Coffee maker
Batch brewer
A filter brewer built to make several litres at once and hold them properly — the machine behind most café filter coffee and most decent office coffee.
How it works
Mechanically it is a drip brewer scaled up and built to a specification: water is heated to a controlled temperature, distributed evenly across a large bed of coffee by a shower head rather than a single spout, and drains into an insulated server rather than sitting on a hotplate. Those three differences — temperature control, even distribution and insulated holding — are the whole reason a batch brewer produces filter coffee that a domestic drip machine usually cannot.
Who it suits
- offices, events and households regularly making coffee for several people
- cafés serving filter alongside espresso
- anyone who wants good filter coffee without brewing it by hand every time
Who it may not suit
- one or two cups, where the bed is too shallow to extract evenly
- anyone wanting to vary the recipe cup by cup
- Starting dose
- 120g
- Starting water
- 2000ml
- Coffee-to-water ratio
- 55–70 g per litre (typically 60)
- Grind
- Medium, and usually a little coarser than for a single-cup pour-over: a deeper bed drains more slowly, so the same grind extracts further.
- Capacity
- 4-20 cups
- Brew time
- 4-8 min
- Skill level
- beginner
- Noise
- quiet
- Space
- large
- Cleaning burden
- medium
- Convenience
- high
- Manual control
- low
Descriptive grind labels like this are illustrative starting points, not precise measurements — the same label can mean different particle sizes on different grinders. See the grind size guide for how to dial this in on your own equipment.
Uses the V60 (pour-over) brewing method.
Equipment
Requires a separate grinder.
Advantages
- controlled brew temperature, which most domestic drip machines lack
- even water distribution across a large bed
- insulated holding rather than a hotplate, so the coffee stops changing once brewed
- very low effort per cup at volume
Disadvantages
- poor at small volumes
- one recipe per batch
- larger and more expensive than a domestic drip machine
Cleaning & maintenance
Rinse the basket and server after every batch, and clean the shower head and server periodically with a coffee-equipment detergent — a server that has held coffee all day and been rinsed with water alone will taint the next batch.
Descale on a schedule set by water hardness and the manufacturer's instructions. Plumbed machines usually require inline filtration as a warranty condition.
Check the spray head for blocked holes, which produce uneven wetting across the bed.
Consumables: paper filters, descaling solution, water filter cartridge
Common faults
- weak or sour coffee
- uneven bed after brewing
- stewed coffee from long holding
Cost
Purchase cost band: premiumCertified commercial brewers sit well above domestic drip machines; the price buys temperature control and distribution rather than capacity alone.
Paper filters and, on plumbed machines, water filter cartridges. The coffee itself dominates.
Suitable roast levels
What these machines can actually do
This is a category, not a product, and machines within it genuinely differ. Where a capability varies, the answer is not on this page — it is on your machine, and each entry says how to find it.
Check these on your own machine
Adjustable brew temperature
A settable brew temperature in the manual or on the display. A machine with a fixed thermostat has none.
Controlled temperature is the point of the category; whether you can change the set point is a model difference.
Pre-infusion
Watch the first seconds of a shot: a machine with pre-infusion wets the puck without the pressure gauge climbing immediately.
Often called a pre-wet or bloom setting.
Plumbed water inlet
A braided hose connection at the back, and no removable tank.
Removable water tank
A removable reservoir, usually at the back or side.
Integrated grinder
A bean hopper on the machine itself, rather than a separate grinder beside it.
Workflow and fittings
- Integrated grinderUncommon
Fewer things on the counter and less to do. It also couples the two purchases: an integrated grinder cannot be upgraded separately, and its adjustment range is whatever the manufacturer allowed.
- Takes a standard single-wall basketNever
This is the upgrade path. A machine that accepts a single-wall basket can make real espresso once there is a grinder to match; one that cannot is capped wherever it is.
Water and pressure release
- Plumbed water inletVaries — check yours
No refilling, and water treatment moves from a jug to an inline cartridge sized against your water hardness. Most manufacturers make some form of treatment a condition of warranty on plumbed machines.
- Removable water tankVaries — check yours
You choose the water, which is the cheapest way to control scale and taste. It also needs emptying and cleaning: a tank left standing grows things, and a machine left full over a holiday is worse than one left empty.
Heat and temperature
- Adjustable brew temperatureVaries — check yours
Lighter roasts are often brewed hotter and darker roasts cooler. It is a real lever and a fine one — worth reaching for after grind and ratio, not before.
Brewing and pressure
- Volumetric dosingAlways
Repeatable without attention, which matters in a café. At home it measures volume rather than the mass in the cup, so it drifts as the coffee ages and the puck resists differently.
The batch volume is set on the machine rather than judged by eye.
What it does not mean: A programmed volume is not the same as a weighed yield. If you are dialling in by ratio, weigh the cup.
- Pre-infusionVaries — check yours
It lets the puck settle and swell before being pushed hard, which reduces channelling on a bed that was not perfectly prepared. Implementations differ enormously — some are a timed low-pressure phase, some are simply a line-pressure fill.
Skills for this machine
The individual techniques this device asks of you, each with its own adjustments and failure modes.
- Adjusting grind sizeMove the grind in the right direction by a useful amount, and know what to expect from the change.
- Single dosing a grinderGrind exactly the beans you weighed for this brew, with as little left inside the grinder as possible.
- Dialling in filter coffeeFind the grind and ratio that suit a particular coffee in a particular brewer, using brew time as the diagnostic.
- Blooming coffeeWet the whole coffee bed and let it release its carbon dioxide before the main pour begins.
- Pulse pouringControl agitation and contact time by pouring in several stages rather than one continuous stream.
- Rinsing a paper filterRemove papery taste, seat the filter against the brewer, and preheat the equipment in one action.
- Preheating a brewerStop cold equipment taking heat out of the brew before it has finished extracting.
- Comparing two coffees side by sideTrain perception using difference, which is far easier to notice than any absolute quality.
- Resting roasted coffeeLet a fresh roast settle to the point where it brews predictably, without waiting until it has gone flat.
- Measuring extraction yieldTurn a TDS reading into an extraction percentage, and know what that number can and cannot tell you.
Not sure if this is right for you? Try the coffee-maker selector.