Gourmet Coffee in Several Ways at Home

Warning, this is a long post about something that holds one of my passions. All pics were from the manufacturers' sites, Amazon, or Walmart.
You have been warned.


Okay, I am the first to admit that I am a packrat. I may even border on a few hoarding tendencies (though I will throw out trash 90% of the time, particularly icky trash. I only keep trash like plastic bags or things that have been ruined but still hold memories.
I am also a collector. I used to collect wooden boxes. I still have a few, the better quality or larger ones. When I was much younger I collected (and played with) Lady Love Locks dolls. I am a collector that uses the things I collect.
Now I am a collector of coffee makers. I adore coffee. I love the taste of a well brewed cup of coffee, and I drink it black with no sugar. I am a purist, if the coffee is good. Starbucks? I have to have cream and sugar. That stuff is gross otherwise.
For years we had a run-of-the-mill coffee maker.

This is way nicer than our coffee maker.

I think we bought it on blitz at Walmart. It was like $5 or something. It was a 12 cup pot. Yeah, I love coffee but even at my worst I couldn't drink that much. Then we got a camp percolator. I remember percolators from my childhood. That was coffee to me growing up.

I think ours was bigger though, but it looked a lot like this.

It was an electric Corningware percolator and it blew my little kid mind. I figured out within about 30 minutes how everything works with it and I still think it's awesome.

I think this is a good pic of a similar percolator. It is not electric.

Now, however, we have several more options and each one has brought better coffee than the last.
To solve our "man, we are throwing out a lot of coffee and then I'm ending up buying cups of coffee at 7-11 every morning" problem, I got a Keurig.

A faithful pic of our Keurig.

I can make my coffee as strong as I want, and it makes tea and Arnold Palmers for John, and we are spending a whole bunch of money, but it's sort of a novelty at this point and at least we aren't buying video games. We got a reusable k-cup called a Solofill. That way we aren't spending horribly large amounts of money (really like 75 cents per large glass) for each cup of coffee.
Two weeks ago I went to Williams-Sonoma to pick up my Toddy. I say MY Toddy because they called me to let me know it was in. Yes, I basically special ordered this contraption from Williams-Sonoma. I do not regret it in the least. It's probably the best money I've ever spent on anything coffee related.
This is a Toddy:

The single greatest non-espresso coffee maker ever.

It is simple and beautiful. I make a week's worth of coffee in one fell swoop. It has less acid which my stomach and esophagus love, and it's just plain delicious. It's another one that I can control the strength because it makes a concentrate. People mix it with water and ice (like us) or milk/half-and-half/cream and ice and syrup (like my mom), or whatever. I seriously could gush just on this.

There is a downside, however. It takes 10-12 hours to make. You don't need to do anything after you load it up except take out the cork and let it drain after 10 hours. Also, it needs a very light roast to work well. I use Seattle's Best Level 1 with a little bit of their Hazelnut to give it the nuttiness that John and I love. The Toddy is how the Seattle's Best Coffee shops make their cold-brewed coffee. It makes tea too, but we have a pitcher for that.

Okay, you've made it through my passion edition. I haven't bought all the coffee makers I want yet, but the vacuum coffee maker will have to wait.

Here's the rundown:

-Drip Coffee: eh, it's okay and everywhere. At home, we prefer 8 o'clock hazelnut that we grind ourselves.

-Percolator: I think it was better in the Corningware because the basket lid was strapped to the basket, but we can take this one anywhere and it doesn't need electricity. If the power goes out during the winter, we can still have coffee.

-Keurig: It's super quick and I don't have to do much if I don't want to. I just load up the k-cup and in a minute I have coffee. I tend to have to add water after though to make it weaker. The coffee's okay and we can use our favorites if we want to.

-Toddy: My pride and joy. My favorite, obviously, though that might have several reasons.  I drink the coffee from it at work and just think to myself "man, I love coffee."

Next edition: finding the unexpected under our noses