Coffee anyone?

If you are looking for a book review, this is not the post for you. Permission to skip this one!

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As you can see, we take coffee drinking very seriously in this house. After all, how can you do any serious reading or writing, particularly early in the day, without a decent cup of coffee to stimulate the brain cells? We started out our married life receiving four different coffee pots as wedding gifts. There were two electric perks, a stove-top Corningwear, and a big 30 cupper for parties. We kept them all, and over the years, wore them all out.

We've had espresso machines, both as a combo with a regular dripper, and standalone. We've had melita drips, french presses, Italian Moka machines, percs and drips. There isn't a brand that sells for under $100 that we haven't tried. We've had digital programmable, auto turnoff, we've had simple 'put it on the campfire' pots. I can't begin to count the number we've gone thru in almost 43 years of marriage.  We also have three grinders (for regular, decaf, and flavored), three canisters (to store any excess beans-again in regular, decaf and flavor), and several different sizes and shapes of paper filters hiding in that corner "garage"---where all the tea bags hide too.
Currently we own 7 different machines. #8, a one year old Korean-made drip is on its way to the dump tomorrow---more on that in a minute. We have a little four cup perk inherited from Auntie, 2 electric drips (12c and 4 c), 2 melita drips (big and little,) a french press, and a moka.

And I still can't find one that doesn't spit and drip all over the counter when you pour the coffee!!!  It's embarassing. Even guests have this problem, so I know it's not my pouring technique. Only the small melita drip brews directly into the cup --I use that one at the library where we only have a big 30 cupper and no microwave.

Tomorrow's dump donation has actually been the best.....it politely drips, brews, and pours the coffee INTO THE CUP--it was only $10 at the local Wally World, and we loved it.  It is however, made of very cheap plastic (whaddya want for $10?) which is disintegrating around the heating element at an alarming rate.  We decided we did not need to burn the house down just to be able to pour coffee.....so we bought a replacement. Naturally, that model is no longer available.

The white one in this photo is the soon to be deceased.  The pot in the foreground is the latest culprit.  I really want to like this new one, it's got an auto shut-off, a cone shaped filter (a type I love because it uses less coffee), and it lets you 'pause and pour'.  However, it also contributes a fair amount of boiling coffee outside the cup when you pour. What's a girl to do?

So to get to the real question : why do we go through so many coffee pots so quickly?
A. We love coffee and we each drink three or four cups a day, and often have a cup of decaf or flavored coffee 'of an evening.'
B. We have a well here on our property, and our water is FULL of iron and iron rust.  Even with a whole house filter installed, the rust deposits collect in the innards of the pot pumps and clog thing up so they just stop working.  No amount of vinegar, cleaner, baking soda, or any other iron out, rust out anything will clean them out, so we gave up buying expensive machines, and have gone to using the cheapies.  The best one is actually the Melita drip because we can boil the water on the stove and then pour it into the filter and thus into the pot. It's getting it OUT of the pot and INTO the cup that is still problematic. And it  means we have to spend more time brewing and messing unless we want to do the microwave thing to heat up anything after the first cup.

Don't the manufacturers have real people test these puppies before they launch them on an unsuspecting public?  Or is there a class I missed someplace on "How to pour from a modern coffee carafe"?

That's my rant for the month....