It Came from the Netherlands

[chipotle]

So, with bigtig and susandeer here now, there are other people in the house who occasionally drink coffee. And, hey, that’s good enough to justify buying a new coffee machine, right? Besides, they got me three bags of good coffee for Christmas.

Besides, making coffee with the Chemex every morning was, well, getting kind of annoying. Drip machines have the advantage of requiring a relatively minimal amount of thought to work. They have the disadvantage, though, of… well, usually not making very good coffee.

At least, most of them don’t. This Dalek love child is a “Moccamaster Clubline,” made by Technivorm in the Netherlands. What makes it so special, you may ask?

• It’s one of a very few coffee machines out there that actually brews coffee at the right temperature: about 200°F, just below boiling.
• It also brews pretty fast.
• The coffee’s as good as the Rube Goldberg-ish vacuum pot I have.
• It’s almost as fun to watch as the vacuum pot.
• It looks at least as cool.
• But it’s a lot faster and easier to clean.
• And most importantly, “Technivorm” sounds like a bad sci-fi movie monster. C’mon.

And really, this is good coffee. I bought a gold-tone filter to go with the machine, but brewed this first pot using a paper filter, and it came out much better than I’d expected—and my expectations were pretty high. (For the record, this was one of the coffees from Bennie and Sue, a Tanzanian Peaberry from Don Francisco.)

I’m doing a little triage on my coffee torture devices; I’ve moved an espresso machine I almost never use out to the garage (when I want espresso, the stovetop moka pot does a pretty good job, honestly), and have tried to make a bit of space on my grandmother’s baker’s rack for the Chemex and vacuum pot. I’m likely to keep the French press close at hand, but the Clubline may, for practical purposes, take the place of the other two.

(N.B.: The image is from Sweet Maria’s, the home roasting store I ordered the machine from.)

Comments

[mordrul.livejournal.com]

The picture is more frightening than the name, but it's still a close race.

So, do you still roast your own beans? I'm assuming that your Christmas beans are pre-roasted.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

I haven't roasted beans in about a year, actually. I've been considering getting a little bag of green beans from a local place I know of and determining whether or not the roaster I have still works, then deciding whether I want to get off my butt and actually do it. It's not that much of a pain, but I don't have a really good place for the roaster to be. (Roasting coffee indoors tends to set off smoke alarms and fill the house with an odor that's less like brewing coffee than like burning grass, and when I was roasting a year ago I determined that the outdoor outlets we have are on the broken side -- you have to wiggle the plug around to make a connection and even when you get it just so it may decide to literally fall out of the outlet when you're not looking. Given that consistent heat tends to be important for coffee roasting, this is a drawback.)

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

I recognize the machine! They were prevalent in Finland in all kinds of places where lots of coffee was being consumed, though they went by some different name which escapes me at the moment. They were known for brewing good coffee, being reliable, and having easily replaceable spare parts available for when anything did go wrong.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen any other names (in English) other then "Technivorm" and "Clubline," but they're pretty distinctive-looking. I did notice on the company's home page that they have a lot of commercial and semi-commercial models that apparently aren't over here. I suspect if I ever opened a coffee shop, though, I'd put some effort into getting one of their whomping big models.

[ben-mouse.livejournal.com]

Beware the wrath of Technivorn!

Hee. I do love a good cup of coffee in the morning, but generally I'm to lazy in the morning to make it.

Shamble to shower. Shamble to clothes. Turn on computers. Shamble to kitchen. Put -yesterday's coffee- in a cup and microwave. Shamble to email.

I think I would love living at your house!