OXO Good Grips Cold Brew Coffee Maker, 32 oz, Iced Coffee Maker with Carafe

Why it's worth it

The OXO's perforated rainmaker lid spreads water across the grounds instead of drilling a hole through the middle of them. A brew-release switch drains the concentrate into the glass carafe when you're ready, and it shuts off the moment you lift the carafe away.

The rainmaker lid is the one design feature here that actually changes what's in your cup. Pour water into a plain jar of grounds and it carves a channel down the center, leaving dry pockets around the edges that never really steep. You taste that as a thin, sharp batch. The OXO's lid spreads the pour across the whole bed at once, and published reviews of immersion brewers routinely single it out for how evenly it saturates.

Then there's the release switch, which sounds like a gimmick until you've used a brewer without one. You set the brewing chamber on the carafe, flip the switch, and gravity does the draining while you make breakfast. Pull the carafe off mid-pour and the flow stops on its own. No tipping a heavy jar over a strainer, no grounds sliding into the coffee at the last second.

From our review of 10 cold brew coffee makers, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +The rainmaker lid is the one design feature here that actually changes what's in your cup
• +Then there's the release switch, which sounds like a gimmick until you've used a brewer without one
• +You get about 32 oz of concentrate per batch, which OXO rates at up to 14 drinks once you cut it with water or milk
• +Cleanup is about as easy as it gets for a brewer with moving parts

What to know

• –It's plastic, and it costs more than glass brewers that make perfectly good cold brew
• –Leaks come up often enough in owner feedback to mention
• –It's tall. Assembled, it needs real vertical clearance, so it isn't the one to steep inside a packed refrigerator