Best Coffee Makers with Grinders in 2023 (Grind & Brew)

If you are new to the coffee-making world, you might be slightly aghast at the number of gadgets required to brew a good cup of coffee. Between the hundreds of coffee machine options, coffee bean grinder options, varieties of coffee beans, conical burr vs blade, milk foamers, coffee bean containers…

There's so much to choose from! Thankfully, there’s a solution that’ll make your mornings a little bit easier by reducing the number of machines you need: buy a coffee maker with a built-in grinder.

If you’re like my mother, you might think purchasing pre-ground coffee will suffice (bless her heart), but nothing could be farther from the truth. You don’t just have to take our word for it. Ask any home barista that grinds their own beans, and they’ll tell you: It’s not even close.

Well, it’s one less appliance to fit on your counter, which is always a bonus. Surprisingly, many of these combo machines aren’t much larger than a stand-alone coffeemaker. The bean reservoir can add a bit of height, but it’s far less than you’d anticipated.

If you already have a perfectly good conical burr grinder that’s still in great shape, it may not make a ton of sense to drop some extra dough on a combo machine, but if you don’t have a conical burr grinder or your grinder’s in need of replacement, hop on over to this article talking about why you should definitely opt for a conical burr grinder.

The fact of the matter is, beans ground using a conical burr grinder are simply better — the conical burrs grind more evenly, create less heat, and ultimately provide a better tasting cup. So whether you buy a stand alone grinder or a combo grinder plus machine, make sure it uses conical burrs!

On to the second reason why having a coffee maker with a grinder built in is the total 'bee’s knees': it’s so streamlined and convenient.

There are two key questions you should ask yourself before adding to cart and clicking purchase:

1. How much do I want to invest in my morning coffee experience?
2. How often will I use the machine and for what purpose?

When eyeballing these prices, keep in mind that you’re looking at a two-machines-in-one and the prices often reflect that. You can find machines for as little as $50 bucks and as high as… well, the $6,000 Jura Giga 6 which features two separate grind units, dual boilers, and a virtual reality so you can actually visualize it in your kitchen for reals.

While you definitely don’t need to buy a $6,000 machine to get a top quality morning experience, there’s definitely a correlation between price and quality when it comes to these combo machines.

To figure out what price range is suitable for you, analyze your daily habits and what you hope to use this new machine for. Are you a big entertainer? Do you want to program it to grind and brew for you in the morning? Are you going to take our advice and choose one with a conical burr grinder?

The more you want, the more dollar signs you may find attached to the price, unless you can find a top-notch deal. Today, we’ll focus on coffee makers that are on the more on the affordable side of things. 

We feel it’s important to re-emphasize that the freshness of ground coffee beans has an enormous impact on the taste of brewed coffee. It’s one of the reasons we’re big proponents of this grind-and-brew coffee maker category, especially if you’re not keep on adding extra machines to your counter, extra steps to making your coffee, or just really appreciate a streamlined process.

The size of the coffee grinds you use impacts extraction, which in turn impacts flavor. Extraction happens when water runs through the ground coffee, and it is measured by the number of solubles that are removed from the coffee and enter the water. The Specialty Coffee Association says that the best extraction lies somewhere between 18% and 22%.

You can see pictures of different grind sizes and a basic overview of which sizes match which brewing methods here.

Additionally, when you purchase a coffee machine with a built-in grinder, you can rest assured knowing that the grinder you’re using is designed specifically to compliment the actual coffee maker. This leaves out much of the guesswork that home baristas encounter when they're looking to purchase a coffee grinder that's independent of their coffee machine.

You’ll notice that the machines we talk about have two different types of grinders, and we want to break down those two types so you can have a real grasp on what you’re getting with each. The two main types are blade grinders and burr grinders.

Most baristas will recommend using a burr grinder, and there are several solid reasons, but the largest is consistency. Conical burr grinders can be made from either steel or ceramic, which honestly is a whole other debate in and of itself. Ceramic burrs are stronger and last twice as long as the steel alternatives, but they come with a significant price increase.

On the other end of the ‘grinder spectrum’, a blade grinder works much like a blender. It uses fast-spinning blades to cut up the coffee beans. However, because of the way the blades chop up the beans, there’s no way to guarantee a consistent particle size distribution, so you’re likely to end up with grinds that are all slightly different sizes.

This may not be terribly noticeable for beginners, but blade grinders can't hold a candle to the overall quality and consistency of a burr grinders, either ceramic or steel. When you have an inconsistent particle size, the flavor is going to be all over the place, some of the particles will be over-extracted, others will be under-extracted, and the whole cup of coffee will be a mess.

The most important takeaway of the blade vs. burr grinder debate is that the burr is considered a higher quality piece of equipment that produces higher quality coffee. As with all purchases that promise higher quality, machines that use burr grinders will be slightly pricier, so keep that in mind.