Daily Dose

I hate my Cuisinart coffeemaker. Seriously hate it. Everyone who’s used it (in my house) hates it. I’ve been dreaming of a new coffeemaker for at least a year, probably closer to two years. Finally, we couldn’t take it any longer and we started talking (a lot) about buying a new one.

At first, I was all “Let’s just get a cheap Mr. Coffee.” But apparently that wasn’t the right idea, since neither of us really pushed to just do that.

Then, we talked a bit about trying to find a coffeemaker like our old Starbucks coffeemaker that we both loved so much. But, that seemed like an impossible task, so we did nothing.

We both considered the Breville  YouBrew, after buying Prince J the fancy schmancy Breville Tea Brewer last year but that’s a lot of money for a coffeemaker we didn’t know much about.

We continued to do nothing and I cursed my Cuisinart every day.

Last month, we wandered into ABT to look for a big microwave with a mute option and while we were there, we saw the Breville YouBrew in person and I fondled it. A lot. I pretty much decided that was the coffeemaker I wanted.  

I went home and researched it. I watched the nice Breville videos and read user reviews and watched more videos and yep, that’s the one I wanted and I was going to get it for my birthday. But then, I bought a new car and thought maybe I shouldn’t also get a new, expensive, coffeemaker. So I did nothing, again.

But TW came home on Friday with the YouBrew and yes, I really was surprised.

I read the instructions. I put it together. I ran it through the cleaning cycle. I brewed a single cup of coffee at 6pm.

It wasn’t the best cup of coffee I’ve had but that’s to be expected. It has a lot of settings and I went light/medium on brew and strength to see what the coffee was like at that setting. It also takes a really, really long time to make that single cup of coffee but that’s fine, I was doing the dishes while it brewed.

The next morning, I got up and made a pot of coffee and I went for the setting just below the strongest setting and it was a fabulous pot of coffee.

(There are a bunch of reviewers who talk about the coffee getting cold. I call BS. I made the pot at 6am and at 4pm the coffee in the carafe was still hot. Not burning hot but a good temperature to drink a fast cup of coffee before you have to leave the house again…)

Later that night, I made another single cup of coffee and I went strong/strong – perfect.

This morning, I made a pot of coffee – strong, not intense and I briefly wondered at the reviewers who talk about how loud the coffee grinder is because at 6:30am, with nobody else up, it didn’t seem that loud to me.  

After the machine beeped, I got up and poured a cup. Hmmm, it seems really light to me. But maybe it’s my imagination because I didn’t have any lights on in the house and it was still dark… I carried the cup back to my desk, took a sip and paused… hmmm that doesn’t taste good.  What happened? Did I screw up the settings somehow?  I took another sip. I looked in the cup, by the glow of the laptop screen – very light. Shoot. I must have screwed up the settings.

I took another sip. Put the cup down. Did some work. Took another sip. Sighed a lot. Wondered whether it would improve if I just left it out all day (and drank Tassimo while I waited for it to improve – I know, I’m nuts. You don’t have to say so, on my birthday. Hmph.)

I grabbed the little Breville booklet to figure out what I might have done wrong.

I got up to peer at the machine. Sighed. And took it apart to wash it so I could start over. Why were there almost NO grounds in the filter? Were they in the pot? No.  Did it somehow brew a cup’s worth of beans in a whole 12 cup carafe of water? That would not be good. Not good at all. It would mean taking back the machine, I’m sure.

I poked around it again and realized… there were no beans in the bean hopper.

Oy. Why doesn’t it have a beeping noise or a warning display light that says, “You are an idiot and there are no beans in here!”

Sure enough, I cleaned the machine, refilled the hopper, made sure the settings were where I thought they were and brewed again…

Another excellent pot of coffee.

Thank goodness.

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