Laughing Sal
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2024
(Edit to review:) I have had this coffee carafe for a year now, and it is still working great. I've found a couple of tweaks to the iced coffee preparing that have made the process more effective. One was I started ordering coffee specified be ground to "pour over" grind. The sediment, or grounds in the coffee thing I mentioned in my longer review really was not, and has not been, an issue, but this size of grind seems to improve the steeping process, i.e. seems to get more coffee flavor out of the grounds with no increase in sediment. But when I can't afford special ordered ground coffee- Graffeo, from San Francisco- Swiss Water Decaf- supermarket pre-ground coffee works just fine in this carafe. By the way- if you are a decaf drinker, you can Google to find out if your coffee has been decaffeinated by the Swiss Water process, which is chemical free, or not. You can "check your decaf"- if you know what I mean.Another thing I started doing was, after I put the grounds into the long metal filter, instead of filling the carafe with cold water, I started filling it with *hot* water. Not boiling water- I don't want to crack the carafe- but very hot water- almost steaming- *very slowly*, stirring as the water is added with the long metal spoon thing. This adding very hot water step, I've found, speeds up the steeping process, so if I drink the iced coffee after say, 8 or 12 hours, it has a nice rich flavor, as opposed to needing it to sit and steep for at least 24 hours to achieve a nice strong coffee taste. (Just be careful to add it slowly, and the water should be quite hot, but NOT boiling.)All in all- this carafe has proved to be an excellent investment. The handle is every bit as sturdy as the day I bought it. As I mentioned in the longer review, I don't pick the carafe up and move it around by the handle when it is full of coffee or even half full, not because the handle feels weak, but because I am a klutz. So I always support the carafe, unless it is a third or under full, by the bottom when I am taking it out of the fridge and putting it back in. It's a great product, and I'm glad I have it. I've actually been thinking of buying another one, because the quality of the iced coffee this carafe makes is so good that I am drinking a lot more of it! Highly recommended!(Original review) I love iced coffee. I had been making my daily iced coffee using instant decaf coffee in an old insulated thermal carafe. I would make a big batch of it and put it in the refrigerator, and it lasted me a couple of days, and it was fine. Or- so I thought.I was thinking about upgrading my iced coffee situation, so I looked around on Amazon for a new iced coffee maker. I liked this one because it got decent reviews; it was made of glass, not plastic; the filter was made of metal; it produced a lot of iced coffee (I ordered the 64 ounce size); and it looked sturdy and durable. I also ordered some water decaf ground coffee- Verena Street Mississippi Grogg, a brand I had never heard of, and this coffee proved to be excellent. I eagerly anticipated new iced coffee day.When the Mason coffee maker arrived, it was indeed nice and robust. Though quite substantive, it was not too heavy for me to manipulate with ease, and I am a small older woman with some arthritis in my hands and shoulders. I washed all of the components- the big glass jar, the heavy-duty plastic pouring lid, and the very cool-looking long metal cone-shaped, fine-meshed coffee filter. It also came with a super long skinny spoon stirrer thing that is also really heavy and well made. I can tell you this- even though it appears this coffee maker was made you-know-where, they did not skimp on the materials. Every part of the coffee maker feels like it was constructed the way things used to be when I was a kid. All the parts- the glass carafe, the plastic lid, the metal filter, the long spoon thing- are heavy and solid. I could tell this iced coffee maker is going to be around for a long, long time.Despite its obvious sturdiness, I am careful when lifting the coffee maker in and out of the fridge when it is full, as it is very heavy with all that volume of liquid. I do not just pick it up solely by the handle. I cradle it in my arm the way you do a football, or, if I do use the handle, I make sure to put a supporting hand under the carafe’s bottom. I do this *not* because the handle feels flimsy, or it is wiggling around, or has given any indication that it is about to snap off. I handle the full coffee maker this way because I am clumsy, and I have a tendency to break things, and I like my nice new carafe, and I want it to be around for a long time.I found the instructions that came with with the coffee maker to be rather enigmatic. There was an allusion to an enclosed “O ring” and “T ring.” Well- there are two translucent rubber rings that are part of the coffee maker. One is nestled at the top of the filter, and the other is inside the plastic lid that screws onto the glass jar. The instructions seem to be implying there are two spare rings in the box someplace. If so, I didn’t find any. The suggested amount of coffee to add to the filter (I think) to fill the 64 ounce coffee maker is 8 ounces, which is about a cup. I added a bit more than that, as I like my coffee strong, and this was new decaf coffee that I was working with, and I don’t like weak coffee. I set the coffee maker in the sink, turned the cold water on low, and let the water run down into the top of the filter, onto the grounds. The grounds within the filter started to float to the top of the water, which is when the long spoon/stirrer came in handy. (I’ve noticed that some brands of coffee have more buoyant grounds than others. For example, the Peet’s decaf Major Dickerson’s Blend- no chemicals!- those are very buoyant grounds, and stirring them and getting them saturated with water was more of a challenge than the first coffee I tried- the Verena Street decaf- which seemed to absorb water very fast, and didn’t need to be stirred at all. So the need to use the spoon/stirrer will vary with the coffee used, it seems.). I filled the carafe with as much water as I could, so I could have coffee for at least three days. The water started to look nice and coffee-colored right away, and I thought- this is going to be good. I screwed on the top, and put the coffee maker in the fridge.I admit I didn’t have the patience to wait a full 24 hours before tasting the brew, but I did let the coffee steep for a good 14 hours. You have to unscrew the top and remove the filter before you can pour any coffee out through the lid. I got my insulated tumbler, filled it half way with ice, and poured the now quite dark and rich-looking iced coffee into the tumbler. I added my favorite sugar-free coffee creamer, popped on the lid, dropped in the metal straw, and took a sip.Wow. Why- why… why had I wasted all of those months drinking crummy instant decaf coffee? This was quality iced coffee- rich and smooth-tasting, without the bitter chemical tang I guess I had learned to ignore in my daily instant decaf. I literally stood and stared into space for some time, savoring how good this coffee tasted. And making it wasn’t a hassle. As another reviewer had so wisely mentioned they had done, I had set aside the wet, grounds-filled filter on a plate to allow the grounds to dry out. This made cleaning the dry grounds out of the filter much easier than dealing with wet grounds. The dry grounds fell right out of the filter with a tap, and it rinsed clean right away.Now I only have to make coffee every three days, as opposed to once a day. And it doesn’t taste stale, even after sitting in the fridge all that time. And since the coffee is being stored inside a glass container, not a plastic one, there’s no worry of any weird chemicals leaching out of the plastic into the liquid even after three days in the fridge.I did want to mention this. When I tried the coffee the first time after initially taking it out of the fridge, I did notice a *very small* amount of coffee ground sediment in the coffee. Very minimal traces of grounds. These traces did not bother me one bit. In my long life, I have drunk coffee that has been made in less than ideal circumstances, like the times when I had to prepare coffee by very slowly pouring boiling water through a paper towel containing coffee grounds into an empty mayonnaise jar (many, many years ago,) so a minuscule amount of coffee grit was not a big deal. After the coffee had settled in the refrigerator for about an hour, if there were any remains of coffee grounds in it, they had vanished. The coffee I had used had come pre-ground, and it was fairly finely ground. More coarsely ground coffee should eliminate this issue. For me, it wasn’t/isn’t a concern.All in all, I am *very* pleased with my purchase. For the quality of this coffee maker, the price is a steal. The Mason Cold Brew Coffee Maker really has elevated my daily tumbler of coffee from “ok- yeah- coffee” to a truly pleasurable coffee drinking experience.