My brief history with coffee

Posted November 2nd, 2009 by Kimberly Dowd

Not long after I moved into my deeluxe apartment in the sky, I bought a Black & Decker Home Cafe single-serving coffee maker. It used teensy pods and could brew a small, medium or large size cup of coffee. I loved it to bits and pieces. Then it broke.

So we (by then “I” became “we”) went to Bed, Bath & Beyond and, saddened that the Home Cafe was discontinued, bought a Senseo single-serving coffee maker. I didn’t love it as much, because it took longer to heat up the water and only brewed a 4 oz or an 8 oz cup (four ounce cup? Seriously? Who drinks only 4 ounces of anything?). I’d have to cycle it twice to fill my 12-oz travel mug. Plus, it was too small to accommodate that travel mug so I had to brew my coffee into my Pyrex measuring cup and then pour it into my mug.

After commisserating on the coffee issue, WM found a Home Cafe model on eBay. We bought that one & put the Senseo away. Life was good again and I had my mug filled in very little time and only one cycle.

‘Til one day my coffee tasted like burned dirt and melted rubber. The Home Cafe broke. The Senseo returned to the counter, and the stupid Pyrex measuring cup returned. To fill both our mugs for after-dinner coffee, we had to use 2 pods and go through 4 brew cycles.

This week, we did some thinking and realized that we could probably save money and time by ditching the pod system altogether and brewing a real POT of coffee.

Now meet the newest man in my life: Mr. Coffee:

It makes 12 cups of coffee in a 12-minute brew cycle. Plus, it’s programmable so I can set it to start brewing at 7:45 so I’ll be able to fill my mug at 8 to head out.

The coffee is a LOT stronger than the pods we’re used to, so we’re in the process of determining exactly how much we need to put into the pot.

Yes, Virginia, this is why I have a blog. To detail the boring minutiae of my life and to document that it has taken me 37 years to own a proper adult coffee pot.