 Old faithful was a Braun Aroma Master that had been in service for
about 15 years. It produced a perfect cup of brewed coffee with a
wonderful aroma so good it usually roused my wife out of bed.Its
death concerned me in two ways: First of all, I had lost a cherished
friend; and second, I was gonna have to find a different replacement
because Braun no longer made coffee makers.
With nothing in the house to make coffee for the following
morning, I made an emergency safari to Wal-Mart to see what they
sold. The coffee makers there were arranged in order from least
expensive to most.
Since my concern was more for perfect coffee than it was for
saving money, I went to the high-priced end of the aisle. The most
expensive there was a Bunn coffee maker that kept water heated and
claimed to put out a pot of brewed coffee in three minutes. We have
one of those at work. Nice coffee maker, but I didn't want to pay
the electric bill for keeping 12 cups of water hot day and night.
The second-most expensive coffee maker really interested me at
$79. It had all the features I thought would be perfect. In fact, at
first glance, I thought I was "in love."
This coffee maker was really good-looking. It had a removable
blue water chamber, which you could take to the sink and fill. It
had a timer so you could have coffee ready for you when you got up
in the morning. It had the controls right on the front with a nice
big "ON" button. I thought its best feature was a stainless steel
carafe that would keep coffee hot and fresh for two to three hours.
Not to speak ill of the dead, my old faithful Braun had only one
downside: It would always dribble coffee on the counter when you
poured, no matter how careful you were. This coffee maker had a
dribble-free pouring spout.
I bought it and took it home. I followed the directions to clean
it and assemble it and make it my own.
I made coffee the next morning manually, not automatically. This
coffee maker was quick. It put out a nine-cup pot in around six
minutes. I poured my first cup of coffee and noticed there was
something wrong with the smell: It smelled like chemicals or burnt
plastic. And, the coffee was lukewarm, not hot. Every morning I
perch my cinnamon-brown sugar pop-tart on the rim of my cup and let
the coffee warm it up on both sides until it is just perfect. This
coffee didn't have any warmth to share. I couldn't even finish a
whole cup because of the burnt plastic smell and taste.
So, I poured out the first pot and started all over again,
believing that perhaps it was a fluke. But the coffee again smelled
and tasted like burnt plastic. And while reading the directions, I
found that stainless steel carafes have to be pre-warmed with hot
water before they are used. Without pre-warming, you get cool coffee
in the carafe. Well, that shoots the idea of setting the timer and
letting the coffee maker make the coffee before I get up in the
morning.
Between the burnt plastic taste and the carafe that needed
pre-warming, I realized the relationship was over. I returned that
first purchase to Wal-Mart.
I went to a hardware store next and bought the cheapest coffee
maker they had for about $23. When I took it home, cleaned it and
prepped it for action, I found that the plastic pieces didn't quite
fit together, and if you weren't careful, the part that held the
grounds would fall off the coffee maker after the water started to
saturate the grounds. You couldn't see through the plastic window to
judge how much water you had poured in. And the coffee was terrible.
I gave it two more tries and then took it back to the store.
I replaced it with a $32 coffee maker by one of those popular
name brands. It was either Bausch & Lomb, Briggs & Stratton, or
maybe it was Black & Decker. It wasn't fancy, but it made a
palatable cup of coffee that lacked depth and certainly lacked
aroma.
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 Researching on the Web turned up information that there is a best
temperature for water to make the best coffee. In order to release
the oils from the coffee beans, the recommended range is 190 to 205
degrees F. This website said there were only six coffee makers that
meet the criteria.
I kept the $32 coffee maker as a backup while I did further
market research.
The next candidate came from a high-end store -- Bed Bath &
Beyond. They had all kinds of fancy coffee makers. Some of them
looked like they would do the laundry while you waited for the
coffee to brew. There were features galore, and since I was on a
roll, I chose the highest-end maker that interested me at $149. It
not only brewed coffee, but would grind the beans too. So, you could
set the schedule, put in the beans, load it with water and wake to a
freshly ground pot of coffee in a stainless steel carafe.
The place where you poured the water into was small and narrow,
and I had a hard time not pouring the water all over the counter. I
wondered, if coffee was made at the right temperature, would that
overcome the cold carafe problem? Nope. It didn't. The coffee was
lukewarm, and the area where the beans were ground was so full of
steam and slobbered bean shards that it was a pain to clean out
every day. Good ideas, but poor engineering.
Next!
The next candidate came from the website's list of six coffee
makers that heated the water to the right temperature. It was made
in Japan, had a weird name that started with a "Z," and despite
having a stainless steel carafe and a narrow water input area, made
pretty good coffee. It even had a red bead in the water tube so you
could accurately judge the level of water in the chamber. But there
was no permanent filter available for it, which meant paper filters
for the rest of its life. It warmed my pop-tart OK, but the coffee
it made was mediocre and was certainly lacking depth and character.
I noticed that most of these coffee makers (I think this was the
ninth now) had a very narrow output spout, meaning that the heated
water only came in contact with a very narrow vertical band of
coffee grounds. Most of the grounds did not contribute anything to
the pot of coffee and for the most part were merely moist. What a
waste of good coffee grounds. And finally, while I am complaining,
when the carafe was warmed up, it was hard to get the lid off the
carafe and I hurt my hand several times trying. I am still searching
for the receipt to return this coffee maker to B B & B.
I was about to give up. Friends showed me their coffee makers and
praised them. But with every one of them I found all the issues that
I have discussed in this article: slow coffee makers, narrow water
input area, not hot enough, hard-to-see filling areas and of course,
dribblers. I also found that some of my friends did not know what
good coffee was. I had grown so frustrated in my search that all I
wanted was a good, hot cup of coffee that tasted and smelled good.
The final coffee maker on the website list also was no longer
made, so I turned to eBay. It was the Michael Graves Hamilton Beach
coffee maker that was sold exclusively at Target for around $40. I
found one on eBay for $68 and $18 shipping. Most of the reviews of
this coffee maker were rave reviews, and so out of desperation, I
bought it.
It came a couple of days later. It has a glass carafe with a
no-dribble spout. It has a removable water container with a wide
input, accepts a permanent filter, heats the water to 192 degrees
and has a special output sprinkler head that pours hot water over
all the grounds. The kitchen filled with aroma with the very first
pot. The flavor was rich and deep, my pop-tart was perfectly warmed,
and the bright blue light was the perfect night light for my kitchen
at night. I finally found my perfect coffee maker.
Now, if it doesn't die for about the next 26 years, it and I will
be very happy together.
[By JIM YOUNGQUIST] |
