SimplyGoodCoffee Plastic-free Coffee Maker Review

SimplyGoodCoffee – really Plastic-free?

Is there such a thing as a plastic-free coffee maker? Up until recently, there wasn’t. Most coffee makers are cheap, and made mostly of plastic parts, to keep costs down.

But now there is a manufacturer on the market that call themselves SimplyGoodCoffee, and they offer a plastic-free variant. But is it really plastic-free? Let’s see in the review to follow.

Conventional vs Plastic-free

To set the context, most coffee makers do have a glass carafe and a metal boiler, but they have plastic water reservoirs, plastic shower heads, and plastic brewing drippers. They generally have plastic drip stems too, if they have one at all. Finally, their bodies are generally made of ABS plastic, too. You can see these elements on the Black+Decker coffee maker above, one of the best selling coffee makers on Amazon.

SimplyGoodCoffee on the other hand, looks to capitalize on consumers who want to avoid all this plastic. All the parts that touch the water are made of glass or stainless steel, or silicone (where gaskets are necessary). The body is made out of anodized aluminum, giving it a more pristine look and build.

Stainless steel and Glass

If you look at the photo below, you will see a myriad of stainless and glass parts. Let’s have a closer look.

Shower Screen

Starting with the shower head at the 12 o’clock position, you can see that the head itself is stainless, and the connection point is silicone. The shower head stem is housed in plastic, but the water flows through a stainless tube, and out of a stainless shower head.

Filter Dripper

Viewing the 7 o’clock position, you will see the dripper. It’s made out of ribbed stainless steel, and has a port at the bottom with a silicone valve. While the inside part that touches the coffee filter is stainless steel, it is insulated on the outside with plastic, for easier handling. The valve itself is made out of a silicone stopper and stainless switch lever.

Carafe and drip stem

The glass carafe is at the 6 o’clock position. Having a glass carafe is normal. But, often the drip stem (even on Technivorm machines) is plastic. In this case, you can see at the 5 o’clock position that again the drip stem is made of stainless steel. It also has a silicone grip, to hold it onto the glass carafe by friction. Here again you can see that the company avoided using plastic, even for the drip stem.

Water reservoir

Definitely a first for me is seeing a glass water reservoir. These have been plastic on all other machines I’ve tried. On the SimplyGoodCoffee however, this is made of glass and stainless steel. The water volume is of course held by the glass reservoir, and the heated water comes up a stainless steel stem. The base of the reservoir is also stainless steel.

How does it work?

All you have to do is put fresh water in the water reservoir, add a #4 filter to the dripper, and scoop in your coffee, then turn the machine on. It does the rest, and 5 minutes later, you’ll have your coffee.

Water and coffee volume

The reservoir has markings for 2, 4, 6, and 8 cups of coffee. For each cup of coffee, you use one scoop of coffee. The included scoop (not photographed – doh!), is made of stainless steel too, and contains about 9 grams of coffee. So, for a 4 cup batch, you’ll use up to 36 grams of coffee. By the way, 2 cups is the minimum volume recommended.

Bloom and on/off

Then all you have to do is decide if you want to bloom or not. SimplyGoodCoffee recommends using the bloom function for 4 cups and over. Blooming will put up to 1 cup of water on the coffee bed, and give it time to soak in. This will allow any carbon dioxide to escape from freshly roasted beans. After a short pause, the machine will then begin with the extraction.

Pressing the on button will begin the whole process, and it automatically shuts off after about 40 minutes. In the meantime, it has a hotplate under the glass coffee carafe. You can also turn off the machine yourself, if you’re done enjoying your coffee before that time.

And here is a photo looking down at the inside of the water reservoir. Here you can see the glass and stainless steel construction.

Technivorm vs SimplyGoodCoffee

If you compare the two models below, you can see that SimplyGoodCoffee pretty much copied the Technivorm design, from an optical standpoint. But again, Technivorm uses a plastic water reservoir, dripper, and brew stem in the coffee carafe. To be honest, I’m really surprised Technivorm has not offered a plastic-free option until now. Maybe they will in the future.

One thing does need to be mentioned. The Technivorm has been proudly made in the Netherlands since 1968. The SimplyGoodCoffee brewer is made in China, and has only been on the market for 12 months (at the time of writing). Nonetheless, it’s a huge seller on Amazon, meaning that finding a plastic-free option is apparently really important to a lot of people.

Other plastic-free coffee options

If you don’t need an automatic coffee maker to make your coffee, there are other options too. You can use a pourover setup for example, or possibly a Bialetti moka pot, or even a percolator. All of these are offered in plastic free and aluminum free variants. See more about other options below.

Wrapping Up

Welp, I hope that this little blog article has helped you gain a little more insight into the SimplyGoodCoffee plastic-free brewer. It’s a neat little machine that allows people who want to minimize plastic in touching their coffee to do so. I do also hope it sparks other companies to consider making plastic-free machines, but until now, it’s the only one I know of.

SimplyGoodCoffee THE BREWER

Plastic and aluminum free coffee brewer. Boiler, percolation stem, shower head and dripper made out of stainless. Carafe and water tank made out of glass.

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