Russell Hobbs 14899 Platinum Grind and Brew Coffeemaker

Product Details

• Boxed-product Weight: 5 Kg
• Delivery Destinations: Visit the Delivery Destinations Help page to see where this item can be delivered.
• Item model number: 14899
• ASIN: B003DNSQRK
• Date first available at Amazon.co.uk: 4 Mar 2010
  

By : Russell Hobbs
List Price : £99.99
Price : £84.99
You Save : £15.00 (15%)

Product Description

Manufacturer's Description
The Russell Hobbs Platinum Grind and Brew Coffee Maker 14899 grinds fresh coffee beans for a quality cup of coffee every time, producing from 2 to 10 cups. Designed and manufactured by Russell Hobbs as part of the Platinum Collection, the automatic coffee maker allows you to choose what strength of coffee you prefer--from light to dark--it’s your choice. Or if you’re too busy for the full process, simply use filter coffee instead for the same great taste. It’s easy-to- use and with its digital automatic control allows you to programme its brewing times for maximum convenience.
How do you like your coffee?
Need a strong coffee boost first thing to kick-start your day or looking for something milder and lighter? The Platinum Grind and Brew Coffee Maker allows you to choose how you take your coffee, efficiently grinding the beans to bring you the brew of your choice. Simply select the strength you prefer, whether it is light, medium or dark to enjoy a cup of coffee the way you like it.
Just a few steps and you’re done
The Platinum Grind and Brew Coffee Maker is simple and easy-to-use. Place the coffee beans in the coffee mill at the rear of the machine and using the carafe, fill the water reservoir with fresh, cold water. Decide the strength of your coffee and how many cups you’d like and then hit the grind button. That familiar grinding noise should soon start, alerting you that your coffee’s on its way as it begins to filter and brew the coffee into the glass carafe.
No coffee beans? No problem--use ground coffee instead
No coffee beans doesn’t mean no coffee with the Platinum Grind and Brew. If you’re low on beans but have ground/ filter coffee to hand, simply use this instead. Rather than adding the beans in the mill, spoon filter coffee into the permanent filter section at the front of the machine allowing you to keep your coffee fresh with a full, rich flavour.
Say goodbye to paper filters with the permanent filter
Paper filters can be a fussy business, slowing down the speed at which you make your coffee so the Platinum Grind and Brew offers a permanent filter. This mainstay of the machine is easy to remove and easy to clean allowing you to re-use over and over again. No more fiddly paper filters that have to be thrown away and replaced, now there’s just one filter to use.
Programme your machine for coffee when you want it
Waking up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee is a treat that can be enjoyed every day with the Platinum Grind and Brew’s digital automatic programmable control. This feature enables you to set what time of day your coffee brews so you don’t have to manually begin the process each time and also has an attractive digital clock display with blue back light-- perfect for morning coffee drinkers.
Grab a cup while it's still brewing
You don’t have to wait for brewing to finish to grab a cup--just remove the carafe and pour. The non-drip valve prevents coffee dripping onto the hot plate for up to 20 seconds, allowing you time to pour a cup without making a mess and disrupting brewing.
Warm coffee for hours
Coffee is best enjoyed once freshly brewed, but there’s no need to pour away any leftover liquid that has been sat there for a while. The Platinum Grind and Brew’s hotplate enables your coffee to stay warm for hours after brewing, making one pot of coffee last even longer. This saves you from unnecessary repeat brewings, making it a more economical and time-saving choice.
Stylish and smart
The Platinum Grind and Brew Coffee Maker 14889 is part of the Russell Hobbs Platinum Collection bringing style and function into the kitchen.
Box Contains

1 x Coffee maker

1 x Glass carafe

1 x Instruction booklet

1 x One-year guarantee card

 

Russell Hobbs 14899 Platinum Grind and Brew Coffeemaker

 

Technical Details

• Permanent filter
• Glass carafe
• Digital programmable control
• Blue LCD display
• 2-10 Cup size selection

Customer Reviews

-- Long Term Test Update (22-Dec-2012)
I've been using this coffeemaker 1-3 times almost every day for over 18 months now and I wanted to take the time to offer some thoughts on my longer term experience.
I have had no issues at all with the machine. It does require quite frequent descaling but we live in a very hard water region and the descaling process is straight forward and returns the machine to perfect performance (it gets a little slow as it scales up). I have not bothered to change the activated carbon filter and not seen any issues. I no longer use an additional filter paper due to laziness (although my original comments stand) and I've grown completely used to the three "design flaws" I highlighted, I no longer notice them.
Most importantly, the bean grinder has continued to perform flawlessly - this is a great piece of kit and I commend it to any serious coffee lover.
-- Original Review
This is a relatively large (24cm wide, 23cm deep and 39cm high) coffee maker which, in summary, brews a great cup of coffee but loses a five star rating due to three design issues which I will return to at the end of this review.
The machine can brew the seeming home standard of up to 10 proper cups of coffee at a time (NOT the tiny 125ml capacity which was stated in the manufacturer's product description on the Amazon product page at the time when I received my review order).
It will do so from ground coffee which can be inserted directly into the built-in washable filter, revealed at the press of a button in a panel which swings out from above the carafe (you may wish to invest in some filter papers none-the-less to make cleaning the machine after use a simpler process of removing the used grounds and paper and composting, although the built-in filter is quite easy to remove, empty and clean). In this scenario, you add the ground coffee, add water, press a button several times to indicate how many cups of water you have used and off it goes. This quickly (about ten minutes for ten cups) produces an excellent carafe of coffee.
However, it is unlikely that you are considering this machine for such a simple scenario and it adds two additional features to justify its premium branding and pricing.
Firstly, it has a hopper on its lid which accepts unground coffee beans. You can select a coarseness of grind from one of five options (although I have left this on the default central setting on the assumption that the manufacturers know which coarseness works best in their machine - they certainly have a view of what sort of ground coffee you should use so I find this option a little odd). In addition, if you are brewing 2-4 cups you can select from three strengths of coffee. If you are brewing a larger volume of coffee then you do not have the option to specify a strength (although the machine does grind more beans for a larger amount of coffee). Then, you specify how many cups of water you have added (at this point in my experimentation I started to wonder why Russell Hobbs could not provide a sensor which worked out how much water you had added to the reservoir automatically - maybe for the next version). Pressing a second button to indicate you are using beans rather than pre-ground coffee now grinds a portion of beans for you, adds them to the filter and brews the coffee. The process remains fast and again produces a delicious cup of coffee.
Secondly, the machine includes a built-in clock and the ability to set a time within the next 24 hours when you would like the machine to start brewing (using any combination of the settings already mentioned). This works exactly as specified and I woke up to the smell of a pot of fresh coffee this morning made from beans ground just before the brewing process began - lovely.
Given how good this machine is at making coffee it almost seems a shame to have to come back to those three design flaws :-
1 - for such a premium model the door you open to add pre-ground coffee or to clean the filter seems very flimsy and thin - it is nowhere near as solid as it seems in the pictures or is implied by the branding.
2 - opening this door catches on the top of the carafe if it is on the hot plate which seems unforgiveable to me. Obviously, you can jiggle it around to get it open and once it is shut it is not a problem to remove the carafe but it amazes me that the designers could have missed this one in their testing. Maybe they assume that you never open this door with the carafe in place but I noticed it almost immediately.
3 - the control interface on the front panel of the device, a set of buttons with cryptic hieroglyphics, is complex and counter-intuitive. You would struggle to work out how to get all the features of the machine working withough turning to the manual. Even then the manual is written in a rather odd mix of dry bullet points and jaunty prose. This means that, although it gives you the information you need to decipher the workings, it also irritates with lines such as "press the button to brew the coffee. Leave it alone - you might upset it". Setting the timer is another example of over complication and poor design, if you take more than ten seconds to muddle through the complex series of button presses required the manual dutifully informs you the system will reset and you will have to start again. This was a fate which did indeed befall me the first time I was flipping between manual and machine to try the timer out.
In summary, if you like the idea of a machine with an integrated grinder for fresh coffee beans and the ability to provide your morning cup of coffee when you wake then this may be the machine for you but I would suggest you take note of the three issues I highlight before you buy so you are not disapointed by one of the surprising niggles which come with your new coffeemaker.

First impressions weren't that great: The user guide is a bit hopeless. We still haven't figured out what the smiley face button (serious!) is for. Initially, it was a bit of a disaster: It was either too strong or too weak. The timer was very hit and miss when setting up. However, we persevered and tried different settings with different amounts of water and slowly settled down to what is now a great cup of coffee every time. We have now also conquered the fussy timer and wake up to the wonderful aroma of freshly brewed coffee every morning.
Some have mentioned that the grinder is rather noisy. However, compared to our Krupps standalone grinder, it is actually a touch quieter. Mind you, if you are a light sleeper, you WILL jump out of bed when it goes off on timer in the morning. No bad thing in my case.
Others have complained about the filter door catching on the lid of the carafe when you open it with the carafe in. As an engineer myself, I decided to take a good look to see if a better design would have prevented it. So far, I am afraid to say, I haven't come up with a better design without over-engineering the door. The operation of the filter tray demands that the valve at the bottom of the filter presses against the lid of the carafe in order for the coffee to flow into the carafe. As the door opens horizontally, the valve will, by necessity remain pressed against the lid all the way. The only engineering solution I have seen to solve similar problems like this would be to have the door rise up slightly as it opens. This needs a hinge with a rising cam. As these types of hinges are subjected to more stresses, it will need a much bigger and stronger hinge to survive daily use, hence over-engineering.
Would we buy another one? A definite yes! However, we will take a star away for the inadequate manual...

 

Russell Hobbs 14899 Platinum Grind and Brew Coffeemaker