****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
First let me qualify myself as a coffee drinker. I owned the Coffee Connection for several years in the 90's and one thing I love is a good cup of Joe. I have only had the Capresso 465.05 for 3 mornings now, and for the last 3 mornings i have had the best cup of coffee in years. I find reading the reviews interesting, usually i read the middle reviews (3 stars) first. People that give this machine 1 star because the light is to light, or it steams when making coffee, or some of the grinds sitting in the machine are already a day old, I appreciate. On the other hand, i go back to why I bought the machine, not as a night light, but as a way to make great coffee in the morning or when I want a cup of coffee.The machine was pretty simple to set up, I made a few coffee-less pots just to get the system working and get the oils cleaned out. Then my first morning, I made my coffee with the following settings.8 cups, bold, 8 on the water setting, my first cup of coffee was almost sweet it was so good. In the early 90's, i owned a grind and brew Toshiba which made good coffee, sort of. Late 90's I bought my first Melitta Grind and Brew, unbelievable good coffee. I realized what Melitta had done, they made the water very hot, which is what is needed to make good coffee. It also starts with beans, so you are starting with fresh coffee. My system broke, so I bought a Cuisinart grind and brew, thinking finally someone made a coffee maker that can replace the Melitta. Nope, because I use french roast coffee beans which are very oily, the machine did not work. It constantly jammed, was hard to clean, and not worth the effort so I sold it right away. I found another Melitta online and bought it right away, then one day I saw a Melitta with a thermal craft, so I bought that one. Over the years I kept my machines working when I found a source of parts online. The latch on two of them broke, I was able to buy new lids, but they also broke. Still made good coffee, but as they got old, the blades on the grinder would get very dull. So the coffee is being bashed, not cut. Now on to the Capresso, I researched for several months, trying to find a way to replace my still sort of working Melitta. I knew I needed something that could get water temperatures up to 200 degrees, something that would not heat the beans when grinding them such as a slur burr grinder, and finally something that was easy to clean. That machine of course is the Capresso. Remember the first priority, a machine that makes a great cup of coffee, nothing else really is as important as that. If you can't get a good cup of coffee, you may as well stop and end right then. As it stands right now, I'm getting a fantastic cup of coffee every morning. I couldn't find this machine anywhere with a discount that made sense, buying from Amazon made the most sense.Paying over $200.00 for a coffee maker does make sense. Consider something you are going to do almost every single day of the year, at a cost of $220.00, for the first year your cost added to the product cost is about 60 cents a day. The second year it drops to 30 cents a day. So here is the question, is it worth 60 cents a day for a great pot of coffee? We are really talking about 6 cents a cup, if you only paid $59.00 for your machine, the savings would only be 4 cents a cup, not worth it no matter how you look at it.If in the next year something changes my feelings about the Capresso 465 coffee maker, I will update you.This is an update to my review.I've had this machine a couple of months now, I think I would still give it 5 stars for the coffee, which is the main purpose of buying the machine. But I would only give it 4 stars for functionality. Something drives me crazy that has been mentioned in other reviews. Mainly, no sight glass so you can see how much water you have added to the machine. I have to use a flashlight to see the water level when I am setting it up to make coffee. The other main problem is if you want to switch beans from regular beans to decaf, you have to be careful because you can't get the regular beans out, and you have ground coffee sitting on the belt waiting to be fed in. It's not like I make decaf a lot, but the regular coffee tastes so good, I wanted to have coffee at night, not an easy thing to do with this machine.But the machine does make the best coffee I have ever tasted, worth the two problems I have listed to have great coffee every day every pot, every time.Larry
