Review: Oxo 12-Cup Coffee Maker With Podless Single-Serve Function

A few years back, I wished out loud for my two favorite coffee makers to be combined into the same machine. Strangely, that wish was granted, super-sized even, and I'd like full credit.

The two previous models are Oxo's 8-Cup and 9-Cup Coffee Makers. The 8-Cup comes with a special insert that allows you to brew just one delicious mug of coffee at a time–sayonara K-cup!–and the 9-Cup has a clock with a timer so you can roll out of bed with coffee waiting for you. Morning bliss!

Last March, at my favorite trade show, there it was, a prototype of the two machines rolled into one, and a notably larger one at that.

The new Oxo 12-Cup Coffee Maker With Podless Single-Serve Function features different heat and timing settings for three brew sizes. These different sizes necessitate two different basket inserts: one for small brews (2 to 4 cups) and a larger one for medium brews (5 to 8 cups) and large brews (9 to 12 cups). It looks like the 8-Cup brewer on steroids, using commercial-sized filters for the medium and large batches, and a peculiarly small #2 filter in the insert for the 2- to 4-cup option. The different batch sizes let the machine give each range its due, moving water relatively slowly through the medium batch and more quickly through the large one, allowing their end products to be more alike. (Since the larger two batch sizes use the same filter, the bed of grounds is shorter in the smaller batches, so slowing the flow gives the grounds a longer bath.) Using the small insert, you can brew 2 or 4 cups right into your mug or travel mug.

“Two cups” is the minimum brew size with this machine, which is modern coffee-maker lingo for about a mugful. One cup is typically around 5 ounces in the coffee world, so the minimum brew size of this machine yields around 10 ounces. That essentially single-cup offering is my favorite development in coffee in the past few years, pleasantly and instantly obviating K-Cups in my mind.

There’s a catch to this design. While the 12-Cup model is only about an inch larger than the 8-Cup on each axis, it's looks notably larger—and much less handsome. This machine feels borderline hulking in a home kitchen.

Still, it has features interesting enough to make me forget about its looks for a while. Most notably, the clear tank in the back of the machine, which is just a tank on most brewers, is essentially a built-in kettle, preheating the water before a second heater brings it to a precise brewing temperature.

Using this machine, no matter the amount, is easy and intuitive. Turn a knob to dial up one of the three batch-size options, hit the Brew button, and you're off to the races. The water preheats, then the brewing cycle starts. Like on the 8- and 9-Cup models, the 12-Cup's carafe pours beautifully and holds temperature well. I ran a water-only batch one day and opened the carafe about 20 hours later to a breath of steam with 140-degree Fahrenheit liquid below. One pleasing bit of attention to detail that took me a while to notice is that the machine comes with a small stand to use when brewing directly into a mug; the stand is hard plastic, but the underside has a rubber sleeve that makes it sound and feel solid when you set it down on a hard surface.

The coffee I brewed came out well from the get-go, and by adjusting weights and grind sizes, I could finesse my way to better and better coffee.

I did run up against two peculiarities affecting cleanup. When making a small batch of 2 to 4 cups, the Oxo beeps to indicate the cycle is done—then continues to dribble out about a tablespoon more of coffee after you've walked away with your mug. Separately, I found the carafe a bit annoying to clean because I couldn't fit my hand in there like I could with the smaller 8-Cup carafe.

To ramp things up in a hurry, I went to see WIRED friends and star baristas Sam Schroeder and Reyna Callejo at the Seattle lab of Olympia Coffee Roasting Company, and they really liked the preheating tank.

“If you're heating as you're brewing, it slows down the brewing,” said Sam, Olympia's co-owner. “This heats water, then brews, like a commercial brewer, which helps move a larger amount of water through faster. This is where most brewers fail.”

“This is fancy tech,” said Reyna, Olympia's director of training and innovation. “I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this.”

For testing, we used Olympia’s Kebeneti Peaberry Micro Lot 9 from Kenya, the drip being served from the Fetco commercial brewer in the café that day. This allowed us to compare what we were making to the café’s completely dialed-in brew.

We pulled out our thermometers, scales, and timers and got to work. Filling the Oxo to the 8-cup line, Reyna ground coffee to the equivalent of a 15 to 17 grind setting on a Baratza Encore, a bit finer than the midpoint. The preheat took less than three minutes, and the brew itself about six, which they liked, comparing it with a brew time for a Chemex. The temperature of the coffee in the carafe was 176 degrees, which Sam referred to as “nice, hot coffee.” Sipping, we found it a bit overextracted, with the tannic, smoky, and bitter notes pushed a bit too far to the fore, something easy to notice when compared to the rounder and juicier coffee from Olympia’s commercial brewer. Reyna made a new batch with a bit more coffee and a larger grind size, which got us most of the way there. Or, as she put it, “no more cardboard aftertaste!” It made clear that we were on the right path, causing Sam to declare that we could tweak our way there.

A full carafe's worth of coffee gave similar satisfaction, and we watched, impressed, as water flowed more quickly through the grounds than on the medium-size batch, keeping the overall brew times similar. The bed of grounds was also uniformly damp, with no dry patches, thanks in part to the machine's nice wide showerhead.

“It brewed in seven minutes,” noted Sam, clearly impressed with this machine, especially compared to less exacting home brewers with notably longer brew times. “It's taking what we know about commercial brewers and applying it to home brewers.”

The total dissolved solids (TDS), often referred to as “the amount of coffee” in your coffee, was a little high, but as Reyna noted, we could fix it by adjusting the amount and fineness of the grounds.

Finally, we switched the large brew basket out for the smaller one and brewed a smaller 4-cup batch. Reyna stuck to the 1-to-17 ratio of coffee to water she'd been using all day, with a medium grind. A four-minute brew cycle made for a cup with a TDS of 1.35, right in Olympia's sweet spot for this coffee, and caused Sam to declare, “This is really quite delicious,” which Reyna and I realized was the highest praise he had ever given a cup in all of the testing we've done together. We had similar success with the 2-cup size.

One thing that became clear is that you'll be rewarded for tinkering with both the amount of coffee and the grind size, beyond the suggestions in the manual, and if that's not your jam, you might want to lower your standards and look for something a little simpler.

We did find some flaws, mostly relating to the smaller brew basket, but nothing fatal. That post-brew dribble I'd encountered with the small insert continued to be annoying and messy, particularly as this is a fault you can literally switch off with the 8-Cup machine. We also agreed that the #2 filter it uses for the smaller batches is really too small to make 4 cups of coffee without a mess. In my kitchen, I regularly ended up with grounds on the showerhead and along the sides of the basket, something that would be avoided with a slightly larger insert using a bigger #4 filter. Finally, while the small insert nestles neatly inside the larger basket in the 8-Cup model, it doesn't on the 12-Cup, meaning you need to find a home for one basket while using the other, and you can't store the two together.

Sam also wasn't a big fan of the Oxo’s looks. “So much thought and intention, then this,” he lamented. “There are certainly uglier brewers, but there's so much stainless. Could we back that up a bit?”

I had hoped that combining some of the best parts of my two favorite models might mean I'd write my first-ever perfect-score review, but it wasn't to be. Alas! Still, the quality of the machine and the coffee it makes for all three batch sizes easily outweighs those downsides.

This being a 12-cup coffee maker, large but not ridiculously so, we conferred about who this is for, and it ranged from intergenerational families to, as Sam put it, “offices with people who care,” to semi-commercial uses, to people who just drink a lot of coffee. I really appreciated how you can start off the day with a pot, then dial back to a cup or two in the afternoon with no loss of quality, a rare bird in coffee-dom.

If you're one of those people who don't mind dialing your way to a good cup or 12, this could be the brewer for you.