Video Overview | Curtis Gold Cup Brewer

Transcript

The Curtis Gold Cup Brewer is an automatic single-cup coffee maker that grants unique control to the brewing process through a touch screen interface. With programmable pulse cycles and adjustable temperature settings, this machine offers automatic convenience and precision while still allowing individual creativity and intuition.

Hey, I'm Chris from Prima Coffee equipment. Today, I'm checking out the Curtis Gold Cup Brewer. The Curtis is an automatic pour over machine that replaces a barista like kettle with an automatic water dispersion pit.

It's really easy to use. It has a simple digital touch screen interface, and it still makes a very nice cup of coffee. As you can see, it has a cone shaped filter basket. It's really similar to a Bee House or an Elita, and the cup is actually really similar too.

It's balanced. It's palatable. It's very evenly extracted, but it's not as nuanced as a manual brew. Overall, the fit and finish on this machine are very nice. It's made in America. The steel is all from Pennsylvania. It's actually made in California and it's very well assembled.

The inside is very neatly organized. If you're looking inside of this, unlike an espresso machine that I've usually looked at, it's not a nest of cables and wires and all this crazy stuff. It's really organized, neatly arranged, and easy to find what you're looking for.

Now let's look at the performance of this machine. The first thing that you would probably see as different might be the filter cones. These filter cones have undergone 27 or 28 revisions. I think this is the 28th unit after 27 prototypes. It's very unique. First of all, we have the siphon on the bottom. This is a really unique valve that only releases liquid once the liquid has reached a certain volume, and prevents drips at unexpected parts. When you're first starting, no drips, which actually allows for a true brew infusion. Very cool.

When you're done at the very end, no drips, which means you don't need the drip tray to be very large indeed, like this guy is. You're just not going to make much of a mess with this machine.

The other very unique thing about this filter cone are these ridges on the inside. They are very particularly calculated or planned. There are certain sizes, a certain amount of space between each one of them. As I mentioned, Curtis has made this filter basket many, many times. This is the exact arrangement of ridges that they have determined had the most even extraction in the cup. They are very happy with it. I'm happy with it, too. It's a great tasting cup of coffee.

Now on the inside of the machine, we also have some pretty impressive components. We have a really large water reservoir. It's 1.7 plus gallons. It's 6.5 liters, bigger than a lot of single brew espresso machines, even commercial machines. We have a 1,500- or almost 3,000-watt heating element, depending on whether you're on 120 or 220. It powers this machine very well.

The temperature stability is impressive. You can determine the boiler temperature once you get into the menu settings. The max is 206 and it really keeps it right there. The machine does allow for up to five degrees of fluctuation. If I set it at 206, the brew temperature could be as low as 201, but it really stays where it's supposed to be. We noticed we were reading the temperature right at the the brew head that it was staying exactly where we expected. We had it at 206, it came out right around 201 or higher every time. The machine performs exactly as they promised it does. It makes a really nice cup of coffee.

Let's talk about maintenance a little bit. An extremely easy machine to clean and maintain. Actually, it has a self-diagnostics program inside that will show you exactly which valve or which part is acting up, if you noticed that something's wrong. It also, has some non-metallic components like the spray head is non-metallic, it's actually made of a special plastic. The level probe is non-metallic, and the temperature probe and the temperature sensor that reads the boiler temp actually doesn't even touch water at all. Interesting how that works. But you can read about it on their blog.

Overall, there are some very careful steps taken to make this machine easy to maintain. It's very simple. It's not going to give you much of a mess at all. We've had this unit for months and months, absolutely zero problem. We really like it for that. It has, as I said, a digital touch screen interface.

The unique function of this machine, how it brews, can be seen if you go into the menu here. Obviously, you passcode protect it, brew settings. Now here we have these different size options. Obviously, there's a right and a left, small, medium and large. They go in small on the right side, pulses. This is where you see exactly what is happening during the brewing cycle. Pulse one, we're on for three seconds, off for thirty, getting out about 1.3 ounces there. Pulse two, on for eight, off for ten. The basic idea is that you tell the machine how long you want it to spit out water, and how long you want it to wait until the next pulse. It reads in seconds and in ounces, and it helps you plan your cycle out. It actually releases about 0.4, a little higher than 0.4 ounces of water per second from the valve, through the brew head. So very easy machine to work with.

You can actually save these recipes, save these presets, and pass them on to friends. I've gotten a couple recipes e-mailed from various coffee shops around the country. It's great for quality control. If you're a roaster, and you have a couple of restaurants or cafe accounts, you can actually pass your exact recipe on to them to make sure that your coffee is being highlighted well. Of course, they're also welcome to change it.

It's a very versatile machine with all of these settings that I've shown you. One way that's actually really fun to change the machine a bit is to use a different filter cone. We like this filter cone, and really trust that Curtis has designed a quality cone here, but we've experimented with using Kalita's underneath, or a Bee House, a Chemex with a Kone, if you want.

There are a lot of different things you could do with this machine. It makes a great cup of coffee. It's easy to work with, and it's great for shops who need an extra measure of quality control, or just don't have the time to linger over a Chemex for a couple minutes at of time. The Curtis Gold Cup Brewer, it's a great automatic alternative to pour over coffee in your shop or restaurant.