Hamilton Beach 12 Cup Coffee Maker: Wake Up Ready

Great

I once owned a Hamilton Beach coffeemaker 50 years ago when I first married my wife. I remember how the coffee brewing smelled just like it tastes, wonderful! Over the years, as a coffee enthusiast, I’ve tried many different brew methods, electric percolator, pourover single cup, Italian Mika brewer, and they all price exceptional tasting cup of coffee. The negative aspect with some of these is cleanup and maintenance. I wanted to get back to a 12 cup brewer because of my need for my coffee and simplified brewing method. This coffeemaker fills that need. It has simplified buttons easy for a senior to operate. Even though it is mostly plastic, like most items we use today, it is adequately durable with proper care. The 12 cup size meets my requirements, and it functions as advertised. Water flow has two speeds, normal, and measured /timed. Meaning, the choice for regular brew or bold. I tried a regular pot with 1 cup of ground coffee. It came out slightly weak tasting. Next, I tried the bold setting, same measures. It came out strong and a bit bitter tasting. So, following a suggestion from the owners sheet and reviews, I next tried a pot with 3/4 cup of coffee. Voila! A perfect pot of coffee! Now, my personal suggestions for making that pot last all day without getting blacker and Muddy tasting. (1) Immediately after brewing is finished, turn the unit off. As you pour a cup during the course of your day, put it in the microwave and reheat it. My wife always did this, and would even drink a cup of this coffee the next morning, using it all before making a fresh batch. I thought she was nuts, but, it does taste pretty good, and, it saves a LOT on rapidly rising coffee prices! (2) Once brewing is completely finished and dripping is done, remove the carafe, open the lid and gently stir the coffee for 5 seconds to mix it. Really? Well , while brewing, stronger coffee settles in the bottom of the pot while toward the end the water coming out is almost clear. It’s stratified. So stir before serving, you’ll enjoy your coffee all day long with these tips. Give a thumbs up if these worked for you. 😎 PS: After a couple months use, I’ve learned a thing or two about the brew cycle. Choosing the Bold cycle allows you to use much less coffee, but it takes experimentation to accomplish your expected results. I began experiencing acid stomach from this process, so I switched to regular brew, put in half cup of coffee plus one tablespoon and brewed on regular cycle and got a perfect pot. Folks had claimed that either the coffee was weak, or the brew basket would overflow. You just need to break in this coffeemaker. Overall, it’s a darn fine product, and once you make friends with it, I believe you’ll like it. 😎

IN SHORT, It makes coffee, BUT these coffee makers are stupidly simple machines with no expensive parts. There is shockingly little to drip coffee makers and for what I paid this is a cheap piece of equipment, poorly made, and overpriced. I had always associated Hamilton Beach with quality in the past and thought this was a good deal, boy was I wrong. But don’t get me wrong, it does make coffee, it works, you just aren’t getting any value for your dollar in my opinion.WHAT I HAD BEFORE: I had a great Mr. Coffee that worked like a charm for the better part of a decade with the hardest water I have ever seen in my life. So bad that I am constantly buying vinegar to remove scale from my drinking glasses. The plastic was strong and thick(likely glass fiber reinforced), very sturdy, no slack in the hinges of the lid and drip head mechanisms, it felt very well made and lasted me a very long time under brutal conditions for this type of coffee maker. The Carafe was thick glass with a very sturdy, firmly attached handle, and I was very happy. Sadly, being in my last year of college and just needing something, anything, to make coffee I am stuck with a cheap coffee maker now until I graduate in a few months and can afford another proper, quality, coffee maker.THIS COFFEE MAKER:1.) This coffee maker feels like it is made of the thinnest, cheapest plastic they could get away with. The only mold marking was >PP< which is polypropylene, judging by the weight and avg. prices of raw material I’d guess there is a total of ~$3 worth of plastic in this coffee maker assuming 60 cents per pound cost(molds discusses further down). It flexes in your hands when you handle it and the components are just poorly made, it feel so incredibly cheap in your hands. See the photos showing how easily I can bend it with two fingers. While the plastic is cheap and too flimsy for my liking, I would guess that if the machine fell it would merely bounce and not crack as that is a benefit of using this type of plastic(One downside to this plastic is its sensitivity to mold and fungus). However, I am not sure that your carafe would survive, but if your coffee maker falls or gets dropped you are doing something wrong on your end.2.) A burn test, and lack of any other mold markings, show there is no glass fiber or other fill material that I could see to strengthen this plastic, hence the low rigidity and my disappointment. Polypropylene being a soft plastic they would not have a high cost associated with molds for making these plastic parts as there is no abrasive fill material to wear out molds faster. Thus no price increase for manufacture.3.)The carafe glass is very thin, the handle is made of the same cheap plastic as the body of the coffee maker and instills zero confidence it won’t break when full of water a year down the road after repeated stress cycles. Lets assume $5 here for price to manufacture/acquire.4.) The heating plate element and “bubble tube”, I am not sure of the name, are also cheap parts to purchase, depending on quality, between $0.50 and $4.00 so we will just round up and say $5 for all heating elements and associated parts, just to be safe, though I doubt it was anywhere near that much. So far these components are working just fine but I have only made 3 pots of coffee so we will see what happens.5.) There are a handful of inherently cheap electrical components. 2 LEDs, 5 push buttons, a small screen, likely a few thermometers, a crystal oscillator for the clock, likely a 555 or similar IC, all together there is maybe $2 worth of electronics in this coffee maker, though I would have to disassemble it to know for sure. As someone who designs and builds electronics for fun, let me tell you that most commercially used electrical components are stupidly cheap, even when purchased as one offs and not in bulk which gives further discount.6.) I am willing to bet the only metal parts of this machine are the hot plate, the actual heating element and the water heating tube(because that is all that is needed) These are all accounted for in the heating elements and hot plate. From what I see the rest is all plastic.7.) Note, in the photo you can see a little red ball valve. This prevents the heated water from pushing back into the reservoir when the water is heated and some flashes to steam propelling the hot water up into the drip head and into the coffee grounds basket. Watching it operate there is good clearance for water to flow when it is open. Likely because they must account for restricted flow when the optional carbon filter is installed. My only concern here is that if you have hard water this could clog up or get stuck either open or closed. THE GOOD THING IS, this valve is accessible from the top of the machine when the lid is open and likely could easily be unclogged if it does fill with scale, so to me this is a nice feature where the ball valve isn’t hidden away deep inside the machine.CONCLUSION: In my opinion this machine is overpriced for what you get. I have found an overly generous approximate cost for this machine to be around $15 to manufacture, but with 3rd world manufacturing and discounts for buying in bulk and economies of scale I would imagine I am overshooting the actual costs. The fact that they are selling this machine around the ballpark of $50+, or around $40 if you catch a sale, I would steer clear of this machine unless you can get it on sale for $20 or less. I have no problem with manufacturers selling items for double their expense to make profit, but that clearly isn’t the case here.We have a camper with a $10 coffee maker that we got at Wal-Mart that this one reminds me in so many ways, and they both make identical coffee. There simply isn’t the quality here necessary to justify this price tag. This isn’t even an issue of name brand markup because the quality is so low and so up front and blatant that the brand name is devalued by the materials when you first handle it. It is one thing to put a famous branding and make it look nice but have poor quality components hidden inside where no one sees but this machine doesn’t care, they fully embraced it and cut costs anywhere they could without concern for their name and the reputation that may be associated.In my opinion this machine is a rip off and I am now seriously considering disassembling my old Mr. Coffee machine and seeing if I cant repair it and returning this machine. I feel like it is an utter rip off. Basically, them selling this machine for this price is them spitting in your face and laughing because they know the general public doesn’t have the knowledge base to see that they are selling a clearly inferior product at a huge markup. Hamilton Beach is no longer a quality appliance company, they want you to buy this so it breaks in a year or two and you come back and pay for an overpriced plastic mess all over again, ever few years, like clockwork.I wouldn’t buy this again…I was upset when I first got it and unboxed it, but sometimes you need something, anything, to make coffee in the morning so you aren’t wasting time over a stove boiling water when you should be getting ready and leaving the house.