Grind Your Own Coffee: Little Muss, Little Fuss

KitchenAid BCG111 Blade Coffee Grinder

The fact is that, while I drink as much or more coffee than many people, I’m not that “picky” about the stuff. When push comes to shove, my coffee needs are pretty basic: I want it dark, and I want it strong. Froufrou infusions of vanilla or hazelnut need not apply, nor do I want artificially-flavored creamers. French roast, though? Bring it on…

We quit buying ground coffee a while back and went to whole bean, mostly because we were buying three pounds at a time and could taste it going “stale.” That switch necessitated a new grinder, since the one we’d had for more than thirty years was basically shot. Pretty much all we could find in the local stores was the KitchenAid  BCG111OB, in "onyx black" (it's also available in "empire red" as the BCG111ER). We’ve had good experiences with KitchenAid in the past, so it was pretty much a no-brainer.

Proctor Silex 48350 Coffee Maker

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.