In the age of drive thru coffee shops and pods, sometimes it’s hard to get a good cup of coffee or a latte how you want it. I know several friends who have stopped using their pod coffee makers for French Presses or other other coffee machines. But a new comer on the scene is changing how you make coffee at home, and the variety of coffee you can make. The Ninja Coffee Bar is the perfect combination of a traditional brewer, latte maker and specialty drink maker all in one.
Ninja sent us their new coffee bar a couple months back to review, and so far we’ve loved everything we can do with it. SolidGoldEat’s review of the Ninja Coffee Bar provides some in-depth comparisons and ratings of the latest models. With the Ninja Coffee Bar on our counter, we haven’t visited a coffee shop for the things that we would normally head out for, instead – we just make them at home. My favorite drink is a mocha latte, but frothing the milk at home can be a pain, that one of the first things I fell in love with when I started using the Ninja Coffee Bar – the milk frother. Simply add milk, heat in your microwave and use the top (similar to a mix between a French Press and a whisk) and create the froth and foam you need for your latte.
The Ninja Coffee Bar allows you to make a single cup of coffee, a travel mug of coffee, a half a carafe, or a full carafe of coffee. With traditional settings like Stay Warm, and delay brew the interface of the Coffee Bar is easy to figure out. With each brew you can even select if you want classic, rich brew, specialty drink or over ice. The Coffee Bar knows what to do when you press the different prompt and does all of the hard work for you.
Like many other Ninja products, the water reservoir locks on with a twist motion. If you have a previous Ninja blender or other product you’ll recognize this motion. You will feel when the reservoir is in place, and ready to go.
The majority of the removable parts of the Ninja Coffee Bar are actually made of glass, including the carafe and the frother. The water reservoir and including measuring scoop are both made of plastic and all are easy to wash. The scoop allows you to choose how much grind you need for the type of brew you’re doing. This makes sure you wont waste any grinds in your filter, and you’re getting exactly what you want.
The only thing that I would change about the Ninja Coffee bar is the fact it only takes coffee grinds. If you’re like me, you’ve got a ton of the single serving pods stashed in your house, and don’t want them to go to waste. You can easily just empty the pods into the included gold filter basket. The filter compartment does not come off your Coffee Bar, but the filter does come out for easy emptying or removing. Because of the shape of the filter basket, if you want to still use paper filters you can but you have to fold them a certain way to get them to fit.
Like all of the other features in the Ninja Coffee Bar, the design itself is actually pretty flexible. It includes a drop down mug holder when you are making smaller cups of coffee. This keeps your coffee mug close at hand, and it fills it quickly as the fresh drinks being made.
The Ninja Coffee Bar has two features I absolutely love and haven’t seen before on their competitors in the same price range – a drip stop function and a minimum fill line for the drinks you’re making. The drip stop is a simple sliding mechanism that puts a block over the openings of the brewer. This will stop any left over drips from dropping down onto the warming plate which can be a mess later. And minimum fill line is a simple graphic feature on the water reservoir that shows you what you can make with the amount of water left. In our tests of different brews, the line was right on for what we needed for our drink, and takes into account used in the system and in heat up.
The Ninja Coffee Bar takes your home coffee maker up to the next level, as well as your home cup of joe! If you’re looking for a way to cut ties from the big coffee chains, the Ninja Coffee Bar is perfect for you!
