The vast majority of people in the developed world share their mornings with a coffee machine, if the are lucky they share it with an espresso machine but have you ever actually wondered how your coffee goes in as water and comes out as coffee? It takes place in a matter of minutes and it has such a huge impact.
There are lots of options when it comes to buying a coffee maker but most of us use a plain old drip coffee maker. It may not be glitzy and glamourous but it gets the job done. And it is actually a pretty simple device. When you get down to it there really isn’t much to making a pot of coffee. And to tell you a secret it has more to do with the grind than it does the coffee maker.
There are three basic components to a coffee pot. First is the water reservoir that you pour the coffee into. At the bottom of the reservoir there is a tube that carries the water into the drip. There are different drip configurations but the name pretty much gives away the idea of what the drip does.
The water is heated in the reservoir causing it to go up the tube and into the drip where it drips over the coffee. The hot water and coffee ground combine in the basket and because of the oil in the coffee grounds and the fine grind the water cannot freely run through the filter.
The water and the coffee grounds mingle together while the fluid works its way through the coffee filter. Filters are usually paper but can also be a reusable mesh, often copper or plastic.
Once the coffee goes through the filter it ends up in the pot where it is kept warm by the heating element on the bottom of the coffee pot. This is the same heating element that originally heated the water causing it to go up the tube into the drip, so you know it is hot. You have probably seem what happens when you leave a coffee pot on all day. You end up with a crusty mess at the bottom of the coffee pot or a broke carafe.
So as you can see a coffee pot is a relatively simple invention that serves us very well. Of course there are fancier options on the market, like espresso machines or french presses, but for most of us a regular old coffee machine is fine.