Alan Harrell wrote:
> And now boys and girls, it's time for Alan's tip of the day. Of course
> you know Alan knows everything about everything. <g>
>
> Continuous heat ruins good coffee. You should not leave your carafe on
> the burner, nor should you leave your cup on a burner. Sustained heat
> will concentrate salts, convert proteins to tars and tannins, generally
> fouling the coffee, and tainting it with a burned smell. Yech!
>
> Instead, you should brew your coffee and then pour it into a quality
> insulated thermos or thermal carafe. The thermos will keep your coffee
> piping hot and you can drink a little at a time. Every cup poured will
> be rich and aromatic. :-)slurp
>
> So then, Patti, I recommend you get a good thermos instead of the cup
> warmer. The thermos will give you multiple uses, while the cup warmer
> will just heat the cup.
My dear Alan,
I have one of these little beauties and I never met a cup of gourmet
coffee I didn't like, either. In fact, I count that as the main
attraction of my newly adopted city, Seattle. The coffee warmer that
I has doesn't heat the cup so much as to ruin the coffee. It does
keep it right on the edge of hot, but it's significantly cooler than
when it comes out of the pot. There's a much greater qualitative
change from leaving the coffee in the pot with the coffee maker on
than with using one of these puppies.
Because of that, I have both a thermos AND a coffee warmer. But then
again, I'm a programmer--a machine for turning caffeine into code.
YMMV.
Emily
