Mr. Coffee

I bought a Mr. Coffee coffee maker when they first came out and drip brew began to replace percolators. They seemed primitive and after I went to Europe and had a succession of Krups and Braun coffee makers, I thought I'd left this cheap American product behind.

My favorite in Europe was a coffee maker whose manufacturer I can no longer remember. It was said to be designed according to Norwegian specifications -- they are the biggest per capita drinkers of coffee in the world -- and what distinguished it was that it flooded the coffee with water, much as brewing by hand does, so that the grounds steep a bit.

In my latest search for a machine that makes a clean, crisp pot of coffee, I did come across a coffee maker that sounded similar but it was out of stock and no guarantee it would ever be back in stock. So I bought a Melitta with a thermos carafe. It cost a sufficient amount of money to make me think I was getting a solid product and I was curious to try a thermos.

I didn't much like it, however. It was not handy and the thermos was heavy and hard to use. The worst part was that it appeared to build up some muck in the cap of the thermos, which of course has some tricky design to open up for the brewed coffee to enter but close to keep it warm. After a couple of days, the coffee tasted muddy and I had to run an "empty" cycle to clean it out.

Back to the drawing board. I was tempted just to get the Cuisinart, which seems to be the current favorite. When I went to Macy's, Cuisinart was running a promotion that had literally pushed all others brands off the shelves. But in Beach Haven the weekend before, the rental house had a Mr. Coffee model which looked fine and brewed a pretty good cup of coffee. That particular model is no longer available, but I got the model they had at Macy's for $30.

Guess what -- at least for the moment I'm getting that clean, crisp pot of coffee. I didn't need the water filter because I now filter my own water. I'm beginning to suspect that the "cupcake" filter might actually be better than the cone. It's a trade-off having the glass carafe on a hot plate instead of the thermos, but it suits my coffee drinking habits. So until I find that perfect coffee maker, it looks like good old Mr. Coffee is going to do the trick.