my coffee maker sucks

to celebrate my resumption of slavery to the bean, i ordered a Bodum Santos stovetop vacuum pot.

i know i will sound like a marketroid when i say this, but it is true: a vacuum pot is fun to watch, a neat physics lesson, and best of all, it makes great coffee.

it operates thusly: a pot is put on a heat source, full of fresh water. when the water is heated nearly to a boil, another pot is put securely on top of that one, the connection is sealed by a gasket to be airtight. the top pot has a filter on the bottom, on top of which sits your coffee grounds. a bit of chain dangles from the bottom of the first pot all the way down through the junction and to the bottom of the first pot.

the chain breaks the surface tension of the water and causes it to boil. the boiling water turns to water vapor, which increases the pressure in the bottom pot, which pushes the vapor up into the top pot, where it combines with the beans to brew coffee. when you think it's had enough, you take it off the heat source, the bottom chamber cools a little, the vapor contracts, and a partial vacuum is formed in the lower pot.

the partial vacuum sucks the coffee down from the top, through the filter, and when that's done, you remove the top and pour your coffee out of the bottom.

the resulting cup has as much body as french press coffee but also much brightness that gets missed in french press, and a much cleaner cup than FP.

now, the bodum santos has one killer feature and one drawback. it is my second vacuum pot so i can appreciate both of these. my first vacpot uses a flame source and takes for freakin ever to boil, even if you use preheated water. not only that, the flame source is an alcohol lamp and i have never had any luck maintaining those -- they tend to need wick trimming constantly, or simply not light ever. to that end, i got a yama branded butane burner (but the gorram igniter does not work! argh!!).

the bodum is designed to sit directly on your stove. you know how to use your stove, right? no additional learning required, no wick trimming, no matches. it even works on our electric HOS.

the drawback is that it has a plastic filter, much like a small poker chip nestled ever so slightly above the junction hole. this allows some sediment in the cup, so the santos cup is cloudier/grittier than the yama. the bright side of this is that the poker chip is much easier to clean/maintain than the yama's cloth filter, which tends to taste like either (your choice of) bleach or mold. bleah.

all in all, the bodum vacpot is great, the yama is good (it certainly looks way cooler, like a piece of lab equipment), and vacpot brewing in general is really the way to go.