Magnum's coffee maker

[MaximRecoil]

That's a General Electric Coffeematic. It was part of the first wave of automatic drip coffee makers, which started with the introduction of the Mr. Coffee brand machine in 1972. Automatic drip machines rapidly supplanted percolators in popularity, which, in stovetop, and later, in electric form, had been the standard American coffee maker for about 100 years. These days, percolators have been all but forgotten.

I recognized Magnum's coffee maker immediately because my father had the same one when I was a kid in the 1980s; he bought it in the late '70s or early '80s. I don't think Magnum's carafe is the original one though; the original one that came with Dad's has a brown handle which matches the brown on the machine itself. I still have the one Dad used in the '80s (he gave it to me when he replaced it with a Bunn automatic drip machine in the early '90s); here's a picture of it:



Unfortunately, it makes bad coffee; sour tasting and not very hot. I haven't used it since the late '90s. Dad was never impressed with it even when it was new. He originally bought it to replace his M.H. Graham Corporation Jet-O-Matic coffee maker, which looks and sounds like a percolator, but according to the manufacturer, it isn't:

The JET-O-MATIC is designed and engineered to brew
delicious coffee without extracting the harsh flavors
and bitter ingredients of coffee. The JET-O-MATIC is
not a percolator.

• The Jet Pump "jets" coffee without boiling! Tem-
peratures never exceed 202° at brewing level.

• The amazing Jet Pump saves up to 50% on
coffee.

• Mirror finish stainless steel.

• Brews 3 to 12 cups.

• No unnecessary knobs to adjust.

• Less than 8" high.

• No-drip spout is easy to clean.

• Signals when done. Shuts off automatically.
Keeps coffee hot.

AT last...enjoy coffee without boiling! Boiled coffee
is spoiled coffee.

He bought that in '71, and when it stopped working about 10 years later, they were no longer being manufactured, so he bought one of those newfangled automatic drip machines. He always lamented the loss of his Jet-O-Matic; said it made the best coffee ever, and his new automatic drip machine couldn't compare.

About 6 years ago I bought Dad a vintage Jet-O-Matic from eBay. He sent me the following email:

Tried my coffee pot out this morning, works great, makes the great tasting coffee that I remember, thanks again.

Dad

I bought one for myself too. They make excellent coffee; perfect in my opinion. Neither sour nor bitter; good and hot (about 185 degrees F as measured in the cup immediately after pouring).

I keep that GE Coffeematic for the sake of nostalgia though, given that it was a fixture in our kitchen the whole time I was growing up.

[Mrs. Higgins]

Great post. I've reached the age where I'm nostalgic for this kind of stuff.

[308GUY]

Great post. I've reached the age where I'm nostalgic for this kind of stuff.

Agreed.

Been more than a few of those type makers come and go through my kitchen..

I'd also agree that the carafe is probably not original to the machine.

I've broken a couple myself, so when the machine's quit working, I'd generally hang on to the carafe's because there was a good chance I'd end up breaking the one in use eventually too! Some of them will not interchange, but for the most part, you can usually swap one for the other.

The thing that seemed to go wrong with them as often as not, was they wouldn't make the coffee all that "hot" to begin with, then IF you let it set there for more than a few minutes, the "warmer" didn't do it's job either. Other than that, the heating element would burn out, or the switch would go bad, but rather than spend the time and money replacing the $6 or$8 switch, I'd just spring for a new $12 maker at KMart!

To the "bitter" coffee issue, for me, that seems to be more a matter of what coffee is used, how much is used, and how long it sits in the carafe. Had a friend tell me once that if you put a "pinch" of salt in with the grounds, it will help with the bitter taste, but it never really seemed to make a difference to me, so only tried it a couple times.

Got started on the coffee kick waaaay back in the late 60's as a teenager working part time in a SOHIO outlet. If you showed up in the winter you had better have a tray of coffee for everybody...otherwise, before you even got completely in the door..you'd hear...."Where's the coffee?" Might have been me that finally talked them into buying and using a percolator...right there in the backroom of the garage! Who'd athunkit? You guessed it, then the standard greeting turned into, "Did you make the coffee?"

Neat post MR, so cool that you were able to and did that for your dad.

[MagnumsGMTMaster]

What are those two appliances between the Coffeematic and the blender?

[Kate Sullivan]

What are those two appliances between the Coffeematic and the blender?

The brown circular thing just looks like an ice-bucket in the top picture. Don't know about the white conical thing - were juicers around in the 80s?

[308GUY]

That was my guess on the brown deal. That's a "fancy" one...like they have at the Marriott or Hilton.

Isn't the white appliance his battery powered automatic popcorn maker?





[I've been wrong before.....]

[MaximRecoil]

What are those two appliances between the Coffeematic and the blender?

The brown circular thing just looks like an ice-bucket in the top picture. Don't know about the white conical thing - were juicers around in the 80s?

It's a hot air popcorn popper, specifically, a Presto PopCornNow Plus, like this one:



They showed him using it at the beginning of I Witness (4.21):



The one we had in the '80s was a Wear-Ever Popcorn Pumper, which was probably the most popular one:



As a coincidence with this thread topic, those Wear-Ever Popcorn Pumpers from the '80s are best known today for being used to roast coffee beans (the 1,400 watt versions).

[MaximRecoil]

Isn't the white appliance his battery powered automatic popcorn maker?

He got that later on (Professor Jonathan Higgins [5.13]), and it was quite a bit different than his Presto PopCornNow Plus:





And I think he only ever used it in that one episode. I suspect that one is just a fabricated prop rather than a real model. At the very least the black box on the base was definitely added by the prop department, and I've never seen a real hot air popper of that style with an enclosed top (as opposed to having an opening for the popcorn to go into a bowl). It looks like it was made using that Presto as a starting point, with the upper flared portion of the base cut off. The shape is the same, and they both have vertical ridges molded into the plastic on the bottom part of the base. You can also see the small hole in the base where the cord used to come out.

Also, battery-powered hot-air popcorn poppers aren't all that feasible in the first place; they use too much juice (about 1,000 to 1,500 watts). Something like a DeWalt cordless drill is only about 360 watts, uses a 20-volt battery, and it's still quite big. I guess a big enough battery could fit in that prop's black box base, especially if they used a high voltage battery such as 36 volts or more, but it would be quite heavy.

[308GUY]

Great detail info.

Thanks for clearing that up, once and for all!







[I was half right....it IS a popcorn maker!]

[MaximRecoil]

To the "bitter" coffee issue, for me, that seems to be more a matter of what coffee is used, how much is used, and how long it sits in the carafe. Had a friend tell me once that if you put a "pinch" of salt in with the grounds, it will help with the bitter taste, but it never really seemed to make a difference to me, so only tried it a couple times.

I've never had a problem with bitter coffee; maybe what some people call "bitter" I call "normal"; I don't know. I've heard of the "pinch of salt" thing, but have never tried it. I have had problems with sour-tasting coffee though. I'm not sure what causes that (other than it definitely being a brewing issue rather than a bean issue, at least in some cases), but it's fairly common. I've never gotten sour-tasting coffee from a Jet-O-Matic, but I've gotten it from plenty of cheap drip machines. The better drip machines don't tend to have that problem, such as commercial Bunn machines used in diners.

Got started on the coffee kick waaaay back in the late 60's as a teenager working part time in a SOHIO outlet. If you showed up in the winter you had better have a tray of coffee for everybody...otherwise, before you even got completely in the door..you'd hear...."Where's the coffee?" Might have been me that finally talked them into buying and using a percolator...right there in the backroom of the garage! Who'd athunkit? You guessed it, then the standard greeting turned into, "Did you make the coffee?"

Neat post MR, so cool that you were able to and did that for your dad.

I think percolators are superior to drip machines. My favorite percolator is the Jet-O-Matic of course. As I mentioned before, the manufacturer claims it isn't a percolator, but I don't know what else it could possibly be. Just look at it:



If not a percolator, then what is it? It certainly isn't an "automatic drip" machine like they wrote on the box. It doesn't use a spreader plate on top of the basket and it doesn't boil the water/coffee, but other than that, I'd say it is still fundamentally a percolator.

Either way, compared to a typical drip machine, I think percolator coffee tastes better. Plus, you don't need a filter (though you can use one if you want); the machine is far more compact for a given brewing capacity; the construction is better (typically stainless steel; the coffee never touches plastic), and the parts are more readily accessible for cleaning. How those cheap, mostly plastic, big and cumbersome, filter-requiring automatic drip machines with delicate carafes ever supplanted electric percolators is a mystery to me.

[ConchRepublican]

I have been using a Cuisinart Grind and Brew since we got one as a gift for our wedding. I believe we are on our 3rd or 4th now in 18 years, which isn't a great track record, but considering the moving parts and that we use it everyday, at least once a day, I make an exception.

Add to that it makes a great coffee from freshly ground beans (Baby's Breakfast Roast from Key West preferred) and well, I'm a sucker I guess.

[MaximRecoil]

I have been using a Cuisinart Grind and Brew since we got one as a gift for our wedding. I believe we are on our 3rd or 4th now in 18 years, which isn't a great track record, but considering the moving parts and that we use it everyday, at least once a day, I make an exception.

Add to that it makes a great coffee from freshly ground beans (Baby's Breakfast Roast from Key West preferred) and well, I'm a sucker I guess.

My older brother is really into coffee. He has two really expensive coffee machines; one he bought new for about $600 and the other was a massive $5,000 commercial machine from Italy which he bought broken for several hundred dollars and had it repaired for a few hundred more dollars. Both machines grind the beans, compress the grinds into a "puck", and brew; all automatically. This method results in a "crema" on top of the coffee (i.e., foam). He uses the $600 machine at home, and he uses the big commercial machine at work, and lets his co-workers use it as well. He also frequents a lot of the coffee joints in his neck of the woods (Tucson, AZ).

In 2008/2009 I was out there for 9 months working with him, so I tried all of those high-end coffees and brewing methods, and went to a lot of different coffee shops, and I never could see what all the fuss was about. Some of it was good, but in my opinion, not better than what I make at home (ordinary Folgers or Maxwell House pre-ground, brewed in a Jet-O-Matic), and some of it I didn't much care for. Dad has been out to visit him a few times too, and he had the same reaction as me.

I was hoping to find something that would make me think, "Wow! So this is what I've been missing for all these years," but it never happened.

I recently bought a Jet-O-Matic that was still new in the box. I'd wanted a new one for a long time, but whenever they show up, they usually sell for more than I'm willing to pay. This one had been newly listed on eBay with a BIN of $35, so I bought it immediately. My old one, which was well-used when I got it 6 years ago, was getting tired. It still worked, but the coffee wasn't as hot as it used to be. It was about 160 degrees as measured in the cup immediately after pouring. This new one is ~185 degrees immediately after brewing and pouring in the cup, just as it should be.

[Rands]

According to a Navy LT. CDR I used to work with, he said the pinch of salt was to enhance the flavor of the coffee. He said it was a common method for the Navy. I can't attest to that statement, but he did brew a very good cup of coffee. It certainly was much better than the stuff delivered out to the field in the Army, which was always hot, and very strong. One way or another, it was coffee, and I think I consumed about a half gallon of it every day.

[Mrs. Higgins]

After Hurricane Sandy, we had no power for 2 weeks. We did have gas, but we had to light the stove with a match and make coffee with our camping percolator...which only made 2 cups at a time. About a year later, I bought a 6 cup Corning percolator like we had when I was a kid:



I bought it at an antique shop on sale for $18. I found out later that they're collectible because they were recalled due to a design flaw. Corning offered a free replacement if you mailed in the lid...thus making a complete, intact model rare.

[MHTR]

Wow, that pic takes me back to the 70s when I was a little kid. Just about everything in my Mom's kitchen looked like that: white ceramic with the 3 blue flowers.

About the sour/bad tasting coffee; a friend of mine who I consider a "coffee expert" told me once that if your coffee maker doesn't get the water to 200 degrees it just won't make a good tasting coffee.