I've had two Black & Decker drip pots, one with a glass carafe, one with thermal, and right now they're both in my basement, waiting for a garage sale, or a clean-up. I am not a coffee fanatic, but even by my liberal standards, these pots didn't make the cut.
What I wanted was a bare bones electric pot. The advantage of electric over stove top is its automaticity -- wake up in the morning, stagger to the kitchen, throw a switch, go to bathroom, come back and pour coffee. This approach leads to some failings on my part. I grind the coffee the night before, and I rarely remember to warm the carafe, or I do remember, but that trip to the bathroom takes precedence. For a couple of years I had a Bodum Santos electric that worked well and met my needs perfectly. It's in the nature of vacuum pots to make at least decent coffee, but there don't seem to be any electric vacuum pots on the market anymore. The Black & Decker seemed like a reasonable choice since it was essentially free of features and gimmicks that I neither wanted nor needed. My first B&D had a glass carafe, and the second a thermal carafe -- and both were mistakes. They both feature the spring on the bottom of the basket that allows you to take a cup without waiting for the entire pot to brew. I found that whenever I took advantage of that feature, the coffee was cold and weak. I had the same experience when I tried making less than a full pot. Even making 6 cups in an 8 cup machine resulted in cold coffee. Only when I made the full 8 cups was the coffee even marginally satisfactory.
I assume the full explanation, aluminum heater cores and rate of heat transfer, has appeared in this forum often enough, so I'll skip it -- when I took the first mugful in the morning, the machine had been pumping tepid water, without time for the heater to heat up. I would have done better with hot water from the sink. Eventually I gave up, but that's a story for another review. |
