I just picked up a Hamilton Beach "The Scoop" single serve coffee maker last night. Drinking the first cup made with it now. Pictures later; sorry. (And now finishing cup #2.)
The coffee is good. It is far superior to the two day old microwaved morning coffee I sometimes have. Today is just plain old Maxwell House Original, my steady standby.
My circumstances are that my work tasks me to maintain a minimalist apartment, not much more than an address, in the city where the office is located. But my wife and I maintain our residence, and she still works, on the east coast.
My work residence coffee pot has been a Mid-'60s Sunbeam electric percolator, which I love. But it doesn't make small quantities well. So I have been brewing a pot, then swilling the leftovers in the morning after nuking a cup in the microwave.
I don't have the time or patience to make pour-over in the morning, so I was looking for a smaller alternative, but I dismissed the K-cups years ago as expensive and environmentally unsound.
First, at only $60 from any number of places, lets be clear this is not a high end machine competing against an Italian coffee maker. It's a pretty well made plastic appliance designed to appeal to the mass market. Fit and finish is good. Nothing fell apart out of the box, and nothing was missing in the box. But it's mostly plastic. Be clear about that.
The coffee basket can double as the coffee scoop. This is by design. There's a handle on it kind of like a giant version of a typical stainless coffee scoop. And it's clearly marked for the large and small quantity fill lines. This scoop/basket probably works fine dipping directly out of an OEM container, but it is a little big for reaching into my canister. So I filled the basket this morning using my normal scoop. I may look for a wider mouth canister, or I may continue to use my current scoop in my current canister. I don't know yet.
Let me add that the basket and secondary filter components are substantial fabricated from stamped stainless steel, so the parts that you must handle the most frequently are much more substantial than I made it sound above. This is pretty good quality budget grade.
A pleasant surprise is that the unit is supplied with two identical scoop/baskets, clearly aimed at a couple. I dare say that this is really a decent first coffee pot for a young couple.
Another very pleasant surprise is that there's a small post on the righthand side of the unit for hanging the baskets. You can hang both if you like, but if the aesthetics of crooked hanging offends your sensibilities then you can store one in the operational position and the second one hangs perpendicular as it should. Regardless of which you choose, the result is that the "coffee pot stuff" remains together, and you don't have to rummage though a drawer of junk to find the second basket when your mother comes to visit. A very thoughtful design parameter that adds only fractional cents to the production costs.
The reservoir is clearly demarcated at 8 oz and 14 oz by steps in the shape. It isn't a sight glass like many other coffee pots have. And since it's all black plastic you have to be looking to see what you're doing. But since I plan to pour water into the reservoir with same cup I place to brew into it doesn't matter.
The delivery tube assembly pivots up separately from the fill door, and feels like a pretty solidly assembled system. The seal when closed is a silicon gasket that should last for years.
The "adjustable cup tray" that's touted so highly in the ad copy isn't all that impressive. It does work, but it is not continuously variable for any cup height as I had expected from the materials. It is an L-shaped bracket that you flip over for one height or the other. The purpose is to position the coffee cup so that the liquid surface is as close as possible to the delivery stream to minimize splash. It works well enough, and it does fit both travel mugs I have as well as my regular coffee cups in the two positions.
The instructions say run a first pass of clean water before using, but I ran a number of pots of water last night trying the combinations of volumes and cups. Everything works about like you would expect. After all, it's only job is to boil a little water and shut off - not rocket science. You do have to fill the reservoir every time. It cannot meter the water for you. It runs to completion. If you want stronger coffee, and you have already got the basket full to the fill line, then use less water. (The instructions are very emphatic to not overfill the basket.)
Note that there are two brew buttons, however: regular and bold. The regular button fires up the unit, and boils to completion. The bold button pauses the action periodically to let the grounds steep. The instructions say 90 seconds to brew, but without breaking out my stop watch for quantitative data it seems that the bold option, what I used this morning, takes a little over two minutes to finish. Either way, the coffee is done before I get the rest of breakfast done.
Yeah, yeah, but can it make a decent cup of coffee? In a word, yes. This morning I had two 14 oz mugs of Maxwell House original made with the baskets filled to the upper fill position and brewed with the bold cycle. Both were good full bodied brews, as good as my percolator. And both were superior to two day old microwaved coffee. And I expect I will have far more control and available variability than the K-cup system.
For now I'm satisfied that this was $60 well spent.
As I said, this isn't a competitor to a high end Italian coffee machine. It is a very comfortable competition to the Keurig system. After one day I cannot say if it's durability exceeds the Keurig systems, but Hamilton Beach has been making small appliances for a long time, and I'm not terribly impressed with the K-cup machines. And there's no plastic in the landfill from this. If you really want to be green you can compost the grounds.
The coffee is good. It is far superior to the two day old microwaved morning coffee I sometimes have. Today is just plain old Maxwell House Original, my steady standby.
My circumstances are that my work tasks me to maintain a minimalist apartment, not much more than an address, in the city where the office is located. But my wife and I maintain our residence, and she still works, on the east coast.
My work residence coffee pot has been a Mid-'60s Sunbeam electric percolator, which I love. But it doesn't make small quantities well. So I have been brewing a pot, then swilling the leftovers in the morning after nuking a cup in the microwave.
I don't have the time or patience to make pour-over in the morning, so I was looking for a smaller alternative, but I dismissed the K-cups years ago as expensive and environmentally unsound.
First, at only $60 from any number of places, lets be clear this is not a high end machine competing against an Italian coffee maker. It's a pretty well made plastic appliance designed to appeal to the mass market. Fit and finish is good. Nothing fell apart out of the box, and nothing was missing in the box. But it's mostly plastic. Be clear about that.
The coffee basket can double as the coffee scoop. This is by design. There's a handle on it kind of like a giant version of a typical stainless coffee scoop. And it's clearly marked for the large and small quantity fill lines. This scoop/basket probably works fine dipping directly out of an OEM container, but it is a little big for reaching into my canister. So I filled the basket this morning using my normal scoop. I may look for a wider mouth canister, or I may continue to use my current scoop in my current canister. I don't know yet.
Let me add that the basket and secondary filter components are substantial fabricated from stamped stainless steel, so the parts that you must handle the most frequently are much more substantial than I made it sound above. This is pretty good quality budget grade.
A pleasant surprise is that the unit is supplied with two identical scoop/baskets, clearly aimed at a couple. I dare say that this is really a decent first coffee pot for a young couple.
Another very pleasant surprise is that there's a small post on the righthand side of the unit for hanging the baskets. You can hang both if you like, but if the aesthetics of crooked hanging offends your sensibilities then you can store one in the operational position and the second one hangs perpendicular as it should. Regardless of which you choose, the result is that the "coffee pot stuff" remains together, and you don't have to rummage though a drawer of junk to find the second basket when your mother comes to visit. A very thoughtful design parameter that adds only fractional cents to the production costs.
The reservoir is clearly demarcated at 8 oz and 14 oz by steps in the shape. It isn't a sight glass like many other coffee pots have. And since it's all black plastic you have to be looking to see what you're doing. But since I plan to pour water into the reservoir with same cup I place to brew into it doesn't matter.
The delivery tube assembly pivots up separately from the fill door, and feels like a pretty solidly assembled system. The seal when closed is a silicon gasket that should last for years.
The "adjustable cup tray" that's touted so highly in the ad copy isn't all that impressive. It does work, but it is not continuously variable for any cup height as I had expected from the materials. It is an L-shaped bracket that you flip over for one height or the other. The purpose is to position the coffee cup so that the liquid surface is as close as possible to the delivery stream to minimize splash. It works well enough, and it does fit both travel mugs I have as well as my regular coffee cups in the two positions.
The instructions say run a first pass of clean water before using, but I ran a number of pots of water last night trying the combinations of volumes and cups. Everything works about like you would expect. After all, it's only job is to boil a little water and shut off - not rocket science. You do have to fill the reservoir every time. It cannot meter the water for you. It runs to completion. If you want stronger coffee, and you have already got the basket full to the fill line, then use less water. (The instructions are very emphatic to not overfill the basket.)
Note that there are two brew buttons, however: regular and bold. The regular button fires up the unit, and boils to completion. The bold button pauses the action periodically to let the grounds steep. The instructions say 90 seconds to brew, but without breaking out my stop watch for quantitative data it seems that the bold option, what I used this morning, takes a little over two minutes to finish. Either way, the coffee is done before I get the rest of breakfast done.
Yeah, yeah, but can it make a decent cup of coffee? In a word, yes. This morning I had two 14 oz mugs of Maxwell House original made with the baskets filled to the upper fill position and brewed with the bold cycle. Both were good full bodied brews, as good as my percolator. And both were superior to two day old microwaved coffee. And I expect I will have far more control and available variability than the K-cup system.
For now I'm satisfied that this was $60 well spent.
As I said, this isn't a competitor to a high end Italian coffee machine. It is a very comfortable competition to the Keurig system. After one day I cannot say if it's durability exceeds the Keurig systems, but Hamilton Beach has been making small appliances for a long time, and I'm not terribly impressed with the K-cup machines. And there's no plastic in the landfill from this. If you really want to be green you can compost the grounds.
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