Burnout Travel Tumbler

There are a lot of people who want to send me coffee mugs, travel tumblers, and other drinking devices that are meant to take your beverage on the go. Mostly, I say "no" because I don't see a lot that are truly different.


Then I heard about the Burnout, and I had to give it a try.

Have you ever poured coffee from your pot into your to-go insulated tumbler, then opened it 10 minutes later to take a sip, and it's too darned hot for sipping?

The Burnout is designed to solve that problem.

When you pour hot coffee into the tumbler, it immediately starts getting cooler. The temperature drops, then levels out, and it stays warm for quite a while.

I was skeptical, so I tested it, measuring the temperature in short intervals until it stopped getting cooler, then I checked it every hour or so. Eventually, like any insulated drink container, it got a little cooler than most people would like for drinking, but if your coffee has been sitting around for three or four hours, maybe it's time for a fresh cup, anyway.

What voodoo is this?

I'm not really sure, but it seems that the tumbler first absorbs the heat, which cools the coffee to a reasonable drinking temperature, then that stored heat helps to keep the coffee at a reasonable drinking temperature.

This is a really cool thing! Seriously. I'm impressed, and I don't say that very often about tumblers.

I received this at no cost to me.

Dash Rapid Cold Brew System

I've fallen in love with cold brew coffee. It's smoother, not as bitter, and seems to be less harsh on my tummy. It makes cheap grocery store coffee taste good, and when I spring for the good beans, it's swoon-worthy.

I like to make the cold brew extra-strong, so I can add it to hot water to have drinkable coffee in the morning. Sure, sometimes I'll have iced coffee, but most of the time, I prefer it hot.

So when I got an email offering me the Dash Rapid Cold Brew System, I was very curious. When I make cold brew, I set it up in the evening an let it steep all night. The Dash system makes cold brew in 15 minutes or less.

What kind of sorcery is that?

Of course I asked for a review unit, and set it up right away. I ran plain water through it first to see how it worked.

Very eeeenteresting. *mustache twirling optional*

The device pumps water through the grounds rather than just letting the water sit and steep. It goes from the carafe to the grounds and then back into the carafe. What you end up with is cold brew coffee that has been agitated to release more flavor in much less time.

There's a timer that you can set for up to 15 minutes, but if you haven't reached the right strength, I don't see any reason why you couldn't start it over again for another round.

The pump on this is a little noisy. Not as noisy as a blender, but it definitely makes more noise than the pump on something like a desktop waterfall or my Aero Garden. But of course, this isn't meant to be soothing, and it's not on for a long time. Just long enough to make the cold brew.

I've used this several times now, making larger batches to store in my fridge so I can make my usual hot coffee. I haven't yet found exactly the right ratio of coffee to water to the most concentrated brew, but I'm getting close. For someone who doesn't want concentrate, it's just a matter of adjusting the ratio to make your preferred drinking strength.

I have to say that it's nice to be able to make the coffee so fast. There have been a few times I've forgotten to set up my overnight brew, which led to a sad, coffee-less morning. Now, the worst that can happen is a 30-minute wait.

Since the brewer pumps both clear water and coffee, I've been cleaning it between brews by running clear water through it. One cycle seems to be enough, but if it was putting it into storage, I'd probably do two brews for more complete cleaning, so there would be no coffee residue at all.

This takes about the same amount of space as my other cold brewer, although it's a different shape, and it's smaller than many standard coffee makers. On the downside, it requires electricity. Not a big deal, but you still need to set it up somewhere near an outlet. Since it's relatively small and lightweight, this is easy to move around or store.

Overall, I like this a whole lot more than I expected. And I like the idea that if I want a quick cup of afternoon cold-brew decaf, I can have it ready to drink in a very short time.

The Dash Rapid Cold Brew System is available at Target.

Who's it for: Pe0ple who drink coffee and prefer cold brew.

Pros: Yay, it works!

Cons: It's a tad noisy.

Wishes: With appliances in the kitchen that are made in so many colors, this one is only available in black. For now.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.

Dripo Iced Coffee Maker

There must be a million ways to make coffee. And sometimes it feels like I've tried them all. But then something new comes along that's at least a little bit different. In this case, the new thing is the Dripo Japanese-style iced coffee maker.

Among the many styles of coffee makers, this is the style that slowly drips cold water onto coffee grounds to make a smooth, less-acidic cold coffee. This one suggests not only using cold water, but using ice.

In order to get the grounds thoroughly wet, there's a small round piece of coffee filter paper than you can put on top of the grounds. Or, you can wet the grounds first, before you start the dripping. If you don't do either of these, the water tends to run around the grounds rather than wetting them completely and extracting all the flavor.

I've used this to make both iced coffee and to make a concentrated cold brew to add to hot water to make hot coffee. My very first effort, the coffee was a little too weak, so I added more grounds for my next batch. Inexplicably, the water took a crazy long time to drip. Then I checked the directions again, and you can control the speed of the drip by tightening or loosening the container. Problem solved.

Now, I know what I'm doing, and I'm happy with the coffee I'm making. And ... I had a brainstorm. I can assemble this thing and put it in the fridge and let it work its magic in there overnight.

I'm mostly using this to make the more concentrated coffee that I combine with hot water. I have a larger cold brewer, but this one is handy for making flavored or specialty coffees. Because although that hazelnut coffee I bought a while back is tasty, I don't really need it every single day.

This would be great for making coffee while traveling, too, since it wouldn't take more space in your luggage than a regular travel mug or water bottle. In the hotel room, all you'd need is cold tap water to make your coffee. How easy is that?

Overall, this works well. It also comes in a fun box that is shaped like a milk carton, so it would be fun to wrap as a gift.

Who's it for: Coffee drinkers.

Pros: Works well, compact.

Cons: If you drink a LOT of coffee, you might want a brewer that makes more coffee.

Wishes: Can't think of anything at the moment.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.

Coffee Maker 3.0

Very recently, my beloved Breville single-cup coffee brewer started exhibiting strange behavior. It was making peculiar sounds and it was dispensing less and less coffee with each brew.

In a fit of do-it-yourselfishness, I watched a few YouTube videos and decided that a filter was clogged and I could fix it.

How hard could it be? I used to fix computers for a living.

I unscrewed a bunch of screws, took out the filter, cleaned it (and there were little bits of stuff in there that looked sort of like very fine coffee grounds) and put it all back together.

I reassembled it, filled the water tank, plugged it in, and pressed appropriate buttons.

It spewed a little bit of water, and then nada. No more water pumping at all.

I took it apart several more times, trying to figure out what I had botched. I watched more YouTube videos and followed more advice. Then the menu buttons didn't work. That wasn't an improvement.

The next morning, after drinking some instant coffee, I toddled off to find a new machine. Most of them proclaimed that they only worked with Keurig cups. Nope, that's not going to do. I like using my own ground coffee and sometimes I get samples of non-Keurig brands of coffees and teas.

When I can afford the really good ground coffee, I splurge. Otherwise, the cheap stuff will do - and that's a heck of a lot cheaper than those K-Cups, so it's very budget-friendly.

I had a couple of choices of coffee makers, and picked a mid-priced machine that looked fairly sturdy. When I got home I set up and tested the machine - a Mr. Coffee model - by running water through it - and hot water came out of it. It took quite a while for the water to heat and the water to dispense, but it wasn't a super-expensive machine, so I figured it wouldn't kill me to be a tiny bit more patient in the morning.

I wasn't planning on drinking more coffee that day, so I let it rest until the next morning.

But then I thought, gee, I like those folks at Breville and every product of theirs that I own has been really solid. Even the coffee maker. Other people complained that their Keurig machines were lucky to last 6 months or a year, but I'd had the Breville for ... well, a long time.

I wasn't looking for a replacement machine, but I thought Breville might have some tips on fixing the problem. They did have a troubleshooting page on their website, but it didn't have any more information than the videos I watched. And we know how helpful those were.

I chatted with a very friendly person at Breville who gave me a few tips, but finally we concluded that the pump must be malfunctioning or some other deep internal thing had gone bad. Which makes sense. It pumped a lot of water over its lifetime without any problems.

She said that the model I had was discontinued "several years ago" and that even the newer model of single-cup brewer had been discontinued for some time. See, I told you my machine was old.

So, she couldn't offer a direct replacement, but she did offer a discount on anything else of theirs that I might want to buy. Anything else ... not just a coffee maker. That was a pretty good offer. Unfortunately, they only had full-pot coffee brewers, and I needed a single cup model.

Oh well. At least I had Mr. Coffee to keep me company in the morning.

I joked with my husband that I had fixed the coffee machine, and I only replaced one part - the part that starts at the outlet and ends at the mug. I crack myself up...

But apparently I didn't fix it well enough, because the morning cup of coffee was tragically weak. And the amount brewed wasn't huge. This didn't bode well for happy, perky mornings.

Weak coffee bolstering my shopping savvy, I wandered off to another store, determined to find a single-cup brewer that didn't require K-Cups. Again, that narrowed down the search considerably. I found a few models that shyly said that you could use any brand of cup-thing, and some that whispered about using your own ground coffee, but then I found one that very prominently proclaimed that you could use all the third-party products with no problem. It even came with its own refillable filter thingie (a technical term, right?), but I could also use the filters and holder that I already had.

The coffee maker that caught my eye was called the iCoffee Opus, and it also boasted a swirl technology that allegedly brewed the coffee better. There was another iCoffee model, the Express, but it didn't have a water reservoir, so you had to add the water for each cup, and I imagine the brewing time would be longer.

Call me skeptical. Swirling water sounds good, but would it make a difference? I got online and found a review on a coffee-lover site and the iCoffee Opus was highly praised. It was rated better than a Keurig.

That was enough. I grabbed the Opus box, dragged it to the register, and brought it home. Sorry, Mr. Coffee, but you're being returned.

While the iCoffee Express was a little less expensive than the Opus, I decided that I didn't want to add water for each cup of coffee, and a faster cup of coffee was a good thing, too.

I set it up as soon as I got it home, and ran some water though it. One nice feature is that you can set the amount of coffee you want to brew in half-ounce increments from 4 to 12 ounces. I chose 12 ounces, because I use a big coffee cup and I wanted to see how full it would be. That worked just fine. And then I decided that since my first cup of coffee that morning was insanely weak, it would be fine if I brewed a supplemental cup of coffee.

For testing purposes, of course.

And ... what do you know? It wasn't weak.

I've been drinking K-Cup-like coffee for a while, from a company that sent me sample for review, and I have to say that this cup had more flavor, more layers of flavor, more depth of flavor, more coffee flavor ... than I had noticed before.

Well, wow. That's interesting. Apparently the swirling-water technology makes a difference.

Later, I tried a tea product that I had. It had more flavor with the iCoffee than I'd tasted before.

The swirl-technology reminded me of a device called CaliX that I saw on the TV show Food Fortunes, but that device was just the coffee-holder-thingie rather than a whole machine. I haven't tried it, but if you've got a single cup brewer that's functioning but not brewing a great cup of coffee, it might be worth looking into.

So - I usually don't review anything until I've used it for a while, but in this case, I thought a "first impression" post would make some sense, since the machine is made to do one thing - make coffee - and there's no learning curve in operating it.

Besides brewing a nice cup of coffee, the iCoffee is also a rather attractive machine with pretty blue lights. And, if you need a visual cue that the brewing is done, a blue light shines on the cup when the coffee is dispensing. The light turns off when it's safe to remove the cup.

The one thing this brewer doesn't have is a clock. Which is great. A coffee maker isn't something that needs a clock, and I have plenty of other clocks in the kitchen.

Of course, only time will tell if this coffee maker lasts as long as my last one. I certainly hope so, because I like my morning coffee, and I'm really happy with the way it brews.

Who's it for: People who want a single-serve coffee maker.

Pros: It makes a good cup of coffee. It looks good on the counter.

Cons: Not the cheapest machine in the world. It's also not the most expensive.

Wishes: So far, nothing. It does what it's supposed to do, and it does it well.

Source: I bought all three of the coffee makers that I wrote about; one is being returned to the store.

OXO Cold Brew Coffee Maker

When I was a little kid, my parents had a cold brew coffee maker, and I was fascinated by it. It looked like a wacky science experiment. But back then, I didn't drink coffee, so I had no idea if it was good or not.

Now that I'm a coffee-drinking adult, I've fallen in love with the cold brew method. The coffee is smoother and less bitter and ... I just like it better. And it's simple. Just add the cold-brew liquid to hot water, and you have hot coffee. Or pour it over ice, add milk or water, and you've got easy iced coffee.

I was pretty excited to try the new cold brew coffee maker from OXO. It's a pretty simple device, but really well designed. Water goes into the top section on top of the coffee. It's suggested that you stir the coffee after a few minutes. Then it just sits overnight or up to 24 hours.

The part that holds coffee and grounds sits on a base, and a carafe fits in that base, to collect the coffee when you press the lever to let the coffee drain.

That lever is pretty genius. It lets you stop the draining, if you need to. Like if you want to make a cup of coffee before it has finished draining. If you absent-mindedly grab the carafe while the lever is in the draining position, the lever will flick itself into the non-draining position before you can remove the carafe. So you're not going to be dribbling coffee all over your counter.

The other neat thing is the filter - there's no need for disposable filters since there's a fine-mesh metal filter. If you've got coffee with a lot of dust in it, you might get some of that in your coffee, but most of the coffees I've used haven't been all that dusty. But, if you want to eliminate even the slightest chance of dust, you can put a paper filter inside the metal filter.

Since the filter is built in, when you're done you can just flip the container over and dump the grounds - no worries about losing parts.

For storage, the pieces nest together pretty well, which is a big deal for me - storage space is a big deal, so being able to condense the parts to fit a smaller space is nice.

The carafe that catches the coffee has a lid, so you can use it for storage, or you can pour it into any handy container you like. Or, if you don't drink a lot of coffee, you can freeze the concentrate for even longer storage.

The carafe lid can also be used for measuring, if that's something you need.

Who's it for: Coffee drinkers who want to try cold-brew.

Pros: Easy to use and easy to clean.

Cons: I wasn't crazy about the design of the carafe lid. It worked well enough, so it's a minor quibble, and other people might love it.

Wishes: Nothing, really, I'm pretty happy with it the way it is.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.