Description
The DCC-1170BKNAS is Cuisinart’s 10 cup Thermal Classic: an insulated stainless carafe with no warming plate, 24 hour programmability, a self clean cycle, a 1 to 4 cup setting for small batches, Brew Pause, an easy to read LCD clock, a 60 second reset that remembers where the machine was after a power interruption, and a double filter system pairing a gold tone permanent coffee filter with a charcoal water filter. It measures 7.97 inches deep, 8.13 inches wide and 14.25 inches high.
Ten cups is a sensible capacity that the market mostly skips in favour of twelve. At the usual five ounce measure that is around 50 ounces, or six standard mugs, which is what a household of two or three actually drinks in a morning. Everything else on the specification is aimed at the same thing: making that pot properly and keeping it drinkable.
The Thermal Carafe
There is no hot plate on this machine. Coffee brews into an insulated stainless carafe and stays there losing heat slowly, rather than sitting on a heater that keeps cooking it. That single decision does more for the coffee half an hour after brewing than any brewing feature at this price could.
The trade offs are the familiar ones. You cannot see how much is left, the lid must be seated correctly for the brew to drain properly, and a steel lid has more crevices to clean than a glass one. One habit is worth adopting: rinse the carafe with hot water before brewing into it. A cold steel vessel pulls several degrees out of the first cup, and that is the usual reason owners of insulated machines complain the coffee arrives lukewarm. The listing does not state how long the carafe holds temperature, which is the number that would let you compare it against other thermal machines.
The 1 to 4 Cup Setting
This is the feature most buyers overlook and it deserves attention. A 10 cup brew basket holding a three cup dose leaves a shallow, spread out bed of grounds, and water passes through a shallow bed too quickly to extract properly. The result is the thin, sour cup that gets blamed on the coffee.
A 1 to 4 cup setting changes the machine’s behaviour for small batches, typically by slowing the flow so contact time rises to compensate. It will not fully match a machine with a second, smaller basket, but it is far better than nothing and it means a household that usually wants two cups and occasionally wants ten can own one machine without compromising either.
The 60 Second Reset
The listing describes a 60 second reset that remembers where the machine was in the brewing process and retains its settings. That is a small feature and an unusually thoughtful one.
Most programmable machines lose their clock and their programme the moment the power blinks, which means the delayed start you set the night before quietly does not happen and the machine is flashing at you in the morning. Retaining state through a brief interruption also means a brew that is part way through resumes rather than restarting or stopping, which on a thermal machine matters because a half brewed carafe is not something you can easily rescue. Anyone in an area with unreliable power will appreciate it more than the feature list suggests.
The Double Filter System
Cuisinart pairs a gold tone commercial style permanent coffee filter with a charcoal water filter, and they do completely different jobs. The gold tone filter is the coffee filter: no paper to buy, more oils in the cup, more body and some sediment. The charcoal filter treats the water before it is heated, removing chlorine, which does not boil off at brewing temperature and which flattens aromatics if left in.
Both are consumables in different ways. The charcoal filter is exhausted after a period the listing does not state, and an exhausted filter does nothing while giving you the impression the water is being treated. The gold tone filter needs a proper wash with detergent rather than a rinse, because coffee oils build up in a metal mesh and go rancid; it is the first thing to check if a machine that used to taste fine starts tasting stale. Neither slows scale formation, which is what the self clean cycle exists for.
The Espresso Note That Does Not Belong
The listing’s first bullet is a note about grind coarseness, insufficient tamping, inadequate pressure for a proper brew, and the amount of espresso extracted varying with grind size and dose. None of that applies to this machine. There is no portafilter, no tamper and no pump; it is a drip brewer with a thermal carafe.
That block of text has been pasted in from an espresso machine listing and it appears on several unrelated products across this catalogue. It is worth naming because a buyer skim reading the bullets could reasonably conclude the machine makes espresso, and because it is a useful signal about how much care went into assembling the rest of the page.
What the Specifications Do Not Settle
There is no wattage, no brew temperature, no brew time, no carafe capacity in ounces and no keep warm figure. On a machine whose whole argument is an insulated carafe, not stating how long it holds temperature is the most useful missing number. The colour field reads Black Thermal, which merges a colour with a feature, and the special feature field reads simply programmable.
The self clean cycle is named but never described, so whether it expects a descaling agent or merely runs hot water through is unstated. Since scale is the main cause of premature failure on any heated brewer, that is the omission worth resolving from the manual before purchase.
Who It Suits and Who Should Look Elsewhere
This suits a household of two or three that drinks coffee across a long morning, wants the pot still good an hour later, and sometimes wants only two or three cups. The combination of a thermal carafe, a small batch setting, a self clean cycle and a power interruption reset covers more of what actually affects the cup than most machines at this price.
Look elsewhere if you want a stated brew temperature, in which case the Bonavita BV1900TS publishes its numbers and this one does not, or if you need a full 12 cups, where the Cuisinart DCC-3400 is the same idea two cups larger. The Cuisinart DCC-3500 is worth comparing on features, and the wider drip coffee maker section covers glass carafe alternatives at lower prices.
