OXO’s BREW Pour-over Coffee Maker: Not a perfect pour-over coffee brewer, but pretty good for hands-off brewing and everyday use.
We purchased the OXO Brew Single Serve Drip Brewer several weeks back. Rather than rush to review it, we chose to use it exclusively for pour-over drip brewing instead of the other drip brewers we have before writing this review. It was not provided for review by OXO.
The OXO BREW Single Serve Drip Brewer offers a couple advantages over the traditional pour-over brewing technique. You can simply fill the tank with the amount of water you want, or you can use a digital scale (strongly recommended). If you don’t have a scale, just use the marked measurements, in OZ or ML, on the side the of the tank. The box includes an instruction card with a chart for different brew strengths.
How the OXO Brew Single Serve Drip Brewer works
Fill the auto-drip water tank with hot water, using the measurement markings on the side of the tank, to the desired amount. Inside the tank there are several tiny holes that slowly drip the water into the grounds, which steeps as it passes through the coffee. Pretty basic.
The Taste
We didn’t find a huge difference with the coffee extraction from the OXO Brew Single Serve Drip Brewer versus traditional pour-over brewing. Although we did notice that you can’t really get a good bloom. We discovered that by pouring some water directly into the grounds we could get a bloom, replacing the auto-drip tank and completing the pour to the desired quality. This seemed to solve that problem. The Brewer can’t mimic the gradual pouring method used for pour-over, but it controls the drip to keep the grounds soaked, and works nearly as well.
Our Recommendation
The OXO BREW is a must-have for any coffee aficionado, maybe not as a primary brewer*, but if you’re short on time, or simply can’t be bothered to manually brew pour-over coffee everyday, you could benefit from the OXO BREW. The OXO Brew Single Serve Drip Brewer is a great alternative to an expensive Automatic Pour-over Coffee Machine, or any type of coffee machine for that matter. You’ll still get a great tasting cup of pour-over coffee.
*If there are times that you want do go full manual pour-over coffee, you can skip the tank and manually brew your pour-over coffee using the dripper only, works just as well as any drip brewer.
BONUS: The lid doubles as a drip tray for the dripper.
