Kitchen & Housewares Cuisinart DCG-12BC Grind Central Coffee Grinder
- Enjoyin' my new grinderI bought this style with the silver retro look as it perfectly matches my Cuisinart coffee maker. The grinder is cute and small, doesn't take up much cabinet space at all! I am happy with my purchase. Giving it a 4 star as I don't understand why plastic lid which fits the grinder cup (and is intended for storage of coffee) couldn't have been made smaller so it could snap on the top and sit under the plastic dome top and on top of the grinder for storage of coffee for the next day.
To store the coffee, you have to take the cup out and then snap lid on and leave it sitting outside the grinder. So for that reason I give it 4 stars, a bit of a design flaw; the plastic lid is worthless to me and I'll probably never use it. Secondly, the cord isn't easy to push underneath the grinder for storing and hiding it. That doesn't bother me so much but it may bother others.
Other than these two notations, I am grinding beans daily and enjoying it!
Rating:
- An attractive but worthless grinderI have to add my voice to the other negative reviews of this product. I've gone through several other small blade-type grinders from other maufacturers. The two best were made by Braun and each lasted about 10 years, at which time the blades self-destructed. I thought perhaps a slightly better grade of grinder would be preferable, and wanted one I could clean more thoroughly. A friend has the KitchenAid grinder with the removable bowl. I liked it, but couldn't find one locally. This Cuisinart was the closest I could get.
I grind coffee & spices. First, the spices. Although the description on this site states you can grind spices with it, the instructions specifically warn against doing so. It does a lousy job with them in any event, not getting them down to a fairly even powder, or even a reasonably even size. It does its primary job, grinding coffee, equally poorly. It takes twice as long (roughly 30 seconds) to grind 12 cups worth of beans to the same degree of fineness than did my old Braun grinder. Although the cup can hold 18 cups worth of beans, don't even try grinding them. They spill over the top as they are ground, leaving bits of ground coffee all over the outside of the cup, stuck to the plastic lid, exploding out of the container when you open it. As others have commented, the grind is uneven. Even at 30 seconds, while I end up with some coffee ground almost fine enough for Turkish coffee, I've got a lot of big (1/8 bean) chunks in the mix. Adding insult to injury, at least 80 percent of the time the grind chamber won't come off, so I'm left first to pour the ground coffee awkwardly from the grinder into my coffee container, then wipe it out as best I can without washing it, since the chamber is stuck. As a last straw, I have to put it away with the cord loosely wrapped around, because the opening into which one is instructed to push the cord is too small to accommodate it and the grinder is too bulky and big around for wrapping the cord around to work well.
In short, don't buy this product. Go buy the KitchenAid. It works beautifully, grinds evenly, comes apart with only a little pressure but never actually sticks. It lacks any way to stow the cord, but it's _round_, so it's easy to wrap the cord around it.
Rating:
- Absolute junkMotor burned out. Didn't last a month under light use. Didn't grind evenly. An awful product.
Rating:
- All looks no functionThis coffee grinder looks great. The problem is the coffee is never ground evenly. There are always big chunks left even after grinding over 30 seconds. If you grind more then that the friction causes the coffee to heat up, so it is not really functional at all. Pre-ground coffee tastes better then anything ground with this machine.
Rating:
- reserving final judgement on this grinderThis coffee grinder was purchased to replace an older Cuisinart dcg-12c grinder. The older grinder was not inoperative, we just felt a new one should be on hand in case of failure. The new grinder sometimes sounds as though it is grinding its own gears instead of the coffee beans. There appears to be some uncertainty as to proper seating of the grinding bowl. Not sure we'll be keeping this grinder so an update of this review may be required.