My new coffee toy
August 31st, 2005 | by mbhunter |
Coffee is a food group for me. (Yeah! That’s it! It’s a food group, not an addiction! 
)
I have a few “discount mugs” that mostly have “paid for themselves” in that the discounts on the refills have paid for the mugs. However, the coffee is still a lot more expensive than if you brew your own.
A 20-oz cup of Sheetz coffee, with the refill mug, is 59 cents plus tax. (And I can knock off a couple of cents because it qualifies as a gas purchase with my Chase PerfectCard™.) It’s much cheaper than a $2 cup of Starbucks, but you can brew a few pots of coffee yourself for 59 cents.
Problem is, if you brew and go, the coffee gets cold without a thermal container. I’ll drink it room temperature, but that’s only because I need the — uuuhhh…. — nutrition. (Yeah! That’s it! It’s a source of nutrition, not an addiction! )
I’ve had a pretty bad track record with glass thermal containers. They seem to shatter after a couple of weeks. That’s where I draw the line — I don’t drink coffee with broken glass in it.
I’ve seen a couple of people with a Stanley Stainless Steel Vacuum Bottle, and they’re well-worn, which indicates that they’re really sturdy. The people who have them love them. I got a 1-liter one at Wal-Mart for under $20. Stanley sells replacement parts for the bottle, so if the stopper on the top wears out I can get another one.
It keeps coffee hot pretty well, too! A few weeks of not buying coffee by the cup and it will have paid for itself.
2 Responses to “My new coffee toy”
By lpkitten on Sep 1, 2005 | Reply
you know i had one of those coffee warmers that you could plug into your car (a random gift). the problem was that it made the coffee too hot and i always burnt my tongue on the hot coffee. perhaps a thermal warmer would have been a better solution.
By mbhunter on Sep 1, 2005 | Reply
Supposedly coffee makers with thermal burners don’t do the coffee any favors. “Burners” are descriptive of what they do to the coffee.
I haven’t broken down to get a thermal carafe yet for brewing the coffee, but the Stanley works well so far at storing it for at least a few hours.