If you drink coffee every day but are tired of having to fill up the water tank, don’t worry. Some products exist to alleviate this pain. There are coffee makers that have a water intake line that you can attach a water line to and won’t have to fill up the water any longer manually. This is especially useful for those of you that use the timed function of coffee makers where it starts making coffee at a certain time each day.
There aren’t a ton of coffee makers with a water line on the consumer market, but some coffee makers have a water tank and an optional water intake capability as well that takes a little work to get set up.
We’ll explore some of the features that distinguish the best coffee maker with water line from the average coffee makers and give some product reviews, so you have an idea of what type of coffee maker to look for.
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Brewing Method
Although you’re buying an automatic coffee maker, you also need to consider what brewing method to make use of. Some coffee makers are percolators, where the water is boiled into steam, and the steam condenses on a collector above the grounds and drips down as more and more water is condensed.
Drip Coffee Makers make coffee by heating the water and piping it over to the grounds and dripping it onto the grounds directly.
Percolators end up with a much stronger flavor as the extraction process is more efficient and ends up actually extracting too much of the flavor and can leave the coffee tasting more bitter than it would otherwise.
The heating of the coffee grounds is also an issue as you don’t really want to heat up your coffee grinds after they’ve been roasted, it leaves the flavor tasting burnt and bitter.
Drip Coffee Makers tend to have a more gentle extraction and don’t heat up the grounds as much as it only passes water over the grounds one time and doesn’t have a pressurized container.
The Waterline
If you’ve ever been to Starbucks, you’ll have noticed that the baristas aren’t having to go back and forth with water pitchers filling up their espresso or coffee machines.
That’s because their commercial coffee makers have an attached water line, but there are also some consumer grade models on the market with the same feature, so now you too can enjoy the convenience of not having to fill the water tank.
You can either hook up the water line directly to the water line of your house via a water line extension, which will take a bit of plumbing knowhow or you can attach a water line to a tank of water that sits somewhere nearby.
Unfortunately, both of those have some upfront cons: a water line extension takes some plumbing knowledge and has the chance to go wrong and make a mess of things, and a tank of water gets you back into the same problem you were looking to avoid and also needs the extra space for the water tank.
Amenities
Make sure also to compare the amenities that each coffee makers offer as there are some specialized coffee makers that offer different benefits or cons. For example, there are coffee makers that are single-use per cup and require buying pre-packaged coffee ground cups in order to make coffee.
If you’re a bachelor or bachelorette this could be extra convenient as you only need one cup of coffee anyways and having an attached water line means you don’t need to do anything, except make sure there’s a cup in the machine at the time of brewing, whether set on a timer or manually set.
If you’re brewing coffee for a whole family, however, this would be a terrible choice as that means you have to come back and change the cup for each person.
There are also some coffee makers that are designed for being able to be built into the wall, so you aren’t sacrificing any counter space for them. Having an attached water line lends itself very well to being built into the wall as there’s nothing you need to pour into the top of the machine.
We’ll take an in-depth look at each of the features of the most popular coffee makers, so you know which is the best coffee maker with the water line. Be sure to take a look at our reviews below so you can decide on which coffee maker with water line is best for you.
