Coffee and Caffeine FAQ

First of all please don't take my disagreement as a personal attack. My comments are not meant to be anything other than a polite conversation.

I agree that some coffee pots are badly engineered to a point that they can't hold a proper amount of coffee. I can not talk about specific brands because that is not my area of knowledge but, I have seen the same complaints you talk about. Maybe some of that is user error but the manufacturer has to take some responsibility when a large proportion of their customers can't get their product to work.

I think we just have different directions for fixing the problem. I would rather see people not purchase these problem machines. This will force manufacturers to use a standard pot size and cup size and if need be increase the size of their filter baskets (see below).

I have to assume part of the reason that manufacturers have gone to the 5 oz cup is because we all think bigger is better. If you re-mark a 10 cup (6oz cup) carafe (60 oz) as a 12 cup (5oz cup) carafe you still have a total if 60 oz. There is no need to re-engineer and you just gained 2 cups. It's like magic. Of course now you have customers overfilling a basket that was probably just barely large enough to begin with.

Your comment about the #4 cone filter does explain something I had wondered about. I noticed when I purchased my gold filter a few years ago that it came with an expander ring for the top that makes it about the size of a paper cone. The gold filter it replaced was the same height as my new filter with the expansion ring attached. This makes me wonder if some manufacturers are cutting the size of the basket back a bit to save a few cents. I honestly have no issues with using 20 tbsp of coffee in a #4 cone filter (paper or gold) in my coffee pot (a Technivorm) but I do think I might have issues with the gold filter if I didn't have the higher expansion ring.

I do think we diverge on how to fix the issue assuming the core issue is a small basket and not simply a re-defined measure. I would recommend making smaller pots and continuing to use the proper amount of coffee. If I am reading you right, your suggestion is to make a full pot and use a less than optimal amount of grounds. It's ultimately a personal choice but if you are going to spend the money of good beans, as I want to assume anyone reading this page is doing, then why hobble the beans ability to create a good cup by brewing weak over extracted coffee by using to small a measure of grounds.

As for companies that need to have a full pot, if it's a pot per day going all day by all means do whatever you want to it. You can't hurt that tar. If you are talking about needing the extra two cups from a full pot vs 48 oz. for a partial pot you probably need a second pot anyway. You are almost always better off brewing more frequently rather than larger pots of coffee. Thermal carafes help but ultimately freshness is measured in how long ago the coffee was brewed not how hot it is.

I do think you bring up a good point that many manufacturers are playing fast and loose with the standards and then advising customers to use less coffee as a fix. I will add a warning at the bottom of this article to address that issue but, ultimately the manufacturers, especially the "good" brands, need to be held accountable for deviating from the standard that has held for years. In the meantime it does make sense to warn people that they may have to adjust their brewing to correct for these engineering and/or marketing induced problems.

On a side note you can get some really great machine reviews over at coffeegeek.com.