My coffee pot is going to pot
I’m having issues – rather, my coffee pot is having issues.
I broke the glass carafe one day while hurrying to rinse it out before making coffee to drink in the car en route to work. I bought what was labeled a “universal replacement carafe” that allegedly fit our coffee maker. It never did fit quite right, and every now and then, the little plastic bucket that holds the filter and coffee grounds doesn’t quite sit snugly down in the holder. That means the button that allows the flow of dripping coffee into the carafe (unless you remove it for the “sneak a cup” function) doesn’t get pushed all the way open. When it does this, the piping hot coffee brews and builds up in the filter bucket. Unless you realize this in time, it overflows all over the carafe and the kitchen counter.
It’s almost happened to me a couple of times, but I managed to catch it in the knick of time before coffee spewed all over the place. Last week, I didn’t realize it was happening and walked back into the kitchen to a wonderful smelling, fresh-brewed puddle of coffee all over the counter.
The most recent coffee mishap isn’t the pot’s fault at all but was totally due to operator error (maybe because I was trying to operate everything before I had my morning coffee?).
This time, my husband was away on business, and I only had to brew enough coffee to fill up my travel mug. Rather than measure water in the carafe, I simply filled my empty travel mug with water, dumped it into the pot and hit start. Again, I walked away to get ready for work. When I returned, the coffee was done brewing and I shut off the power button, picked up the carafe and dumped what I thought was the perfect amount of coffee into my travel mug, only to have it start overflowing.
What? How could water that only went just below the top of the mug somehow brew way too much coffee? This defied the laws of science, as my pot had magically double the amount of coffee this water had created.
It was only after I wiped up the mess and took a swig of the coffee that I realized what a goofball move I had made. Apparently, I left cold coffee in the carafe from the day before and the fresh, hot coffee had brewed into it leaving a lukewarm excess amount of java.
I started laughing until I realized I didn’t have time to rebrew the coffee or even microwave any of it in another mug. I just sipped the tepid brew on my way down I-79 and somehow resisted the urge to pull into a Dunkin Donuts for a hot cup of the good stuff.
Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.