My coffee maker has forsaken me and tried to kill me, too! As if it wasn’t bad enough that it stopped making coffee for me it also had to scare a few years off my life.
I have one of those pod coffee makers but it’s sort of a generic brand I got along with some coffee. It has worked well for a few years and I love the convenience of it, since I usually only have one cup of coffee in the morning. Well, recently its liquid amounts have been way off, I press the 8 oz button and get 4 oz or I press the 6 oz button and I get 12. I was in denial of course, “oh, it’s just a passing thing, it will get better.” Then it started giving me about a tablespoon no matter what button I pushed. Then the other day the light wouldn’t stay on when I pressed the button. I couldn’t deny it anymore, my friend was dying. Fortunately, I had cold-brewed coffee as a backup.
Today, still in denial, I thought “maybe it’s just got some buildup and I could run some stuff through it to clean it out?” So I pressed a button and the light stayed on. I thought it was kismet because it was working again (sort of). I was standing nearby but not in front of it and the hot water started to come out where it’s supposed to come out. Yay It’s working! Then “BANG!”. I thought I’d been shot. I quickly but shakily shut off the machine, staying low to avoid any shrapnel and then checked myself for damage, except for the rapid heart rate, there was no apparent injuries. I checked out the machine and saw no obvious damage but that was it. That was my friend’s death BANG. I wasn’t going to try to keep him alive when he was literally asking me to pull the plug, so that’s it, my coffee maker is dead.
I really like the pod makers but in my search for a new one I discovered that some Senseos have been recalled (safety issues, I don’t need to go through that again!) and the Home Cafe doesn’t seem to get good reviews and the Keurig is way too expensive and uses a different type of pod, actually a cup, which is more expensive and wasteful. So I guess it’s back to the messy grounds of the old fashioned coffee maker or cold-brewed coffee. I hope they won’t try to kill me.
I guess this might turn into a IMHO thread if people start giving opinions on good, non-homicidal coffee makers. But like most of my threads it will probably just drop like an anvil.
Cuisinart Grind-and-Brew coffee maker, with a clock and timer. Load in beans and water the night before, and you can have hot coffee waiting for you even before you wake up, if you like.
The only similar option you haven’t mentioned is flavia. We had these at my last office, and I liked it well enough. I can’t get a strong enough cup out of any of these, but then I like my coffee “al dente.”
Hmm all these exploding/unsafe coffee makers…sounds like a conspiracy to me. Starbucks doesn’t want to go under so they closed some stores and used the extra money to pay off some of these coffee maker companies to make utterly useless products. Pretty soon no one will ever be able to make coffee at home and you’ll ALL have to stop at Starbucks on the way to work.
I have a couple melitta 1:1 pod brewers, one at my home and one at my moms home. I also have a pod maker so I can make my own custom tea and coffee pods. I got them all at coffee icon if I remember correctly. They also make a k cup adaptor for holding said pods =)
But then I will be awakened by that Gawd awful punishing grinding noise that sends me and the dogs fleeing under the couch when Mrs. Plant grinds coffee beans unexpectedly.
It’s been implied, but seriously, am I going to be the first person here to come out and say how awesome the user name/topic/post combo is?
For advice, though, I can only say that I love, love, love my multiple copies of French press coffee brewers. No moving parts, no confusing electronics. Just wonderful coffee once I wake up and heat the kettle to pour into the Bodum.
After one particularly debauched night, I once forgot to PUT THE POT into the coffee maker before turning it on. My housemate was blearily buttering toast when the coffee maker hissed and started spewing coffee all over the floor. She threw herself across the room, pulled the plug out, grabbed the whole thing and started sprinting towards the door. “IT’S GONNA EXPLODE!!!” she yelled.
I quickly calmed her down by showing her the all too important missing coffee pot.
I love the fact that while I was too hungover to remember to put the pot in, she was likewise too hungover to realize it wasn’t there.
I would encourage all owners of anything more advanced than a standard drip coffee maker to RTFM and clean the thing!!!! A co-worker had a somewhat expensive one die which I discovered was due to a one-way valve in the pump getting stuck with mineral build-up, leading to the heater overheating and blowing the thermal fuse.
I put a sticker on the thing after I fixed it saying to run some vinegar through it every few months, which is all it needs. Though I’d be interested to know why Wile E’s decided to try exploding.
