Select a Strength: Black & Decker CM1650B Coffee Maker

A skilled driver who enjoys the ability to fine-tune a car’s performance will prefer driving a standard car over an automatic–and by the same token, a proficient coffee-drinker will enjoy a coffee maker which allows for the fine-tuning of its brewing. If anyone teases you for being a “control freak,” chances are that the Black & Decker CM1650B coffee maker will appeal to your sensibilities. I can speak for myself, at any rate, as a self-professed control-freak, in saying that the ability to adjust and customize every element of my coffee brewing has made me a very happy camper.

Black & Decker CM1650B coffee maker product features:

  • 12-cup capacity
  • Special setting for 2-4 cup brewing
  • Quicktouch button programming for automatic brewing
  • Brew strength selector
  • Pause and pour feature allows carafe to be removed during brewing
  • Automatic shut-off with adjustable time
  • Permanent filter
  • Perfect Pour carafe eliminates dripping
  • Self cleaning
  • Purifying water filter
  • 2-year limited warranty

 

Features of coffee makers which used to strike me as novelties and luxuries, such as pre-programming the brewing-time or automatic shut-off on hot plates, have become commonplace; and as they lost their novelty, I began to find some of their characteristics annoying. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I began to remember what I had enjoyed about my previous decades of brewing, before the advent of the automatic-everything, when I fine-tuned everything about my cup of coffee.

Although I’m glad not to have to remember to turn off the heating element, the standard two-hour shut-off is much too soon for me; I tend to savor a succession of coffee cups throughout the morning, so instead of remembering to turn the heater off, I’d have to remember to turn it on. I enjoy a strong cup of coffee, and to accomplish that with my previous automatic machines, I had to overload the filter basket with grounds so the water often backed up and made a mess of grounds in my coffee pot—and often on my counter.

Someone at Black & Decker must have had the same idea, because in the Black & Decker CM1650B coffee maker they’ve designed the perfect cross between the luxuries of an automatic coffee maker and the fine controls of old-fashioned brewing. Hands-down, my favorite feature of the machine is the ability to select the strength of the coffee brew.

Although I could accomplish a strong cup with added coffee in the filter, the aforementioned mess was all too often the result, and my enjoyment of a strong cup doesn’t include satisfaction with grounds-polluted coffee that would need to be chewed. Enter the Black & Decker CM1650B coffee maker with its option of selecting a strength, not by overloading the filter basket, but by selecting a setting on the machine’s flashy round dial.

A close second among my favorite features is the ability to select the length of time before the automatic shut-off kicks in. Instead of turning my pot back on after two hours, I can now set it to stay on for four. And for those mornings when I won’t be home long enough to enjoy a full pot’s worth of successive coffee cups, the machine includes a specialty setting for successfully brewing a smaller amount. Alongside the fine-control elements which return me to the days of manual brewing, the Black & Decker CM1650B coffee maker includes delightful features which a manual brewer could never experience, such as the self-cleaning feature (hallelujah), the purifying water filter, and the Quicktouch buttons for automatic programming of brewing time. The futuristic circle of silver buttons took some getting acquainted—but the fine controls they provide make this machine a gem among automatic coffee makers.

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