Description
The DGB-2 is Cuisinart’s attempt to put a burr grinder on the single serve side rather than the carafe side. There is no carafe at all. Whole beans go into a hopper, a conical burr mill grinds them directly into a reusable filter cup, and the machine brews a single cup of 8, 10 or 12 ounces from a 48 ounce removable reservoir. It will also take any brand of single cup pod, including K-Cups, if you would rather skip the grinding.
That is a genuinely unusual layout. Most grind and brew machines aim the grinder at a full carafe, on the reasoning that anyone who cares enough about freshness to want a grinder is brewing in volume. The DGB-2 assumes the opposite: that a single cup drinker is exactly the person who suffers most from stale pre ground coffee, because they open a bag and work through it slowly. Whether it succeeds is a question about the mechanism, and there is a documented problem there.
The Burr Mill and the 100 Gram Hopper
The grinder is a conical burr mill, which is the right choice for this application. Burr grinders produce a more even particle size than blade grinders, and evenness matters more on a single cup than on a carafe because there is less coffee to average out the inconsistency.
The hopper holds 100 grams of beans behind a sealed lid. That is a small hopper by design, and it is the correct decision: 100 grams is roughly ten to fourteen single cups depending on dose, so beans turn over within a week or two rather than sitting in a large hopper going flat. The sealed lid slows the same process further. Anyone who wants a longer refill interval will find that most grind and brew machines with bigger hoppers are storing beans for longer than the beans want to be stored, so the small hopper here is a feature rather than a compromise. The listing does not state the number of grind settings or the burr material, which is a real omission on a machine sold on its grinder.
The Grounds Spill Owners Report
The mill grinds directly into Cuisinart’s HomeBarista reusable filter cup, which lives in a storage compartment on the left side of the unit. That transfer is where the recurring complaint arises, and it appears often enough in published feedback to state plainly rather than gloss over.
One owner reports that after grinding, the machine overfills the filter cup slightly and some ground coffee spills, describing it as annoying but not enough to stop them using the machine. Another owner reports the same behaviour more sharply, says other reviewers have reported it too, and states that when they contacted Cuisinart the representative acknowledged the company was aware of the issue and could not say whether a fix would be offered. Those are published owner accounts rather than measurements taken here, but two independent reports of the same mechanism, plus a manufacturer acknowledgement described by one of them, is a pattern worth weighing. If a small amount of grounds on the counter each morning would irritate you, this is the specific reason to buy something else.
Reservoir, Cup Sizes and Water Filtration
The reservoir holds 48 ounces, is removable, and is paired with a charcoal water filter. Forty eight ounces is large for a single serve machine, running to four 12 ounce cups between refills, and the easy view water window means you can check the level without lifting the lid. The charcoal filter is a meaningful inclusion at this price, since it reduces both the taste of chlorinated tap water and the rate at which scale builds.
Cup sizes are 8, 10 and 12 ounces by push button. That range is narrower at the bottom than machines offering a 4 or 6 ounce setting, so if you want a short concentrated cup this is not the machine. The drip tray is removable for travel mugs, though the listing never states the maximum mug height it clears, which is a standard omission across this whole category and an annoying one on a machine explicitly mentioning travel mugs.
Footprint and a Weight Figure That Is Wrong
Recorded dimensions are 11.02 inches deep, 7.28 inches wide and 12.67 inches high. A 7.28 inch width is narrow for a machine with a built in grinder, and the storage compartment on the left side is part of how Cuisinart achieved that. One published owner comment notes it fits under their cabinet, which the 12.67 inch height makes plausible.
The item weight is recorded as 1 pound. That is wrong. A machine with a burr mill, a motor, a heating element, a pump and a 48 ounce reservoir does not weigh a pound; the grinder assembly alone weighs more than that. Treat it as a data entry error rather than as a portable appliance. The voltage field has the same problem in a different form, reading 1.1E plus 2 volts, which is 110 written in scientific notation.
What the Specifications Do Not Settle
The coffee maker type field reads espresso machine, which this is not, and the listing’s first bullet is a block of copy about grind coarseness, tamping and espresso extraction pressure that has been pasted in from an espresso machine listing. There is no portafilter here and no espresso function. The operation mode field says manual on a push button machine.
The included components field lists the HomeBarista reusable filter cup as included, while the second bullet describes it as optional. On this model the components field is the more credible of the two, since the grinder has nowhere else to grind into, but it is still a contradiction on the same page and worth confirming. Genuinely absent are wattage, brew time, brew temperature, grind setting count and burr material.
Who It Suits and Who Should Look Elsewhere
The DGB-2 suits a single cup drinker who buys whole beans, wants them ground at the moment of brewing, values a 48 ounce reservoir and a charcoal filter, and can tolerate a small amount of ground coffee escaping during the transfer. Nothing else in this size class puts a burr grinder on the single serve side. The Cuisinart DGB-800 is the version that grinds for a full carafe.
Look elsewhere if the grounds spill would bother you, if you want a carafe, or if you want a short 4 to 6 ounce cup option. Households wanting the grinder aimed at a full pot should compare the Cuisinart SS-GB1 or the Cuisinart DGB-400. Anyone who would rather keep the grinder separate from the brewer, which is the more reliable arrangement in the long run, should look at a standalone unit in our burr grinder section and pair it with a simpler machine from the single serve range. The Cuisinart SS-10 Premium is the simpler machine to pair with a separate grinder.
