
Are you looking to enhance your coffee game at home with a superior coffee maker? You might have come across the buzz surrounding the OX of brew machines. In this video, we will review the OXA Brew 9 Cup Coffee Maker, discuss the pros and cons, compare it to the Chemex, and share our thoughts on whether it is worth investing in.
If you enjoy videos about minimalism, purposeful living, and quality home product reviews, consider subscribing to this channel. We have been brewing our morning coffee with the Chemex for over five years, and while we love the routine and the flavor of our coffee, with a toddler and a newborn at home, we were looking for a machine that could make our morning coffee routine easier without compromising the taste.
At $200, this machine is pricier than what most people would spend on a coffee maker, especially compared to the $40 Chemex that we have. However, with many excellent reviews online, we decided to give it a try. If you plan to purchase one, we recommend buying it from a store like Kohl’s that offers email coupons regularly, and you can get it for 20 to 30% off, as we did.
You will need coffee filters with this machine, but other than that, it is a simple and minimalist coffee maker. Our first impression and a significant advantage of this product are that it is built with high-quality materials and looks great. However, it takes up a lot of counter space and is more substantial than we expected, so be sure to check the dimensions. Other than some free filters, a coffee scoop, and an instruction manual, there is nothing else inside the box, so you can expect a quick and easy setup. Simply place the machine on your counter, ensuring that the cord goes through the hole in the back, and remove all the removable pieces.
Here’s our most significant advice before using this machine: wash everything as much as possible. Some of the loose items are dishwasher safe, so run them in the dishwasher a couple of times if possible. The reason we say this is that new plastic smells strong when it first heats up. In our first week with it, we kept tasting the plastic, and it was ruining the taste of the coffee. Also, fill the water tank to the max line and run the machine without any coffee a few times so that you can clean everything out on the inside as well.
There is only one button on this coffee maker, and you can click it once to turn it on. Then, turn left or right, depending on the number of cups you want to make, and click it once more to start brewing. You also have the option of setting it up for automatic brewing. Another advantage is how fast this machine works. Although the video is sped up, a full tank was done in about 6 minutes. It starts by blooming your grounds, which is something we do with our Chemex, so we love that. Once it’s done, the screen will start counting for you the minute since it finished brewing, so you can keep track of the freshness. This screen will show up for up to an hour, then go away.
One drawback for us at first was how challenging it was to get the water-to-coffee-grounds ratio correctly. The manual recommends one full scoop per cup, but that was too strong for our taste, so we wasted a few bags of coffee and had unpleasant morning coffee for the first two to four weeks before we finally got it right. We also noticed a clicking noise every time our coffee was brewing, but we had no idea what was causing it. Additionally, we wish the machine made a beeping noise to let us know when the coffee was ready because sometimes we forget about it, but that’s a minor detail that might not be important for everyone. To give you an idea, filling up the tank to the 2 cup line will fill up exactly one of our 11-ounce small cups, which is convenient if you’re just making a quick cup of coffee.
While this carafe is great at keeping our coffee warm for a long time compared to our Chemex, it does present some challenges with how weird the coffee comes out. We’re pretty sure it has made us spill coffee on our counter every single time because it splashes.
So, is this the coffee maker of our dreams? Are we ready to say goodbye to the Chemex? Now that we’ve gotten through the awkward beginning stage and we like the taste of our coffee, I honestly still feel like the flavor is no match for the smooth cup you get with the Chemex. As you can see, we found more cons than pros with it, and it seems to be more work with constant cleaning of the small parts. And if you forget to set it up the night before, it takes us just as much time and even more work than it would to do the Chemex.
Unfortunately, for us, this machine was not a good match, and it’s most likely going back to the store. If you have this machine at home, please leave us a comment and let us know what your experience has been like. Maybe you love it and have some suggestions for us, so we would love to hear them.
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