If you like caffeine jolt every day, you’re probably familiar with most of the coffee shops near your home.
It’s difficult to find a coffee maker that makes you restaurant-quality coffee specialties, especially when you don’t want to pay through your nose.
I was in the same boat until I discovered Ninja Coffee Bar.
You might be familiar with the Ninja company already. They’ve built up a pretty decent reputation with their excellent quality kitchen products, including brewers, juicers, and mixers.
This time, they turned their efforts to the coffee with their latest attempt at kitchen supremacy with Ninja Coffee Bar. And the best part, the results are as great as you’d expect.
The home station provides you everything to satisfy your taste buds fully, and with time, you’ll probably abandon visiting Starbucks anymore.
Ninja Coffee Bar
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To get the real sense of how well it understands the coffee, here’s the detailed review of Ninja Coffee Bar that might clear every question you’ve in your mind.
Unboxing
The first thing that will make you feel like having a coffee bar at your home is the plenty of accessories that comes with Ninja Coffee Bar. Here is what you’ll get by unboxing:
- Ninja Coffee Bar unit
- 8 oz hot and cold tumbler
- Glass/Thermal carafe with warming plate
- 40-recipes cookbook
- Reusable filter
- Ninja scoop
- Milk frother
- Instruction booklet
Every stuff with the unit is somehow linked to improving the quality of your drink and helps take it to the next level. Ninja Coffee Bar crafts roughly 100 different style hot and cold specialty brews, which you can find on a coffeehouse menu.
Ninja Coffee Bar – Top Features
Ninja Advanced Technologies
Something that’s an eye-opener, is the efficiency of its Auto-IQ one-touch intelligence that basically only needs “one-touch” to get the drink of your desired size and favorite flavor.
You might also love The Ninja Coffee Bar’s Thermal Flavor Extraction technology that ensures to extract the coffee at just the precise temperature and proper level of water saturation to deliver you a flavorful and balanced cup of java that are never bitter.
Water Reservoir
The 48 oz removable water reservoir is located conveniently on the right side of the coffee maker. Made with clear plastic, twisting counterclockwise releases it from the coffeemaker while reversing the motion will lock it again at its place.
You can make anywhere between 5 to 7 standard coffee cups before replenishing, you can either flip open the half-circle top or reveals the wide mouth for constant and easy refilling.
Brew Basket
The left side of the machine consists of a big Easy-Fill brew basket that slides out quickly and easily to fill your favorite coffee. Moreover, it’s fully removable, which makes it easier to clean effortlessly.
Measuring the perfect coffee grounds is easier with Ninja Scoop as it has 4 marking to make your single-serve and carafe size drinks, so there will be no more guessing for how much coffee to use for your favorite java.
The brew basket only accepts standard No. 4 cone filter papers, or you can also use its specifically designed reusable filter to preserve the natural coffee oils to make each cup full of flavor and aroma every time.
The brew basket shelters the thermal/glass carafe underneath to collect your coffee liquid for the entire family and keep it hot for hours without affecting the quality and taste.
What’s more, there are some other nice features too, for example, the “drip stop” switch manually stops the over-dripping after brewing to prevent messing your countertop.
There’s also an auto-shut-off feature that turns the machine off if not used for a couple of hours, this saves your appliance from unwanted damages and prevents unnecessary energy consumptions.
Brew Sizes and Water Smarts
Speaking about brewing sizes, The Ninja Coffee Bar allows you to choose 4 different drink sizes at just the flip of a switch.
Here is the breakdown of sizes:
- Single-cup (9.5 ounces)
- Travel mugs (14 ounces)
- Half carafe (19 ounces)
- Full carafe (38 ounces)
So, no matter what size you want to brew for yourself or your entire family, this coffee bar will get the job done for you. In addition to that, its brewing station can accommodate large travel mugs as well, makes it easier to fill your thermoses without spilling the counter.
There’s no guesswork for the amount of water, just fill up the water reservoir to the “maximum level” mark, and its Auto-IQ Intelligence will command itself automatically to draw just the right amount of water regardless of the coffee drink and size you select to brew.
Keep in mind, the above mention volumes of drink are for “classic brew” mode. Moving down to the “rich brew” and “specialty brew” modes will give you relatively less liquid coffee across the same spectrum of different brew sizes as it dispenses more concentrated liquid – allowing you to add syrups and milk to articulate plenty of coffee flavors.
Performance
What’s better than having the best brew station just right at the countertop of your kitchenette that will make you cup after cup without slowing and straining its resources?
As the name indicates, The Ninja Coffee Bar is designed to brew anything from hot coffee specialties to iced coffee drinks, all at the comfort of your home.
You won’t need to have prior knowledge about techniques or concentrations to have your hands on your favorite drink. Surprisingly, brewing your best-loved drink with this brew station is just as easy as 1. 2. 3.
It’s foolproof and more like an old-school buttons and dial control panel that lets you select your desired brew size and whatever you’re in the mood to brew.
With its multiple brewing modes, the sky is the limit to personalize your drink that suits your taste buds and matches the style of the beverage you prefer.
Its “Classic Brew” mode delivers you a smooth and balanced flavor of the coffee. Or if you want to take it to the top-notch intense level, just push the “Rich Brew” next time to get a deep and richer flavor drink that stands up to extra milk and flavoring.
It’s blazing hot outside, or you want to enjoy iced coffee games all the summer? Choose “Over Ice Brew” mode to increase the coffee concentration to compensate for melting ice so you won’t have to worry about iced melting that leaves you to drink like tainted water with a coffee hint.
Last but not least, its “Specialty Brew” mode lets you brew cappuccinos and lattes that you can layer with delicious milky foam just like a latte art pro. Why spend a fortune at Starbucks when you’ve your own ninja bar station at home?
More Awesome Features
24-Hour Programmable Timer
I like its pre-programmable brew up to 24 hours in advance, so you can always have your favorite drink right at the moment when you’re.
Self-Cleaning
Cleaning the Ninja Coffee Bar unit is just like an absolute walk in the park – even if you don’t bother using its built-in “Clean” feature. Simple wait for the machine to cool down before detaching the brew basket and any temporary or permanent filter.
You can use soapy warm water to clean any remaining coffee grounds out of the brew basket to make it look like new condition once again.
Outside of the hand-washing unit components, you can also toss them into the dishwasher for deeper and efficient cleaning.
Furthermore, cleaning the glass carafe is also a breeze, however, you may find it hard to clean some extra stubborn coffee strains out. Ninja recommends using the bottle brush to deal with this kind of strain if simple washing with cloth isn’t helping.
So, why there’s need for a “Clean” function? Over time, you’ll probably notice, the Ninja Coffee Bar will begin to accrue a bit of calcium build-ups which is necessary to clean to ensure consistent and great-tasting coffee every time. That’s why Ninja designed this feature to help you deal with this kind of cleaning without the need for any technique or special toolkit.
Performing this process is simply a piece of cake, just fill the water reservoir to 16 ounces with white vinegar and fill the remaining area with clean water. Now press the “Clean” button to begin to the cleaning process. Wait for about 8 minutes.
Once done, rinse out the water tank and carafe. It’s recommended to run the water through the machine two or three times to completely rinse off the vinegar. Otherwise your coffee will taste a bit stranger than regular due to the leftover vinegar.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE NINJA COFFEE BAR FEATURES →
Potential Drawbacks of Ninja Coffee Bar
1. Aesthetics
When it comes to appearance, The Ninja Coffee Bar has a lot that needs to be improved. The bitter truth – its lightweight plastic design looks cheap and more like a flimsier model.
But you don’t need to worry about the quality as it’s made of top-grade material and can last you many years without irking.
2. Occupies More Counter Space
The Ninja Coffee Bar measures 14.75 inches tall at 10.5 inches wide, and 10.8 inches deep while weighs 8.62 pounds (3.9 kg).
That’s normally the standard size of a coffee brewer, but it will certainly eat up lots of counter space as it isn’t just a coffee maker but mainly an entire coffee bar, so its accessories will also occupy kitchen countertop space to spread everything out.
3. Over Brewing
So, why there’s need for a “Drip Stop” button? Definitely, it’s due to unnecessary dripping after brewing that a lot of customers complain about.
It’s not automatic and will require you to push the “Drip Stop” button to avoid over-dripping otherwise, your counter will be messed up and sloppy that will need to be wiped up every time.
What we liked
- Makes excellent quality coffee specialties
- Brew multiple size coffee drinks to meet everybody’s need
- Multiple strength settings to satisfy everybody’s nature of taste
- Permanent filter
- Milk frother to prepare foamy milk to top your lattes and cappuccinos
- Free 40-recipes book to help you make fun trying out plenty of coffee drinks
- 24-hour pre-programmable timer
- Auto-shutoff if not used for 2 hours
- Easy to use
- Easy to clean and removable parts
What we didn’t like
- Over-dripping after brewing
- Plain design makes it look like a flimsier model
- Multiple strength settings to satisfy everybody’s nature of taste
What’s the Bottom Line?
Of course, Ninja Coffee Bar isn’t a flawless model, nor any other coffee maker as well.
With its ability to brew a wide range of coffee specialties, Ninja Coffee Bar is as versatile as I’ve seen – of drip varieties, of course. I admit I’m impressed!
The sheer number of options and multi-brewing capability is truly remarkable. It requires a few button presses to give you your desired drink – in just a matter of few minutes.
When it comes to billing, the Ninja Coffee Bar won’t cost you an arm and a leg. It retails at anywhere $150 to $200, depending on the store. It’s a reasonable price tag, considering the functions and features you all get with the unit.
The Ninja Coffee Bar might not revolutionize the home-brewer industry, but if it’s about variety and selection you seek the coffee bar worths every single penny you spend on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Does it make espresso?
Not true espresso, however, it does make a concentrated cup of coffee that somehow matches to espresso. The major difference is that the espresso machine uses pressure to force the water through the beans to extract the coffee, and Ninja Coffee Bar uses the drip system.
2. Can you use regular coffee grounds, or it needs to be coarse or fine?
Either way is fine, the coffee will taste remarkably great!
However, the majority of the customers reported better results by using the regular coffee grounds.
3. Which one should I pick up, Glass or Thermal carafe, and why?
I’d recommend choosing the thermal carafe as it’s built with double-walled vacuum-insulated stainless steel, so it keeps your coffee piping hot for about 3 hours without affecting the taste.
Conversely, the glass carafe can’t keep your coffee hot for long unless you put it on a warming plate, and there are chances the coffee will taste burnt.
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