Coffee transitions

I finally took a plunge and bought a coffee maker despite all the mixed reviews. The odd thing is that if I had not done any research I would probably have just gone ahead and bought one instead of agonizing over it. I like my old thermal carafe coffee. The drip coffee makers with a hot plate leaves a burnt taste sometimes. I can only conclude that the negative reviews from those who had trouble using it are from those switching from a maker with a hot plate to one one without (hence a thermal carafe).

Here are some things that I discovered during the transition about 10 years ago.

1. You cannot fill the water reservoir with the thermal carafe. This seems to be really bad for those who are used to measuring and filling with a glass carafe and hot plate combination. It seems that over the years technology must have improved in order to allow us to do this but apparently not. The thermos type container does not appear to have advanced at all. Spillage always results no matter how careful I am. So, yes, you will need a separate vessel to fill the reservoir.
2. You have to unscrew the top of the carafe all the way in order to pour out the coffee as opposed to just loosening it. I don’t know why this is so, but so it is. I have the same problem in coffee shops when trying to pour out cream from their thermal carafes. No matter how much I loosen the cream just won’t come out and if I loosen too much, the top falls out (all over the coffee!). I always end up taking the top off anyway.
3. The coffee brewed using a thermal carafe is much cooler than one that comes from a drip coffee machine with hot plate. I would have expected this to be the other way around and again I don’t know why this is so. I don’t mind it because I like to able to drink it right away (well, maybe let it sit for 5 minutes or so) but if you are a coffee nurser, the coffee will get cold very quickly.

There is definitely a stagnation in coffee making machines (at least the thermal carafe ones anyway). It’s been a2 weeks since I bought the machine and it’s still working. I can only hope that it will last as long as the previous one which was bought from Gevalia at $10 plus coffee subscription which I promptly canceled.