Mr. Coffee: Time for Retirement

About a month ago, the old reliable 4-cup Braun coffeemaker which She Who Puts Up With Me got for free in college died. She got it for signing up with Gevalia Coffee , which brought us far more coffee than we could ever drink, and charged us far more than we should ever pay, but it was a good coffeemaker. We used it every day, since the 4-cup size was far more convenient than the 12-cup one we got as a wedding present. So, we decided to get a replacement small coffee maker. At Target, they only had one brand of 4-cup coffeemaker: Mr. Coffee. I can say without reservation that this is the worst coffeemaker we've ever owned.

To begin with, even though the box loudly proclaimed that it contained a 4-cup coffeemaker, and the water tank and carafe both bore authoritative gradations from 1 to 4, this is not a 4-cup coffeemaker. At its maximum capacity (namely, full to the marking which says "4"), it holds 20 ounces of liquid.

In most places in the United States, a cup is 8 fluid ounces, making this actually a 2.5 cup coffeemaker. Now, I've heard of some places where they delicately sip coffee from 6-ounce "cups" (not in our hyperactive household, I can assure you--our coffee cups hold closer to 12 ounces), but the notion of a 5-ounce "cup" is completely foreign to me. Perhaps someone in the design department confused "cups" with "shots," thinking that Mr. Coffee was to be employed in serving espresso (or whisky). Whatever.

We've also noticed a curious odor when Mr. Coffee has been hard at work, sort of like almost-burning plastic. This leads to a certain amount of trepidation when preparing and serving our morning brew, should Mr. Coffee turn out to have an incendiary personality. So far, this has not changed the flavor of the coffee itself, probably because the carafe is glass not plastic.

Speaking of which, judging from the rows upon rows of replacement carafes also available at Target, it would seem that this is a considerably more fragile part than it was on our old coffeemaker. The old one took almost 15 years before the glass carafe broke. With Mr. Coffee, we're getting impatient after only a month.

Then there's the problem of cleaning. With our old coffeemaker, the entire assembly which held the grounds could be placed in the dishwasher. Mr. Coffee has a curious arrangement whereby the filter sits in a removable plastic basket, which sits in a second plastic basket which is molded into Mr. Coffee's body. The basket which holds the filter can be easily washed, but the main unit can't be immersed in water, since it contains electrical components.

This wouldn't be a problem, except that in order to fill the filter with coffee grounds, it must be installed in Mr. Coffee. It won't sit upright on the counter. Since a few grounds are always, inevitably spilled in the filling process, the end result is an ever-increasing agglomeration of coffee grounds inside the molded plastic body of Mr. Coffee. The only way to effectively clean it is with a damp Q-tip (remember, it can't be immersed) to get around all the bumps and ridges molded in the plastic.

I'm sure there was once a time when the name Mr. Coffee stood for quality design and manufacturing. Not any more.