![]() The trip kept rolling, now up into Washington state's San Juan Islands. I was already tweaking my way to a perfect cup. But the result was still good, especially for a first run-through with a new machine. It wasn't too much of a mess, and the coffee was stronger than I like it. So no gold this time, but maybe a bronze. Or, you know, if Brim had tested it out a bit more. At the beginning, I watched the grounds swell-a good sign of freshness-but in the metal filter, they rose right up into the showerhead, something that wouldn't happen with a paper filter, as that sits lower in the filter basket. Pre-infusion, aka blooming or wetting, means you use a small amount of hot water to soak the grounds, then stop for a bit and let them puff up as they let off bitter-flavored carbon dioxide. The brewer does a quick “pre-infusion” of water to let the grounds soak a bit, then launches into the full cycle. ![]() I immediately went for gold, filling the metal filter with the recommended seven level scoops of coffee and turning it on. ![]() It’s not rocket science, but the way the filters sit in the carafe is just peculiar enough that anyone using the Brim for the first time is going to want to see the instructions to make sure they've got it right. In a Portland, Oregon, Airbnb, I eschewed the Keurig on the counter and started out with a bag of preground Torrefazione Italia that I picked up at a Korean deli. I called a Brim in to review, tossed the box in the back of my car, and took it for a road trip. The Brim also achieved the Specialty Coffee Association's esteemed Gold Cup Standard, an honor currently bestowed on only 23 other coffee makers by the SCA. The machine also heats water to a desirably high temperature thanks to a powerful 1,400-watt heater, and runs a relatively quick brewing cycle, key attributes that most coffee maker manufacturers sometimes forget. ![]() The carafe has a silicone sleeve that looks like a corset around its midsection, and there's a wedge-shaped filter basket into which you can set either a paper filter or a cone-shaped reusable metal filter. That showerhead is part of a handsome setup that includes a one-button machine with a pour-over-style carafe that you park on a heating element. Coffee's is barely an inch wide, the Brim’s is an impressive 2 1/4 inches across, which bodes well for a nice, even soak. Part of what makes it so interesting is its extra-wide showerhead. But it's simpler to think of the Brim as a well-made automatic coffee machine. The name of the machine, the Brim 8-Cup Pour-Over Coffee Maker, is as much of a mouthful as the JXW36T. Montreal-based small appliance manufacturer Sensio has taken the brand name and pivoted, turning Brim into a coffee gear brand. It's quite a bit of fawning for a single serving in a busy shop, but it makes for a fantastic cup. This guarantees that the water is the proper temperature, and that all the grounds get equally wet. In part, this is what makes real pour-over coffee popular: over the course of several uninterrupted minutes, baristas slowly pour hot water over the grounds by hand. Most of these machines are under-endowed, with showerheads (as the water spouts are called in coffee-dom) barely wider than your thumb that struggle to get the grounds beneath them evenly wet, and heating elements that can't get the water hot enough. The “Equal Time In The Hot Tub” memo appears largely unread by many automatic coffeemaker manufacturers. Ideally, all grounds should get equal time in brewing's hot bath-not too quick or too long, too hot or too cool, all of which can lead to different versions of nasty. It means that some grounds get most of the hot water and brewing time, while others clearly see less attention. Coffee, the 900-watt JWX36T, and left to its own devices it splatters water in a straight line across the circle of grounds in the filter basket, pretty much missing anything that’s not directly in its path. Recently, in the pursuit of a better cup of Joe, I've developed what my officemates have called an odd ritual with the coffee machine.
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