The Cone’s unique rod design has both its supporters and detractors, I am a supporter. The rod is easy to clean and easy to maintain. Certainly stylish and must be displayed on the counter. Brew great coffee, even though it sometimes takes a good ten minutes or more. Made of first class materials.
Negative Product Points
Has a decent price tag. People have reported breaking them, but they are glass after all. Sometimes a Cona can be little finicky, deciding it will clog up. It a little difficult to get the bottom globe really clean.
Detailed Commentary
The Cona D is indeed a work of art, which like most art often requires a bit of patience. The glass rod, which acts as the filter between the two globes, is unique to the Cona pots. Many of those on alt.coffee are not fans of the glass rods and replace them with other filters. Personally I prefer using the glass rod as most filters out there are metal, the natural enemy of coffee brewing. In addition, the glass rod so easy to clean and maintain.
The coffee one gets from a Cona, after one waits a good while, is a high quality coffee without any trace of sediment. I find this, however, to be a drawback to some coffees. The best way to describe this is to compare it to French Press coffee, which feels thicker on the palate. Coffee from a Cona is a thinner coffee, but in a very refined way. It takes time and experimentation to decide which coffees work better with which method.
Warning: These things can be dangerous. To speed along the process I started placing the Cona on the stove(which requires some faith that the thing will not tip over). The stove brings the water to boil faster and “move north” into the top globe. Well, the water in the bottom globe appeared to be hot enough so I placed the top globe with coffee firmly in place. After about two seconds I had a geyser of super heated water/coffee burning my hand and making a huge mess. The water in the bottom globe had super heated and when I disturbed it the water instantly vaporized causing the geyser. The glass rod shot up a good several inches and landed sideways back in the top globe. After a good cleaning up though everything was back in good shape. (To avoid this I now use the handle of the wooden spoon in the bottom globe while brining the water up to boil, you will notice that the water boils from off the handle not the pot itself, this prevents super heated water.)
All that said I enjoy spending the time with what is arguably one of the finest methods of coffee brewing in the world.
