Coffee & Coffeemakers

I am finally getting my taste for coffee back. I had a nasty sinus infection two or three years ago about the time my Dad died. Terrible, I can't remember whether it was two or three years ago? Let's see. He was 87 when he died, he was born in 1918, so his last birthday must have been in 2005 (7 plus 8 equals 15, and 2005 is the most recent year that ends in 5). He died in January, so that must have been 2006, so it was only two years ago, not three. Thank you, memory.

Anyway, back in August we took a trip to Chicago and spent a few days at the Chicago Hilton where they had these little two cup Cuisinart coffee makers that made pretty good coffee using these little prepacked bags of coffee. There was a coffee man who came around every day, dropping off your allotment of these coffee packs.

So I am getting my taste for coffee back and I would like to have a cup of coffee without having to put my shoes on and drive the two miles to McDonald's. (I think their coffee is fine, and it is about as cheap as you can get, and they even put the creamer in for you, which may be to your liking or not). A while back we bought a Senseo one cup coffee maker at Costco. It looked like it was everything we wanted. Put the packet of coffee in, pour in a cup of water, put the cup under the spout and press the go button. Wrong. Looks good, but sounds terrible. Noisy like a freight train. Coffee was okay, but the noise was unacceptable. I think it was made by Philips. Another reason for me to hate Philips. Took it back.

This Christmas I took another swing at coffee. My wife got me a Cuisinart two cup coffee maker. This one is much bigger, it is about twice as tall as the one at the Hilton. It is designed to use travel cups (supplied) and has a small filter basket. Well, we have a regular coffee maker with a filter basket, and we use it sometimes, but you never know how much coffee you are going to need. On weekends it will usually all get consumed, but weekdays, that does not happen. And besides, it uses a filter, which means you have to get the filter out, futz with it to get to stay open so you can pour the coffee in, and then hope that one side does not fall over and let grounds into your drink. That is a real bummer. And then you have to figure out how much coffee to put in. I do not want to have to figure this out. The directions are conflicting and vague. For instance: How much coffee does a 10 cup coffee maker hold? About five. They use four ounce cups! Nobody drinks four ounce cups of coffee. Who do they think they are kidding? And then the instructions on the coffee want you to measure one and a half tbsps for each cup of coffee. What the heck is a tbsp? More importantly, where is my one and half tbsp measuring cup? And then when you measure it out it you get coffee that is strong enough to peel paint.

The last place I worked had a Bunn coffee maker. We had a green measuring cup of some arbitrary size we used to scoop coffee into the filter. Some people used one and one half of these scoops. Some people used two. So you never knew what kind of coffee you were going to get. Good, weak, or wacko strong.

I am not interested in measuring coffee. I do not want to make several pots and see which one is best. What I would really like is a coffee vending machine. Fill it with 50 pounds of coffee beans and hook up the water supply. Press the button and it grinds the beans and brews one cup of coffee. No waste, no measuring, no fooling around. But vending machines are very expensive. So I am trying to make do with my two cup Cuisinart.

I bought some Senseo pods at the local grocery store and have been trying them out. It takes two to make one decent cup of coffee, four for a travel mug. I think this may be because the Senseo machine brews coffee under pressure. So more experimentation is in order. I think my next attempt will be with Folger coffee bags, which are similar to tea bags. Since they are made to work without pressure, they may work out all right.

Okay. I finished writing this entry and then I went and looked for pictures, because pictures are worth a thousand words, and that's when I found the picture of Hilton coffee maker. So now I am going to see if I can find one. Cheers.

Update December 2016 replaced missing pictures.