Coffee carafes
The good ol’ coffee carafe! A very underrated piece of equipment if you ask me. A coffee is only as good as the carafe it comes from, at least if you’re not going to drink it all immediately after it’s been brewed.
The most important thing to consider with a carafe is that it’s made of stainless steel. This is non-negotiable in my opinion. First of all, they’re extremely durable. You couldn’t break them if you tried! A nuclear war could break out and your stainless steel coffee carafe would survive next to your skeletal remains. I could possibly be exaggerating, but they really are much harder to break than for instance plastic or glass carafes which would break just by leaving it in the sink for too long.
Second advantage: it does a swell job of keeping the coffee warm. But that’s not all! Since a stainless steel carafe is (most of the time at least) also thermal, it means you don’t need to keep it warm using another heat source, it just magically keeps itself warm in there for hours all by itself.
This leads us to the third advantage: keeping the coffee heated in a thermal carafe like this preserves its good taste! Unlike those lousy glass carafes which are heated from its heating element below and thus reduces the taste and aroma with time. Some coffee makers can brew the coffee directly into a thermal carafe like this to keep the flavor nice and exquisite, but even if yours doesn’t, you can just immediately pour the coffee from your coffee maker’s boring glass carafe into a handy stainless steel carafe that you have on the side.
Of course, if the taste of your coffee is worth preserving, it has to taste good in the first place! Make sure to buy high quality coffee, it makes a world of difference. My personal favorite coffee comes from Gevalia. I especially recommend their Colombian and hazelnut coffee types which you can read more about on this site.
Gevalia’s stainless steel coffee carafe
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If you want to give Gevalia’s coffee a try and also happen to be in the need of a good coffee carafe, check out their great offer by clicking the link on the carafe picture on the right! Not only will you get a highly recommendable 34 ounce stainless steel coffee carafe that keeps your coffee hot for 4 hours, you also get your choice of two coffee boxes, a drip coffee maker and a coffee mug , for almost nothing! All top quality stainless steel stuff, and it’s only $22.95 plus $5.95 shipping. According to them it’s a $168 value and although I can’t confirm that exactly, it’s definitely huge bang for the buck, no doubt, with the entire package costing approximately the same as most coffee carafes do separately. I can’t recommend this offer enough since it gives you everything you need to enjoy high quality gourmet coffee at a terribly reasonable price.
Gevalia’s intention with the offer is the assumption that you will keep ordering their coffee in a schedule from them after you’ve received the kit. BUT, there is no obligation with this offer. If after having ordered the bundle and find yourself being one of those strange people who don’t care for Gevalia’s coffee (they do exist!), you simply cancel the service and that’s it! Since it is pretty common among some shady “companies” to scam people by luring them into giving their credit card numbers with offers like this that they then can’t (or at least have a very hard time to) get out of, it’s understandable that many are skeptical to this offer. But don’t be afraid, Gevalia is a reputable company with lots of satisfied customers. The idea of this offer being a scam can be seen being dismissed by plenty of people at Yahoo! Answers.
Besides Gevalia’s coffee carafe, there are some other ones I could highly recommend, in case Gevalia’s offer isn’t your cup of coffee (haha). If you don’t mind paying approximately the same price for just a carafe that does not include a coffee maker, mug and coffee boxes, check out the other fine products below.
Thermos Nissan 34-Ounce Stainless-Steel Vacuum Insulated Briefcase Bottle
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Here’s a nice stainless steel carafe with 34 ounce capacity. There’s also a little brother version that can hold 16 ounces but the price difference between the two are almost negligible so I recommend going for the bigger one. You can never have a carafe that’s too big can you? Maybe one day they’ll invent the unlimited coffee carafe, but until then, this one will do juuust fine!
The product is stainless steel, which, like I said above, is utterly mandatory in my opinion. Read the intro text above these product reviews for the reasons why, if you skipped it. The stainless steel helps this carafe to do the outstanding job it does at keeping the coffee hot. Or if you prefer, keeping your cold drinks cold! They claim it keeps liquids hot for 12 hours, and keeps them cold for 24 hours. I always finish my coffee before 12 hours has passed so I can’t confirm that 100%. I can, however, confirm that it does stay perfectly hot after 8 hours, so I’m sure it will be just fine after 12 hours as well.
On the down side, it has to be washed by hand only as dish washers can damage it. But really, you should take care of your precious coffee carafe enough to not throw it in a dishwasher anyway! It’s almost sinful!
Another down side is, well, I may sound like a broken record by saying this, but it’s $27. That’s more than Gevalia’s offer which also includes a friggin’ coffee maker, a mug and two boxes of delicious gourmet coffee! Gevalia’s carafe only keeps coffee hot for 4 hours, however. It’s up to you to decide if you need the heat for all those extra hours enough to warrant the extra cost. If time is of the essence for you, then this carafe has my highest recommendation!