Our old Mr Coffee died recently. It was old, and had a very good life.
My gf decided she was going to buy a replacement, because I usually look for a good deal and she thought money shouldn’t be a primary concern for something used daily. So, she bought a Bunn that cost more than I’d have ever spent on a machine that heats water. One of the selling points was that it makes a pot of coffee in 4 minutes.
When it arrived I set it up as per the directions, but I was surprised to see that it is able to produce a pot in 4 minutes because it is always on with hot water ready to go. When you add water to make a pot you are replacing the already heated water you are about to use.
We have a water dispenser (the ones that use the five gallon jugs). It has hot, cold, and neutral buttons. You can turn the hot one off so it isn’t always on (which we do) but it’s certainly an option.
Sure seems like it. The side of the coffee maker is always very warm to the touch.
If I want to turn off the constant heat I would have to unplug it and start from scratch each morning, changing the 4 minute cup to a 20 minute cup (you have to fill the reservoir in stages).
At work we have a (big) coffee maker that always has a hot tank of water. The thing to remember about those is that they always have a big tank of hot water in them. Generally not an issue until you decide to pick it up and move it and the water starts spilling/splashing out.
If you’re only making coffee once or twice a day, yeah, probably. It could be mitigated with a timer that shuts it off at night and the majority of the rest of the day other than a half hour or so before you make coffee. But at that point, you might as well just get a regular coffee maker.
Sounds like a joke for home use, unless you’re painfully impatient and drink a lot of coffee, and thinking about it, the one could easily lead to the other.
These are commercial units, which I’ve never seen in a residence. Coffee services did supply them to the construction departments of motion picture crews I worked in - when twenty people broke for their morning coffee, it was a poor idea to slow them down.
I recommend what I’ve used for decades: a Cuisinart with an insulated carafe that shuts itself off when the batch is finished. Doesn’t continue to cook the coffee to death (gag) and will hold a pot (with some loss of heat; use your microwave) with very little degradation of flavor.
We have this water boiler/heater at home for “always ready” hot water for tea at just the right temperature. Probably not the most energy efficient item to own, but considering the appliances/electronics we run on a regular basis, the constant ~25W drain is pretty negligible. And, the convenience is significant.
Heh, now that seems like something she would actually appreciate. She works from home. After her morning coffee she sips hot water throughout the day. She boils water in a teakettle (on the stove) and fills an insulated carafe.
Yeah. This is a great appliance. My wife had it before we got together, and I was skeptical of it at first (using energy all the time! space on the counter! who even needs hot water that regularly! If a kettle on the stove was good enough for caveman Og, it’s good enough for me!). But, it really is massively functional and easy to use for anyone who uses hot water on a regular basis.
It’s close enough to the sink that whenever it gets low/empty, we just use the sink hose-thingy (technical term) and fill the pot again without having to move it or anything.
This. I have a KitchenAid coffee maker that I fill up the night before with water and coffee. I set the timer for 5:45 and when my alarm goes off at 6, I can walk into the kitchen and have hot coffee all ready and waiting for me.
I assume it started as a diet thing. She hates artificial sweeteners, avoids caffeine after her morning coffee, and has been sipping hot water for years.
ETA: I like ice/water/lemon juice, which I call faux lemonade. I go through a bottle of lemon juice every couple weeks.
It is generally a feature of a commercial model, so one can make coffee faster. Not something I would recommend for a home, but to each their own. It’s not hard to set up a basic coffee maker to a smart timer so one can activate it on a timer or voice command from bed (assuming one set it up the night before).
But if one wants to spend some cash I would recommend a grind a brew, nothing like freshly ground and brewed coffee ready in the morning. I’d take that in a glass carafe over preground coffee in a thermal carafe, though I’m sure you can find both together.
