Blog of Death

Crappy Coffee Makers Galore

May 1st, 2006

What's with coffee makers these days? Does anybody not make a coffee maker that either doesn't leak, or doesn't have some funky wierd rubber smell and/or taste to the coffee, or doesn't burn out in a month? I've had some pretty bad experiences with poor quality coffee makers recently.

Hamilton Beach Stay or Go: This coffee maker was really promising. A little bit on the higher side of the price range ($75) when I got it.. slick looks, nice features (brew directly to two travel mugs.) Problem is, after a month or so, the coffee started getting this really funky smell / taste. After two pots of it I could not take it anymore, unhooked the maker, and took it apart. I found the problem to be this short section of orange rubber hose that is located on the bottom of the water tank in the back. You can pull it out by opening the top lid on the maker and reaching in. I pulled this out and sure enough, that was the funky taste/smell in my coffee. I don't know if the rubber was rotting or was burnt (overheated water?) but it was gross and stank even from a distance.

Cuisinart Grind n' Brew: We bought this coffee maker for our department where it enjoyed fairly heavy usage (IT departments top the charts for coffee consumption I think.) After a couple of months, what did we find? Same thing as the Hamilton Beach maker above - that funky smell & taste of bad rubber... I also thought the coffee filter tray mechanism was cheaply built. In fact, if you take the stainless steel faceplates off of this maker and you have a $35 coffee maker with a $25 grinder built into it... for $179.99. And you can't even put the grinder components into the dishwasher. What kind of useless piece of kitchen equipment doesn't go in the dishwasher? So we returned it to get...

Another Hamilton Beach Unit (43244C)!: This one was a 12-cup maker, fairly simple no-frills, glass carafe, but still $60. Does it brew good coffee? We'd know if it could hold water. It leaks all its water out the bottom! Pour in a carafe full of water and 3/4 of it ends up on the counter below the machine. What a piece of crap (I get to go back to exchange it today.)

GRRRRRR!!! Does anybody make a coffee maker that isn't a piece of turd?

Best Experiences with Coffee Makers

BUNN GR10 (white): We had this coffee maker where I worked previously. Again, it was used heavily, and I must say, what a great coffee maker! While it had a few forgivable things I didn't like about it, it made coffee very quickly (due to the dual-tank water system) and it [b]always[/b] tasted excellent. No funky tastes or smells, no crappy cups of coffee. The minor downsides was that it took a bit of practice to get the right amount of water into it (the dual tank system was easy to over-fill if you didn't know what you were doing) and you have to remeber that closing the water lid starts the brew, not turning on the burner switch. But those are things easily learned after the first few mop-ups and then you're in coffee paradise.

Mr. Coffee El-Cheapo Maker: My mom is also a major coffee drinker, but she drinks decaf (probably a good thing!). Her maker is on pretty much 12 hours a day so it's as good of a testing environment as any - primarily for the heater, which will eventually burn out on most makers. She doesn't believe in spending big bucks on fancy equipment, and I've found that the cheaper drip makers are the ones which have served her the best. She used to have this $35 maker which burned out in a month and a half. She then replaced it with this Mr. Coffee that was on sale at Wal-Mart for like $12 and that lasted her almost 8 months.

The Veridct: I have to run and replace this piece of crap Hamilton Beach (where the "drip" happens below the machine) and I'm debating whether to go and buy a cheapie-model, in hopes that the no-frills design turns out to be really durable, or to dish out a few extra bucks and get a commercial-grade coffee maker by BUNN... All I know is I won't be buying any more mid-range ($50-80) stainless coffee makers. They seem so far to be the worst ones you can buy!

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