Melitta 36 oz. Pour-Over Coffee Brewer with Porcelain Carafe, White

UPDATED 19 Dec 2012As suggested below, I've now not only bought one for my father (who loves it), but bought one for home as well, so that makes three of these I've purchased. I am still extremely happy with the product. A couple of notes to follow on to the problems mentioned above, which I've mostly solved:** Slow Drain Time:This, as advised elsewhere, is best fixed by using a coarser ground. I buy bean coffee at the grocery store and grind it there, and I use the "Regular" setting, which oddly enough is the second coarsest setting on most machines, just to the right of "Coarse." On this setting, the hot water that gets poured in early in the process goes through relatively quickly, whereas the water later in the process goes through slowly. This is largely what you want, and gives a more even flavored coffee.** Cold coffee:The problem here is that you've got a ceramic maker, which is going to soak up the heat when the hot coffee comes through. The solution is actually ridiculously easy -- when you boil the water to make the coffee, boil about 8-12 oz. more than you need. Start by pouring about this much boiling water through the filter cone WITHOUT THE GROUNDS and into the carafe, then swirl it around the carafe for about 20 seconds, or until the whole carafe is hot to the touch from the fattest part down. Then dump out the hot water, put the grounds and filter back in the cone, and make your coffee. If you want to keep your coffee extra hot, do the same thing with the mug you're going to drink it out of, so that's hot before you pour the coffee in too. Watch at good coffee bars and you'll see the baristas do the same thing with the steam nozzle.** Cone doesn't attach to baseI can't see this as a negative, as never expected it to. But for those who might think otherwise, be advised that the cone just sits on top of the base, and then the ceramic lid fits about as tightly as any teapot lid. Which is to say, just enough to keep it from falling off.** A word on amounts:It took me a while to figure out the amounts on this thing, given that I don't have measuring cups in the bizarro world of measurement that coffee makers use. This is called a "six cup coffee maker," which uses the weird definition of a "cup" that exists nowhere outside of coffee makers. (For what it's worth, a "cup" to coffee makers is about 4.85 fl. oz. of brewed coffee, for which they estimate you need about 6 oz of cold water to start off with.)For starters, the carafe holds just a little less than a quart or a liter of coffee, and most American coffee mugs hold 8-12 oz of coffee, with big travel mugs usually holding 16 oz. The brewing process will lose about 25% of that liquid from the cold water you start with, and you probably want that much again to pre-warm the carafe (see above), so I tend to heat up about 1.5x as much as I want to make.A good base amount of grounds is about 1 tbsp for every 4 oz. of brewed coffee you want, so a full pot would need about 8 tbsp. (In metric, this isn't far off of 15 ml of grounds for every 100 ml of brewed coffee.) I like it a bit stronger, so I tend to use about 10 tbsp for a full pot, and people who like it extra strong might even go up to 12 tbsp. For a large mug of coffee without the carafe, I'll use 4-5 tbsp.Once again, I am thrilled with this coffee maker, enough to buy two more after the original (all of which are still in great shape). Review bumped to five stars because once I figured out how to use it, the coffee I make with this thing is better than any but that which the absolute obsessive gourmets make.ORIGINAL REVIEWI didn't read the other reviews before purchasing, and I'm glad I didn't, because the negative ones might have scared me away. The coffee pot arrived last week, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly so far.When I was a teenager my father bought a plastic Melitta to take on backpacking trips, because it meant he could have real coffee without doing it cowboy coffee style. He quickly discovered that the coffee he made using this little piece of plastic and a camp stove was better than the coffee coming out of their fancy Braun coffee maker at home, and still uses the little plastic thing to make a single cup in the morning when he gets up if no one else wants some.Recently, our office cancelled our coffee service in order to save money (it was terrible coffee anyway), and replaced it with a Krups machine, allowing us to buy our own K-cups. I tried several different brands of K-cups, and finally decided I'd rather bring in my own Fair Trade coffee to work and make it myself, and started trying to find something to imitate Dad's plastic Melitta, but maybe not plastic because of the BPAs and such. So I bought this.The negative reviews appear to break down into three categories:1 - Not as good as the ceramic Melitta pot they had 20 years ago.2 - Grounds gum up the filter, so it drains slowly.3 - Pouring the coffee in manually is annoying, and it doesn't make much coffee.In response to 1, well, they're probably right. That happens a lot these days. I'm reviewing the pot I got, and it's pretty good for what I expected. I imagine if it were still made in Germany, it would cost $120, and perhaps be worth it, but this one works exactly as I expected it.In response to 2, I've never had this problem. I've been using a coarse ground coffee, which seems to be the main response others have. The liquid goes right through it at about the speed of any other drip coffee maker.In response to 3, this is the way a Melitta works. You stand over it with a container of hot water, pouring first around the edges to wet the filter and make it stick to the sides of the cone, then try to keep the grounds soaked without overfilling. It's not fill and walk away -- you have to stand over for the couple of minutes it takes to brew. I find this to be a fun and relaxing break in the morning at the office. If you want something that you can fill and walk away from, find another pot.However, if you're like me and kind of like this method, this is a great pot. The cone is sturdy and does its job exactly as I expected, working even better than Dad's old plastic cone. The pot is only as insulated as your average ceramic tea pot, so don't expect any miracles here, but it has a classic northern European style with smooth lines, and I wouldn't hesitate to use it to serve coffee after a nice dinner. (Since it's sitting on my immensely cluttered desk at work, that's unlikely, but still.) The lid fits on in exactly like my teapot -- not tightly, just like your average ceramic with a lip to hold it on. I'm still working out the exact measurements for grounds and hot water, but even with the inexactitude, the coffee from it has tasted bold, full-flavored, and delicious. I would warn that it doesn't come out scaldingly hot, because there's obviously no heating element to keep the carafe hot, and the transfer process of pouring it in will obviously cool it down, but it means it's the perfect temperature for drinking black right away. If you like lots of milk in your coffee (or like it at McDonald's-second-degree-burn temperature), you'll probably have to be quicker getting boiling water into the grounds as quickly as possible.So hey, maybe not for everyone, but I love this thing so far. I think Dad might need a new ceramic cone for his birthday this year, come to think of it...

I got the white ceramic Melitta pour over filter with the white ceramic pitcher - which was such a deal! I wish I had known about this decades ago. It's so simple, fast, and easy to make coffee without a coffee machine (literally just pour hot water on it and then you're done), and it tastes WAY BETTER. I've gotten so tired of coffee machines that you pay $200 for and they last a couple years before tubing cracks and they start leaking all over the counter. You know how long this ceramic pour over filter and pitcher will last? Forever! And, I'm making amazing tasting coffee in about three minutes. It turns out this is the original drip coffee technology. I don't know how industry has convinced us that spending two minutes pouring hot water onto coffee grounds is so arduous that we need a machine with a short lifespan to do it for us - and the machines do it so poorly. Just swirl the kettle spout around a little bit while you pour, and your coffee comes out so terrific. I don't know why coffee machines can't do this properly, but they just don't. I had no idea, but I'm sold on this Melitta ceramic pour over coffee maker. It's also nice that I can throw away the coffee grounds in a normal supermarket coffee filter - seems way easier than one of those hipster chemistry sets for pour-over coffee with the steel filters and the totally unnecessary analytical balances and specialized doodads. The hipsters claim that a paper filter absorbs the oils. Yeah, I'm sure it does a bit, but do you really lose enough of the oils to notice or care, out of a six cup pot? I doubt it.The pitcher is slightly smaller than one of those big ten cup coffee pots that come with full size machines, but at this smaller 6 cup size I find that I need to fill the filter up half-way with grounds to get decently strong coffee, and I wouldn't recommend filling it higher than that to keep pouring and water flow practical. So, in other words, the full 32 oz size of this six cup pitcher is the maximum amount of coffee I would want to make in one batch from this size of a filter, lest my coffee come out weak, or lest my filter overflow! Leave it to the Germans to remind me about keeping things simple and efficient!If it's relevant, our household has gone through extended periods of french press, cold brew, cheap $20 coffee machines, and expensive $200 coffee machines. I buy fresh beans from a local roaster, and grind them in an inexpensive ($30 store brand) burr grinder, medium fine ground size for drip or pour over. I would claim, if asked, that I prefer floral delicate stuff like Indonesian beans, but in reality we bounce around a lot and try lots of different beans and roasts, and I appreciate them all.I was THINKING about getting an electric goose neck kettle to use with this, but then I remember that nah I don't NEED that - keep it simple. Our regular old stovetop kettle works perfectly fine.