Coffee Making Methods I Have Known: Episode I: Mr. Coffee-Brand Coffee Maker(s) (2008–2014)

My daily coffee habit began the summer before my final year of college. I’d gotten a job at a local gas station, and sometimes I had to go into work very early in the morning, necessitating a dose of everyone’s favorite legal stimulant, caffeine. At the time I also happened to be attempting to cut down on my soda intake, as it seemed to me a healthy decision to make. So, one morning, I asked my dear mother if she would pour me a cup from the pot she had brewed. It was love at first sight. Before then I had occasionally indulged in those disgusting, sugary espresso concoctions from Starbucks that hacky stand-up comedians love to make fun of, but I’d never been a coffee drinker. But now, things were different. I was a new man.

Since retiring from her job on the Ford assembly line, my mother had drastically cut back on her own consumption of the morning bean brew, and so when I packed up my things and prepared for my first college migration, she offered to give me the coffee maker. I happily obliged. The thing itself was one of those upmarket deals, covered in buttons and dials and digital readouts. Operating it felt like piloting a space ship bound for planet alertness. It had an automated timer feature that you could set to brew your coffee for you, so that a fresh pot would be waiting for you when you awoke, obviating the need for bleary-eyed early morning labor. This feature, which I know is quite common, always instilled a small sense of wonder in me, a bumpkin from the midwest’s backwoods. Convenient and futuristic, it betokened a Jetsons-esque world in which appliances performed their tasks independently, freeing us humans from the drudgery of caring for ourselves. Such luxury!

I never much used the automatic timer. My deeply ingrained tendency for irrational procrastination meant I was typically in no mood to empty grinds and fill the water reservoir before I absolutely had to. But I still liked the idea of owning a coffee maker that possessed such a function. Those days ended suddenly and rudely during my second year of grad school. The morning before leaving town for the Christmas holidays I had made coffee. Since my flight was relatively early, and since I was not typically in the habit of immediately cleaning the coffee maker after making coffee, I happened to leave the used grounds in the basket and a small amount of undrank coffee in the carafe. When I returned two weeks later, a bluish green mold had taken up residence. I quickly realized that rescue was impossible and, with a heavy heart, removed the device to a nearby dumpster.

Later that day I drove out to Target in order to buy a replacement. There I realized that fancy, space age coffee makers are priced well above a teaching assistant’s pay grade, and so I settled for the cheap model. Over the next few years, I went through two, maybe three, of these. My memories of them are ill-defined and hazy. They were rebounds, mere trifles. My true love had been lost due to my own carelessness. I grieved.

NEXT TIME: The French Press