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December
16,2008

Buying a Coffee Maker

Author | Marc Wortman

Question: What coffee maker do you recommend to make HOT coffee. Most do not heat the water hot enough so the coffee is not hot when it comes out even though
the wattage is over 1000. I’m getting tired of buying and returning coffee makers.

Answer: Hi Kathy, Be sure to check out our Coffee Makers Report Card. We started by creating a consumers report card against which to measure the best of the best coffee makers, and then went through the evaluation. You’ll see a description of the report card process by following this link, and then our ranking of the top five coffee makers. The good news is that the top five reflected a broad price range, so although you get what you pay for, you can also get an affordable machine that may not have all the bells and whistles but still makes a good cup of coffee. This section of the site is fairly new, and I would certainly appreciate your feedback.

December
16,2008

The 50-Cup Coffee Maker

Author | Marc Wortman

Question. How many teaspoons of coffee per cup of water do I use for the big (50 cup) coffee makers?

Answer. The ratio of coffee to water that you use shouldn’t differ based on the size of the coffee maker. Having said that, the big fifty-cup “urns” get mixed reviews as they often run into problems after a year of using them, sometimes with little support from the bigger manufacturer of these. If you were making 50 cups of coffee, consider grinding up 2.5 – 3 pounds of coffee for the job.

December
9,2008

Hazelnut in the House

Author | Marc Wortman

I’ve tried to move away from the flavored coffees. Generally, artificial flavors are added to the mellower beans -like Peruvian coffee- that won’t have a strong natural flavor. After all, why add artificial flavor to an already-flavorful coffee? But what’s more, why artificially flavor any good coffee? Because of this last question, I’ve shyed away from the flavored coffees in place of quality coffees from the right sources that are so good, they don’t need artificial flavor.

But after a long hiatus, I caved and bought my favorite flavored coffee, and probably the coffee that got me into coffee…Hazelnut Coffee. I have to say I forgot how good hazelnut flavoring is with coffee. Because of it, if you already put sugar in your coffee, put in less with flavored coffee, you don’t need to sweeten it as much. Even my wife has been enjoying some, and she’s not quite the enthusiast for Guatemalan, Kenyan, and Arabian Mocha coffee that I am.

My moral: every now and then, relax the rules and buy a coffee that tastes good. I suppose there’s also Hazelnut syrup for coffee that flavors it and sweetens it at the same time.