The Latest In Coffee Machines

Summary: Coffee has been around a long time, but did you know that coffee makers have been too? The oldest one we know is the ibrik, a copper container used in ancient Turkey. It had a long handle with a grooved tongue and produced a very strong coffee, since there is no filtration involved. It is still used today. If you think Turkish coffee is a little too thick for you, there are many other types of coffee machines to choose from. From simple to state of the art, you have your c...

Coffee has been around a long time, but did you know that coffee makers have been too? The oldest one we know is the ibrik, a copper container used in ancient Turkey. It had a long handle with a grooved tongue and produced a very strong coffee, since there is no filtration involved. It is still used today. If you think Turkish coffee is a little too thick for you, there are many other types of coffee machines to choose from. From simple to state of the art, you have your choice. The most common and popular coffee maker is the simple drip model. You pour water in the top, it is heated, goes through the coffee grounds and pours into a glass carafe. That works just fine, but many people seem to want a little more out of their coffee machine. There are models today that can be mistaked for a stereo system, with LCD dials and gages that give all the information you need to know: the time, the time to brew, the temperature of the coffee and even more. You may find it important to have a degree of brew desired feature. A lot of folks find the auto shutoff indispensible because they always forget to shut off the coffee maker. In today's rushed world, we don't want to wait for the breweing process to complete, so many models have a cutoff feature whereby if you remove the carafe, the coffee will stop flowing. If you walk into the kitchen in the early morning hours, you may appreciate a lit up clock on your coffee maker, allowing you to find it easily. Even cleanup has been taken into account in the new coffee makers. Now we have coffee pods, small envelopes, much like teabags, that contain the premeasured amount of coffee. When you are done brewing your coffee, just pick up the pod and dump it. No more loose grounds to spill. If you have water that is not perfect for coffee, for instance if it is chlorinated, you may want to get a coffee maker that has a water filter built in. Another valuable feature for the forgetful is a permanent coffee filter. Instead of buying paper filters, you just have one metal filter inside the brewing cup. Pods have made forgetting to buy filters less of an issue, but there are some who think throwing out the pod is environmentally wasteful. There are even some coffee brewers with built in coffee bean grinders. A true coffee devoté would prefer to grind the beans outside to be able to judge the proper consistency of the granules. Perhaps one day we will see a coffee maching that roasts, grinds and then brews our coffee. That would certainly be taking it far away from the original Turkish coffee, with just the the copper pot and the grooved spout. Well, who knows? If you are feeling your coffee is a little weak, maybe the oldfashioned way is best.