The 1961 VW Beetle of Automatic Drip Coffeemakers
Not all of us stop at the local Starbucks for a tall half-caff no-foam skinny vanilla latte every morning. I mean, some neighborhoods don't even have a Starbucks, plus some people find doing that inconvenient, expensive or both. For them, there’s a whole world of coffeemakers out there to let you do it yourself before breakfast.Ever since Joe Garagiola started selling Mr. Coffee back in the ‘70s, an automatic drip pot has been the country's favorite coffee pot. There are zillions of variations: built-in grinders, timers, cleaning sensor, auto-off… or there’s your basic sixteen-dollar pot. That would be the Proctor-Silex 48350. If this appliancewere a car, it would be the so-called "key and a heater” model without chrome, radio, tinted glass, anything fancy. But the, the great thing about a basic model like this is that there’s not much to go wrong; and when something does the item's so cheap it’s basically disposable.
