For many, the coffee maker is among the most frequently utilized electrical devices. It proves incredibly useful for brewing a cup of coffee at any time of your choosing. Have you ever pondered the functioning of a coffee maker? How exactly does a coffee maker warm up the water and manage to make the coffee so flawlessly?
In this article, we will try to give you an illustration of how coffee heats the water. Moreover, we will also discuss the mechanism of the coffee maker. Keep reading the article to find out all the information about the coffee maker.
What’s Inside of the Coffee Maker?
It’s been around 30 years since the first coffee maker was manufactured. After so much honing, the coffee maker device is now better than ever. A typical coffee maker usually consists of the same mechanism and components. They equip reservoir, shower head, heating element, etc., and some other components. Amongst them, the reservoir is the part where the water is stored. The coffee maker utilizes the water during the cycle.
You will find suitable several white tubes usually made of aluminum. It brings the water from the reservoir to coffee grounds. Some machines may pass the water to a drip area from where it falls on the coffee ground. There are also some other colors of the tube along with power cables. Power cables are obviously for transforming electricity while the tubes transform hot or cold water.
There is also a heating element inside the machine which is actually the part that heats up the water. In the below part of the article, we will let you know how the heating element of the coffee maker works to heat the water.
So, How Does a Coffee Maker Heat Water?
As we said earlier, the part that works to heat the water is the resistive heating element. A heating element typically consists of coiled wire. It is very identical to the electric toaster’s coil or the filament of the light bulbs. The heating element helps to heat up the water when you start the brew cycle. It also dispenses hot water based on demand. Furthermore, the heating element helps to keep the temperature at an ideal level.
Most of the machines out there equips the machine between the warming plate and the aluminum water tube. As a result, the heating element can warm the hot plate while also pass the heat to the aluminum water tube. To assure the efficiency of the heat conduction, some machine equips heat-conductive grease. There are buttons on the coffee maker that allows you to control the power on the heating element.
The machine also equips sensors along with fuses to detect and prevent overheating. Moreover, the smart sensors of the machine can cut off the current when it measures that the heating element has become very hot. Moreover, it starts again when the heating elements cool down. This way the machine assures that you are getting the safest performance from the device.
How does a Coffee Maker Works?
Here is how your coffee maker works:
- Once you fill the water reservoir, it goes through the hole below and travels through an orange tube.
- After that, the liquid goes through the one-way valve to an aluminum tube near the heating element. Then it passes through a white tube. Coffee makers utilize gravity to do this.
- Now once you switch on the coffee maker, the heating elements got the power to heat up and also heat the aluminum tube. This makes the water boils inside the machine at a low temperature due to the impact of the pressure.
- As the water boils, the bubbles from it rise through a white tube. This also brings an amount of water to the waiting coffee grounds.
- As the hot water travel through the ground coffee beans and then go to your coffee pot or carafe. That is how your coffee is made.
Note that this is the procedure that the drip coffee maker uses to produce the coffee. There are different variations of coffee makers out there that utilize discrete mechanisms. Such as we can talk about single-brew coffee machines. They use totally different and advanced techniques to produce the coffee.
Can Coffee Maker Boil Water?
The answer is no for most cases. Coffee makers are designed to produce a certain temperature to heat the water. And that temperature is typically below the boiling point of water. The temperature is between 200 F or 96 C. This is the perfect temperature for brewing coffee. It can extract the most flavor from your coffee, assuring a perfect taste. As a result, most coffee maker’s heating elements are designed to produce the exact temperature.
Although the coffee maker produces around 96 C of temperature, it is just a bit less than the water’s boiling point which is 100 C. So, you cannot expect a coffee maker to boil your water. It will be bad if you are living in an area where the tap water quality is bad and you are using the same water to prepare the coffee. That is because as the water will not be boiled it can contain some of the substances which can be harmful to your body.
For such areas, it is recommended to use filtered or bottled water as it assures that your coffee will be safe. Note that if you are using a manual stovetop coffee maker, then you can boil the water in it. That is possible simply by putting the machine on the stovetop at adequate heat. As increasing the heat in the coffee maker in this way is impossible, you cannot do the same thing in the automatic coffee makers.
Conclusion
As you see, the mechanism of the coffee maker is not that complex. What is more interesting is the majority of the coffee maker in the market share the entirely same method although there are some exceptions. We hope that this article will help you to understand how your coffee maker works and what is the mechanism it utilizes to heat the water.
