Hausfrau Product Review

Recently, we purchased our fourth coffee maker in twelve months. I.am.not.kidding. As a matter of fact, I am guessing that we are on at least our 25th coffee maker since we got married in 1994. Part of the challenge is that we are power coffee drinkers. We drink ALOT of coffee--especially on the weekends. And if we have friends over on the weekends? Fugetabout it. It runs all day for three days. Another challenge is that we are klutzy. We have broken so many coffeepots, and wouldn't you know--it's always the one with no replacement carafe available. Thirdly, they are all crap with a capital C. We are always amazed when we stay with friends who we've not seen in a year and they still have the same coffee maker. I just don't understand.

We've purchased them all (except a Bunn and those coffee makers with coffee pods). Proctor Silex, KitchenAid, Krups, Mr. Coffee, Delonghi, Braun, Hamilton Beach, Cuisinart. We've purchased Melitta coffee presses (love them but they don't make them large enough for a power drinker.) We've spent $20 and we've spent considerably more. We've had the most basic of models and the models with all of the bells and whistles (except for the grind and brew--our friends HATED it.) We've studied consumer reports and we have flipped a coin to choose one. It doesn't matter. They always let us down.

We currently have these two little gems in the basement collecting dust:

I ordered the white one from JC Penney days before we moved into our new house so it would be waiting for us when we got there. Our previous coffee maker bit the dust after a particularly rough but memorable "Goodbye New Jersey Party Weekend." We were minutes from a Starbucks, so it wasn't a hardship to get coffee until moving day. I thought that two carafes and the $100 price tag would mean lots o'coffee, despite the fact that nowhere on the website did it list the cup capacity. I was wrong. Those two sizeable carafes make a whopping 4 cups each. It took up too much space on the counter to be useful. Why didn't I return it, you ask? The freaking movers took the box it came in and JC Penney wouldn't take it. Bastards. The other one is a Hamilton Beach Stay & Go. Love it. Too bad I shattered the glass liner inside the stainless steel carafe when I dropped it a few weeks ago. Guess what? They don't sell replacement carafes. I've been trolling Ebay too, to no avail. I usually have a spare Gevalia in the basement to use, but I was fresh out. Don't act like you've never ordered a Gevalia. We've ordered so many that we have even used
our dogs' names for creating new accounts to get the coffee makers. They are just as good as the rest. We are no longer conveniently close to a coffee shop, so I went to Target.

I was getting ready to purchase an old fashioned stovetop percolater when I happened upon this:
Sweet! No more carafe to break. It makes 12 cups. It stays warm for two hours. And it was on sale for under $40. Who cares if it looks like the pop machine in the McDonalds drivethru?! We've had it for almost three weeks and it's still working. Just to be safe, I will check out Gevalia's latest offering and order it under my husband's middle name.