A coffeemaker is a kitchen appliance used to brew coffee without having to boil water in a separate container. While there are many different types of coffeemaker using a number of different brewing principles, in the most common devices, coffee grounds are placed in a paper or metal filter inside a funnel, which is set over a glass or ceramic coffee pot. Cold water is poured into a separate chamber, which is then heated up to the boiling point, and directed into the funnel. This is also called automatic drip-brew.

Brewing coffee through the ages

Making a cup of coffee is a deceptively simple process. Simply take roasted and ground coffee beans, add hot water, and consume the infusion. Throughout the 19th and even the early 20th centuries, it was considered adequate to add ground coffee to hot water in a saucepan, boil it until it smelled right, and pour the brew into a cup.
The first modern method for making coffee — drip brewing — is more than 125 years old, and its design had changed little. The "Biggin", originating in France ca. 1800, was a two-level pot holding coffee in an upper compartment into which water was poured, to drain through holes in the bottom of the compartment into the coffee pot below. Around the same time, the French developed the "pumping percolator," in which boiling water in a bottom chamber forces itself up a tube and then trickles (percolates) through the ground coffee back into the bottom chamber.