into one. With the flexibility to use either at any time, filter, or pods. This not only makes you more flexible in the cup size you can brew but especially in the choice of coffee.

There are hundreds of K-cups available, official, and compatible ones. Plus the possibility to use ground coffee, as found in any supermarket, makes the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew a machine that can use nearly all the types of coffee present on the market.

How to Brew Using Pods

But how does the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew exactly work? Let’s start our review from the pods brewing.

The brewer doesn’t force you to brew a specific cup size with one of the two systems. You can use either. With that in mind, K-cups are meant for a single cup of coffee, not large mugs. Therefore, the pods system will be most useful to you for a single cup, for a single person.

You’d switch to the filter drip coffee part of the machine for larger amounts. Brewing with K-cup pod is as easy as it gets: press the single-serve button, lift the lid, place a pod inside, and close it.

In 1-2 minutes your coffee will be ready. 

That’s the main advantage of pods-based systems, convenience. It doesn’t take long nor does it require any skill to make a pleasant cup of coffee.

How to Brew Using Coffee Pot

Slightly harder, but not difficult, is brewing with the filter system. Place a paper filter in the netting, put your favorite ground coffee in, possibly just ground for the maximum aroma and taste.

Fill the reservoir with the desired amount of coffee. Press the brew strength button to have a stronger cup of coffee. Otherwise, just press the brew now button and wait for the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew to do its job.

With the filter system, a 24-hour timer can be used to have freshly brewed coffee whenever you want. To avoid wasting too much paper, reusable filters are supported by the FlexBrew too.

Be also aware that the carafe that comes with the machine isn’t a thermal one but uses a heating plate underneath it to keep your coffee warm. That can overcook it if you leave the carafe on it for prolonged periods of time.

To avoid it, pour the coffee in your mug and accept it won’t be kept warm for hours.

Unfortunately, there’s no possibility to keep the coffee warm when using the single-serve pods system. That shouldn’t be a big issue though, as that brewing system is meant for smaller cup sizes, that won’t take long for you to drink.

Design and Build Quality

A proper review of the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew wouldn’t be complete without citing the actual build quality and design of the machine. A positive aspect is that the machine is quite compact. This is especially surprising considering the double brewing system and water reservoir.

It’s about 13 inches tall and 11 wide. It will fit almost anywhere a normal small kitchen equipment would. Most of the components of the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew can be quickly removed.

The carafe, drip tray, K-cups brewing pieces, and water reservoirs are all removable. These pieces can be taken aside and thoroughly cleaned when necessary. All parts are also dishwasher safe.

Most of the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew is made of hard plastic. Considering the price at which it’s sold, that shouldn’t surprise anybody.

Pros and Cons

You may be wondering why would you choose a Hamilton Beach FlexBrew or the single-serve system vs the filter one? We spoke already about the advantages of the machine, let’s see its disadvantages.

Having separate water reservoirs for the two brewing systems means that they can work independently from each other. If one breaks, the other will keep working. But it’s also a pitfall, as you now need to descale two systems instead of just one.

An increase in maintenance time is thus required. After all the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew is two machines in one, it only makes sense that it’d need more maintenance. It is easy to fill both reservoirs.

But it is also easy to use only one system to brew for a long time and forget that molding or even calcification have built up in the less used reservoir.

An unexpected shortcoming of the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew can be that the pod side can brew only enough for one cup at a time. Most other Keurig machines have larger reservoirs and can brew as much water as you put in them.

Not so with the Hamilton Beach FlexBrew, in which if you need a flexible, and greater, amount of coffee you need to switch to use the filter coffee system.

Not a big deal for most, but something to be aware of.

As with the increased maintenance time, having two machines in one means also that potentially two machines can break. While you are able to use one machine while the other is not working, double the brewing systems also means double the risks of something breaking down.

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