[For the Love of ‘Fee] If a Percolator Dies in a Kitchen Does Sarca Make a Sound?

Tragedy struck my coffee-loving home this weekend. My two-year-old Cuisinart percolator bit the biscuit. Instead of brewing hot java, it made lukewarm dishwater.

I can’t deny my percolator’s impending death has been etched on the wall for a while now. Every once in a while, it would make weakass coffee. I’d dump out and start over, and it would often manage to make an okay pot of coffee the second time around. Not yesterday morning, however. Nope, I had to succumb to the fact it was time for a new percolator.

Thankfully, we have an old Black and Decker drip coffee maker stored in our utility room ready to go for times like this. The drip maker’s coffee was passable, but it’s not my preferred method of brew.

In case you didn’t catch it the first time, I’m a percolator girl. I am well aware in this society of K-Cups, Tassimos and Timmy Ho-hos, I am the minority. Hey, nothing wrong with that kind of brew; I may even partake in a pinch. Just not the way I prefer my ‘fee.

My first exposure to percolated coffee was 1998 when the only coffee maker my husband had in his tiny dank apartment in Pembroke, Ontario was an aluminum stove-top percolator. That thing made the best tasting coffee ever! Throw forward two years ago when we found an electric percolator at Value Village for $7.99, and voila! I was hooked onto the percolated coffee every morning! That percolator almost started a fire in my kitchen before finally kicking the bucket. But, at that point, there was no turning back – percolators all the way for this household!

My husband and I have been through a succession of coffee makers over the years; I’d hazard around five or six since we got together. Most of them were drip makers, all lasted no longer than two years before meeting their maker. Something would happen to them and they just would quit working. This time, our Cuisinart percolator’s heating element failed almost two years to the day I bought it. They just don’t make ’em like they used to.

Every time something like this happens I try to look for a different brand thinking maybe I’ll find the golden coffee maker that will last until eternity. Then that maker busts….and well…frankly, I am running out of coffee maker brands, especially when it’s hard to find an electric percolator.

Where I live in Ontario, you are limited to maybe 4 different places to buy coffee makers – Walmart, Canadian Tire, Sears or Target. At that, you are pretty much limited to two brands of percolator – Hamilton Beach and Cuisinart. The choice of coffee maker matches the demand; if I am to judge what people are into coffee-maker-wise these days, I’d say that Keurig and Tassimo are sweeping the nation, interspersed with conventional drip coffee makers. My taste in brewed coffee is obviously not popular.

Message received: “percolators are OUT, Sarca!”

…Or, at least the 4 different stores I ran to yesterday looking for an electric percolator  would tell me this is so.

I’d like to think I’m a pretty smart cookie…Before heading out to hunt down a new one, I checked Walmart and Canadian Tire’s stock online to make sure I was not wasting my time and both said they had Hamilton Beach percolators in stock. Well, the websites LIE!! …okay, they half lie. Walmart had only one boxed Hamilton Beach electric percolator, but I wasn’t buying it; it looked like someone busted it open, then did a Mexican hat dance on the box. Crappy Tire, on the other hand, had nothing but Keurigs and Tassimos in store.

I can hear my inner voice: “Yeah, yeah, deal with it, Sarca. Turn to the dark side – Keurig! Keurig!”

But, NO!! I can’t do it!!

Following my hunting expedition, I returned home in a totally bad mood. I was about to resign to a week of drip-coffee maker coffee and an online order to Amazon, when my husband spirited me away to Target, in an attempt to turn around my bad coffee karma. Lo and behold, the trip was not in vain! I managed to buy the one and only Hamilton Beach electric percolator they had on the shelf, and the box was sealed! Hallelujah!!

Since, I have used my new percolator twice. One thing is for sure, it makes one strong cup of coffee. It will take a bit to adjust the amount of grounds you need to use. But, It makes hot ‘fee! Here’s hoping this percolator lasts another two years!