what coffee maker won't I have to repurchase in a few years?

[Nate Nagel]

Couple years ago the girlie bought a new Mr. Coffee "thermal" coffeemaker because she liked the eco-friendliness of not having a heating element under the carafe, and also it had a timer so you could set it up the night before.

Fast forward to recently - the lid of the carafe doesn't pour nicely anymore. Would like to buy a new lid, or a new carafe if I had to. Well, it's not available on Mr. Coffee's online store which is apparently run by a third party. When I contacted them, they basically said "if it ain't on the web site, we don't sell it" and suggested I contact Mr. Coffee customer service. Which I did, something like four days ago, with no response yet.

So... is there another brand of coffeemaker that wouldn't leave me high and dry like this? Or should I just give up on the "thermal" thing altogether and buy the cheapest regular coffeemaker with a timer that I can find, so I don't have to worry about a specific carafe?

nate

[aemeijers]

Or just give up on the plastic crap and buy a single-burner Bunn like you have in the break room at work. Expensive, but it will outlive you. And replacement carafes are available at pretty much any restaurant supply. Or for a more realistic answer, just get one of those cone-shape deals where the filter and coffee fit in the top, and a teakettle for the stove. Set it up the night before, and while you are brushing teeth, wander out to kitchen and flip the burner on. By the time you are out of the shower, the water will be hot enough to pour.

-- aem sends...

-- aem sends...

[HeyBub]

Don't get one with a timer - that's just one more thing that can go wrong. Get a separate timer; the kind that the pot plugs into and in turn plugs into the wall. My timer, so far, has outlived three ten-dollar coffee pots.

[benick]

I 2nd the Bunn Pour-O-Matic....A pot of coffee is never more than 3 minutes away....Even using the hell out of it (3+ pots a day) it lasts for years...Have gone through a couple in the last 15 or so years and love them...About a hundered bucks or so..Just replaced the old one...Got the new one at Walmart.....HTH....

[Jon Danniken]

Make it by hand. Boil water in a pot on the stove, remove pot from stove, add coffee, and let it sit for a minute or two. Finally, pour it through a filter cone into whatever receiving vessel holds your coffee before it goes into your mug.

I use a quart-sized mason jar as my receiver, and one of those gold filters in the cone. Makes an outstanding cup of coffee, far better than any coffee maker.

Jon

[SMS]

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[tmclone]

Do the REALLY eco-friendly thing and forget the timer. Set it up the night before, punch the button when you head into the shower, and then TURN OFF the coffeemaker and pour the entire pot into a stainless steel coffee warmer when you get out of the shower. The contents stay hot all day, the container costs about $8 and lasts forever, and the coffee tastes great all day because it's not being over heated for hours.

[Nate Nagel]

hey, that's a good tip. just checked their web site, sure enough they sell replacement parts. Already have a couple of their other kitchen things - I'm sure that at least the rice cooker is from them - as the girlie's mom is Japanese, and they sell a lot of Japanese cooking type stuff. Don't recall a problem with anything, and she's had at least the rice cooker since college, I'm pretty sure.

nate

[Nate Nagel]

That's what the one I have does, but automatically.

Unfortunately, the only way to pour out the coffee now is to unscrew the lid from the carafe, which isn't really that big a deal, but annoying - so I figured I'd buy a new lid. The result of that attempt (which I figured would take a couple minutes of keyboard time) is this thread.

nate

[Phisherman]

I buy the cheapest Mr Coffee maker. They last 6-15 years, used twice daily. But, I turn it off immediately after each brewing. Sometimes you can find a Mr Coffee pot at a garage sale for cheap.

[Ashton Crusher]

I bought one for our office. It didn't last a year. Didn't make very good coffee either. Replaced it with an $18 noname from some discount place, coffee tastes as good or better and it's still chugging along 3 years later. No more expensive coffee makers if I buy them.

[Roger Shoaf]

I suspect you have "gone through" them as you didn't bother to mend them. There is not much to go wrong on these and what could go wrong is very simple to fix.

[Phisherman]

I believe a good cup of joe has to do how the coffee is made, rather than the kind of maker (or its value). I used to make coffee at a restaurant, and everyone told ME that I made the best coffee! My "secret," as strange as it is in this case, was that I watered the coffee down a little (maybe 15%) with plain hot tap water which was enough to remove some bitter taste. It helps to have a clean maker, clean pot, and freshly ground French-roast beans too.

[salty]

It's not recommended to drink hot water from the tap. It is not as "plain" as you think.

[Lee B]

If you are only making one or two cups of coffee at a time, you might also want to think about a "single serve" brewer. I have a Senseo that takes a minute or so for the water to heat up and then about 30 seconds to make a cup of coffee. Second cup would be another 30 seconds. And since you make each cup fresh, you don't have to worry with the thermal carafe or a heating element under the carafe. I just brew directly into my mug.

My Senseo is admittedly a low end model. There are other SS machines that have lots of bells and whistles, including timers. There are models that take pods and ones that use those plastic cups. If she likes the eco-friendly part, she'd probably prefer the pods.

Informative forum at

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[usenet-659f31de7f953aeb]

I had a Pour-O-Matic. It does make a decent pot, and does it quickly. Unfortunately I had trouble with mine: first, hit with a series of manufacturer recalls, it seems like I spent more time sending it back and unpacking the new one than I did using it. Finally, after about a year of use on the last one, it developed a charming habit of blowing the circuit breaker every couple of days or so. Turns out that the tank heater tube had corroded through, exposing the contents of the water tank to live electrical parts. Apparently it had been resistance-heating the water itself, rather than the nichrome wire, for some time....

After that I wasn't enjoying my $100+ investment anymore. I put it on a shelf in the garage and bought a little 4-cup maker from Shopko for $15. It's slow, but economical for making the one big cuppa mud that I drink every day.

[LouB]

Check out Walmart

[Tony]

I learned to add a pinch of salt if it's bitter. Just a pinch.

[Tony]

From what tap? From mine? And is cold water OK but hot water bad?

[Jules]

BTDT, with a Bodum one. Piece of crap; the surface of the heating plate started to rust quickly, the valve that's supposed to shut things off unless the pot's underneath broke in a couple of weeks, the pipework within the heating element part filled up with sediment. The rubber feet fell off, then the glass pot suddenly cracked one day (without being hit on anything).

I've looked around the stores, but everything seems to be equally plastic-fantastic and built like crap, no matter how much you pay. Wife has her eye on a thermal one which might be the same as yours, so I'll have to check for that - thanks for the warning if so :-)

We boil water in the kettle now and just use the filter part of the Bodum (actually it took paper filters, but we found a wire basket that'd fit from somewhere - but even that's starting to fail now and needs replacing). *Much* quicker to make. I like my coffee hot anyway, not just slightly warm, so it suits me fine that way; the only issue is not being able to leave it and do its stuff.

I really don't know why there's so much crap on the market - I mean it's not like it's hard to make something that heats water and pours it through a filter into a pot, but all the vendors of "home" equipment seem to screw it up nicely. In the spirit of the newsgroup, I'm tempted to build my own...

cheers

Jules