My favorite coffee machines

I drink a lot of coffee. Part of that is because I live in the greater Puget Sound metropolitan area. The rest is because I'm a software developer.

Over the years I've used a lot of coffee machines. Here's how they all stack up.

We have these machines in our office and they're pretty decent. They take about 45 seconds to make a cup of coffee and more or less chug along all day long until the magic coffee fairies refill the bean hoppers at night. It's all freshly ground and brewed, which doesn't matter in the mornings but is a distinguishing factor at 3pm when a traditional pot would be hours old.

-1 point for only having two coffee selections, but +1 point for labeling the coffee selections "Left" and "Right" as if it were some sort of political statement. Leftist coffee for me, thanks. The Right is decaf.

Rating: 4 stars

I ran into one of these things earlier this week in Irvine. It's another minute-long on-demand brewer, but it comes with these silly coffee-filled pouches you stuff in the machine, which are subsequently doused in water producing a steaming cup o' something.

The selection is comparably infinite¹ against the Starbucks machine and plus, it sounds like krakatoa when it's making coffee. The only downside is that the accessorization and pouches are a little spendy.

Rating: 4 stars

¹ by infinite, I mean "twelve flavors."

I'm not a huge fan of these standard-issue coffee machines, but it's not because of the quality of the coffee it makes. In fact, the liquid that comes out of machine like this is often indistinguishable from the liquid that comes out of one of the fancier machines above.

The reason I don't like it is because, well, someone has to make the coffee—and that someone could very well be me.

Spending the minute or two pouring out the grounds, rinsing the tray, and refilling it isn't too bad on its own, but the machine usually isn't quick enough to produce coffee very quickly, so there's a whole mess of waiting that takes place after the process has been started.

And in fact, the dread of coming across an empty (or nearly-empty) coffee machine is sometimes enough for me to stay away entirely. Not cool.

Rating: 2 stars

Engrish. Yen. Cans of coffee hot enough to use as hand warmers. Tommy Lee Jones on Boss coffee. Machines that politely thank you for your purchase. Tiny paper cups smaller than your hand. There is nothing that is not awesome about Japanese coffee machines.

Rating: 5 stars