I love Corning products, particularly their "Corelle" stuff which is made of "Vitrelle", which is 2 types of glass in a 3-layer laminate. It is incredibly strong, allowing it to be much thinner and lighter than ordinary glass or ceramic dishes and cups. I grew up with Corelle "Butterfly Gold" pattern dishes (which was one of the original 4 patterns) that Dad bought for Mom in the early '70s, shortly after they were married. They are what I use for dishes to this day. We also had the Corningware casserole dishes, which I like as well. I don't have any of those now, but I should get some. They are thinner and lighter than the typical Pyrex type casserole dishes, and just as strong, if not stronger.Mrs. Higgins wrote: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:
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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.
Yeah, coffee should be brewed with 195 to 205 degree water. According to the manufacturer, the Jet-O-Matic brews at 202 degrees. Coffee is usually served/maintained at 175 to 185 degrees, and that's also about the temperature it will be immediately after pouring it in a cup (which inevitably cools it down) if it was brewed at the right temperature.MHTR wrote: 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.
With a drip brew machine, the water should be boiling (212 degrees), because dripping down toward the grinds, and then hitting the grinds, inevitably cools it down. With a percolator, the water should be kept just below boiling, because unlike a drip brew machine, the water and the brewed coffee are effectively the same thing, i.e., it is a continuous cycle and it gets all intermixed, so if your water is boiling, so is your coffee.
Inexpensive drip brew machines don't usually get the water hot enough, or the heating element is too far away from the shower head, so by the time it makes it up that tube it has cooled down too much. More expensive drip brew machines tend to have higher wattage and/or improved designs to ensure the water is about 200 degrees upon contact with the coffee grinds. A cheap way to replicate, and potentially improve upon the performance of expensive/commercial drip brew machines is with a "Chemex", which is just a glass pot that accepts a cone-type basket/filter. They've been around for ages. You manually pour hot water from a tea kettle over the coffee grinds. This allows you to make the water as hot as you want it (just boil it; it will automatically be the right temperature when you take it off the stove and immediately pour it), rather than relying on a machine to get it right.