Ok. This is a photography blog, but I am about to review a coffee pot. If you fail to see the connection between massive amounts of readily available caffeine and photography, you have obviously never gotten home from a shoot at 2am, downloaded your images, left your backup running and fallen over asleep only to have your toddler ....er.... alarm clock.... wake you up at 6am so you can play.... or start editing.
Needless to say, good coffee is pretty important to my workflow, and I will hazard a guess that many photographers can say the same thing. I am really the only coffee drinker in my household; my fiancee prefers tea and the idea of my already hyper speed toddler becoming caffinated is truly terrifying, so brewing pots at a time is overkill. I decided a while back that the k-cup setup was the way to go, especially with an adapter to let me use whatever coffee I want in the system. It's quick, easy, and I don't wind up reheating the same pot all day for a new cup.
I had a machine that served me well for a few years, but it started acting up, I think it developed a wormhole into another dimension. Seriously, I would hit the go button, water would disappear from the tank, noises were made, no coffee came out. No leaked water on the counter, or anywhere else I could find, it just disappeared. I can only assume somewhere in an alternate universe there was a repeated random appearance of coffee or at least hot water every time I pushed the button.
I needed reliable coffee, so it was off to replace the machine. Went to Costco first, they only had one machine, a Kuerig 2.0. Luckily I googled that for reviews before grabbing it, in the immortal words of Admiral Akbar, "IT"S A TRAP!" The new Keurig machines will ONLY brew new Keurig cups with a special sensor thing in them. WTF? If I am paying $200 for a coffee pot I want to be able to choose what coffee I make in it dammit. So that was out. Off to Bed Bath and Beyond.... no real store commendation here, that just happened to be the next closest place that I knew had coffee makers.
There I found my new Hero, and subject of this review, the iCoffee Opus! It was on sale, it had good reviews... and it was in stock.
I will start by saying it makes coffee. Therefore it meets the basic requirement. My water no longer vanishes into an alternate dimension, instead it comes out coffee flavored and goes into my mug. But this pot goes beyond mere survival. It brews in style, with a spiffy Blue LED lighting scheme that also serves as a handy kitchen night light, this making it possible to brew the first cup of morning coffee without having to deal with blinding myself before I am sufficiently caffinated to deal with brightness.
It also has a selector dial to adjust the output to your cup size, as long as your cup happens to be between 4 and 12 oz, adjustable in 1/2 cup increments. That's handy when you want to go from your favorite small desk mug to the large road trip car mug. Water reservoir holds enough to get me through an average weekend without a reload. It heats up pretty quick, and has an energy saver mode where it will keep the water warm enough that it's near instantly ready to brew. Once the water is heated it takes around a minute to brew a 12oz cup.
That's all pretty standard. But what makes this different as a pot is a mystical think they call Spin brew. Not sure what it actually is, but they say that it "steams, spins and stirs inside the K-style cup to virtually eliminate acidic and bitter aftertaste." I can't say how it manages that, but it does actually work. With my old pot, I found most of the bulk purchase pods from Costco or even most of the high end pods were really not that good. That didn't stop me from drinking them, but it was more for utility than enjoyment. This thing really makes the pod coffee smoother than the old machine.
It may not be on par with handcrafted brews from a Chemex, but it's quick, it's easy, and it makes the cheap stuff taste great. So it's a win all around and it gives me steam to keep going for long days of editing, or early wake ups on the morning after the all nighter shoots I am too old to keep doing but still do anyway.
So, if coffee is your life, and mandatory for your workflow, when it's time for a new pot this is definitely one to look at. (of course, it also may be the reason I am still up after midnight writing blog posts.... but can't hold that against it.... twitch... twitch... twitch......)
No comments:
Post a Comment