That One Time I Didn’t Hang Out With Sofia Vergara
My Ninja Coffee Bar infomercial adventure, and my honest review of the best home coffee brewer I’ve used.
“Hey Nick, it’s Mark Inman here. Uh, what is today… it’s Tuesday evening, and I have an interesting proposition that involves being on a commercial….”
When I called him back about that voicemail, Mark told me about an encounter he had at Coffeefest Dallas (Coffeefest is a trade show geared toward new coffee shop owners) at a booth for Ninja Coffee Bar. They were having attendees taste coffees brewed behind a screen and commenting on camera. They were also looking for a coffee expert or two to possibly appear in their infomercial for their next-generation product, and Mark gave them my name. A few weeks later, someone from the company called me, inviting me to participate in the infomercial shoot.
My reply was simple: I want a unit to test and try. If I think it’s a good product that adds something to the marketplace and helps people actually make better coffee, then I’d consider it. While appearing in an infomercial and saying good things isn’t exactly a product endorsement, it is also sort of a product endorsement. Trust me, I can’t wait to sell-out some day, cash in my years of work in coffee, and ride off into the sunset, but that won’t be for a few years at least.
So they sent me a test unit and I got to know it. Whaddaya know, it was the best home coffee brewer I’ve encountered. Let me explain.
There are two kinds of home auto-drip machines: flash heaters, and hot water kettle types. Of the latter, there are three machines that I know of: the Behmor Brazen, OXO On 12-cup “Barista Brain”, and KitchenAid Pour Over brewer. I call it a “hot water kettle type” because it operates by heating the entire quantity of brew water in a kettle-type tank, releasing water into the coffee only after that entire volume of water has reached the target temperature. I confess that have never actually used any of these, as they’re all pretty new on the market, but I hope to soon. I’m a big fan of this video about the Behmor Brazen from Sweet Maria’s (shout out to Amanda!). The marketing claims about the OXO Barista Brain brewer is even more intriguing, with variable temperatures, brew times and brew volumes. The brew dynamic for these kettle-brewers is sound, at least in theory. I’m not as much a fan of the wide and flat brew basket in the Brazen and Barista Brain, but again, only in theory. If I ever get to test any of these, I’ll edit this paragraph to acknowledge it.
Flash heaters are the more common way home drip brewers work, like the classic Mr. Coffee. Similar to on-demand water heating systems you might find that supplies hot water to a sink or shower, flash heaters draw a narrow-ish tube of cold (or room temp) water into a heater mechanism (called a ‘heat exchanger’), which boils that bit of water. The boiling causes, by definition, the water to turn to steam bubbles. The geometry of the plumbing creates a situation where the bubbles drive portions of hot water up a tube and to the shower head and onto the coffee grounds (thats the gurgling sound you hear). This action is in lieu of an electric pump, which even commercial coffee brewers eschew in favor of a gravity-driven water supply. Curiously, the OXO Barista Brain appears to be driven by a pump–“curiously” because pumps that push ~200°F water haven’t shown great longevity. Commercial brewer manufacturer FETCO put a pump in one of their brewer lines back around 2011, only to discontinue those models a short couple of years later due to high failure rates on the pump.
Flash heat brewers vary greatly in how well this action occurs, and almost all of them are what you might call “dumb.” You turn them on, they heat and drive water up to the shower head. When they run out of water, guess what? You’re done. This helps simplify the mechanism and reduces a typical home brewer to being a glorified hot plate with some plumbing built around it (in fact, that’s why so many cheap brewers have that “warming plate” under the carafe: that’s what heats the water too). The problem is that you have a smaller mass of water in the reservoir at the end of the brew cycle, which, without a meaningful mass of cold water behind it, gets super-heated, delivering 210–212°F water right at the end when (assuming everything was otherwise perfect) the coffee grounds have been extracted of the good-tasting flavor compounds. Super-heating the brew water at the end is a bad thing, leading to astringency and bitterness. Unfortunately, all flash heater brewers that I’ve ever seen work this way. Except the Ninja Coffee Bar.
Is it perfect? No. Is any brewer perfect? No. Are there extraneous features that a real coffee brewing nerd would have no use for? You betcha. But hiding in the admittedly unfortunate name and multitude of buttons and dials is a solid coffee brewer that I’m happy to endorse and use myself at home. I used it this morning, and Trish and I had a fantastic cup! Here’s a rundown of the features I like, and what I don’t like about it.
The “Drip stop” prevents drips when you engage the switch, or if you remove the brew cone. I also like how the brew cone assembly is on a double-hinge, and when you switch it to open, it lifts the cone up against the showerhead for a more closed brew environment.
When you turn it on, it goes into pre-heating mode. This gets the flash heater up to a good working temperature that will deliver ~200°F at the beginning of the brew cycle. Many “dumb” flash heat brewers end up with low temperature water at the very beginning of the cycle, because the bubble-up force pushes whatever’s above it, regardless its temperature. It also has a pre-wet “bloom” feature, where it turns the brew system on for a few seconds, then off, then on again for the main brew cycle.
In talking to the folks at SharkNinja (the company that produces this brewer and other Ninja brand kitchen products, as well as Shark brand products like vacuum cleaners), they really wanted to simplify processes as much as possible while still making a solid coffee-making machine. Additionally, they wanted to go after the K-Cup single-serve market with a single-cup feature. The Ninja Coffee Brewer does a respectable job of single-cup brews, but I like the half-carafe volume best. It’s about 26 oz (768 mL) and a 4 minute brew cycle. I use about 55 grams of coffee for this, ground at the same grind size as I brew Kalita Wave pourovers with. Because when I make coffee at home, it’s for both Trish and me, this is the perfect volume, and the brew time is well-suited for the other parameters.
The thing about the volume settings is that they’re the result of corresponding brew times, and the machine shuts down the flash heater at the end of the interval. If you fill the water reservoir well beyond your brew volume, it means no super-heated brew water at the end of the brew. This is a big deal!
There are many different dial and button combinations, but they really just correspond with different brew cycle timings. However, I really appreciate the philosophy here: They’re allowing users to dial-in their desired end-product, rather than have to think about recipes and ratios and such on their own. In this, they really are going after the single-cup ease-of-use market, and more power to them. I really like this end-user-friendly approach, and I believe that it will indeed help make it easier for more people to make better coffee.
The “Over Ice Brew” setting cuts the brew cycle short, resulting in a concentrated brew for a flash-brew/ice-brew iced coffee. I love that they’re promoting this feature as an iced coffee technique. Are you telling me that Ninja Coffee Bar is with me in the war against cold brew? Can I get a Stone Cold Steve Austin “HELL YEAH!?”
Aside from that, it has a good showerhead (sprays evenly and consistently). The build quality is, while being made of plastic, really good, though your aesthetic tastes may vary. It has a cleaning cycle with de-scaling instructions, which I really appreciate.
Here’s what I don’t like as much about the Ninja Coffee Bar.
This “Stay warm” warming plate automatically comes on with every brew, and I have to manually switch it off. That’s only because I have the glass carafe version (the stainless steel vacuum carafe version doesn’t have this), however I said I’d tell you what I don’t like so much, so let’s start with that.
I wish that the different brew sizes had more variable brew times. That half-carafe volume (and brew time) works really well for what I’m trying to do, but the other sizes still suffer from the typical flash heat brewer issue of volume and brew time being inextricably linked. This is probably the most overlooked issue in home coffee equipment, and one that top-end commercial brewers solved with “pulse brew” systems (starting with the FETCO Extractor Series back in 2003). The Ninja Coffee Bar could overcome this by pulsing the heating mechanism, stretching out the brew time for smaller volumes. That doesn’t address the fact that a #4 (Melitta-type) filter is really big for a single-cup’s worth of coffee grounds, but it would still be an improvement without having to re-engineer the whole thing.
That’s about it as far as negatives.
So should you get one?
If you’re reading this and you’re a coffee professional or über-nerd, this probably isn’t the thing to get for yourself. Stick to fiddling with pourovers. It is, however, one to recommend to others, especially those who aren’t trying to get geeky with their coffee. It is absolutely better than the over-rated Technivorm brewers, smarter than the Bonavitas, and is a fantastic alternative to single-cup pod machines like Keurig or Nespresso. Paired with a good grinder (can’t forget that!), it makes as good a brew as I’ve ever had from a home machine. That’s a statement I am happy to stake my professional reputation on, which is something I do not take the least bit lightly. I am absolutely committed in my work and career to make it easier for more people to make better coffee, and I am happy that the Ninja Coffee Bar has done that, and now even moreso with their next generation machine.
The infomercial shoot was a blast, and I had a good time hanging out with my buddy Mark (who I have to thank again for getting me on to this project). Catherine was a fantastic director, and it was fun to get paid to talk about this cool machine. If SharkNinja folks are reading this, and you need me to do appearances with Sofia Vergara, you know where to find me!
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, which you probably are: my obligations, contractual and otherwise, with SharkNinja and the Ninja Coffee Bar were completely limited to the appearance on that one-day infomercial shoot. This article is completely independent and nobody asked me to write this. In fact, I’m not sure how happy they’ll be with my honest assessment, but here it is.
