Here’s a little project we’ve been working on here at TheCoffeeMakerStore. It’s an eco-friendly coffee tips widget that displays ways to make your coffee habit more gentle on the environment.
Copy the text below and paste it in your blog or website:
<div id="content-wrap"><div id="main"><h2>Eco Friendly Coffee Tips</h2>
<p><br><iframe src="http://thecoffeemakerstore.com/widget.htm" mce_src="http://thecoffeemakerstore.com/widget.htm" width="160" frameborder="0" height="380"></iframe><br>More cool<a href="http://TheCoffeeMakerStore.com" mce_href="http://TheCoffeeMakerStore.com"> coffee makers
</a> and coffee tips...</div></div>
It displays 13 environmentally friendly coffee tips. Please add this to your website and tell your friends about it. It’s a great way to teach others how to reduce their toll on the environment.
Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa created this compact 6 cup tea and coffee maker combo. It uses a double activated charcoal filter and brews in less than 10 minutes. It’s been on the Japanese market since 2007 and is now being released to the US and Europe for about $240. It’s good for small, compact kitchens and living spaces and has a one hour automatic shut off function to prevent your coffee from burning. It may look no more complex than a Brita water filter, but its simplicity and clean design have won it (and this designer) a fair share of design awards.
This battery powered coffee maker has gotten a lot of attention online over the past few days, and for good reason. It’s made by Made In Design It’s actually an espresso maker and besides its sleek design, it’s coolest feature is that it’s battery powered, allowing you to take it anywhere you go. It’s nearly $300, but it’s still worth it if you’re interested in a new espresso maker.
We used to have fish as kids. Pirahnas, Oscars, Jack Dempseys, and Betta fish (aka Siamese Fighters) and the Betta fish were some of our favorite. The rub is that you can’t have more than one in a tank at the same time because they, well, fight. What you typically do is buy two small fish tanks and place them side by side, causing the fish to see each other and fan out their beautifully colored fins as a display of strength and authority.
If you have kids and don’t want to get them the same old tired gold fish, think about getting some Betta fish. Now for a creative way to turn an old coffee maker into a fish tank, here’s what you need:
old coffee maker
light fixtures
wires for electrical connection
wire nuts
craft iron
screw driver
glue
You’re going to use the carafe as the actual fish tank. For more instructions, check out this article.
I read about the iMac coffee maker the other day and just had to share it. It’s totally handmade and all of the modifications were down by 53 year old German designer designer, Klaus Diebel himself. It’s made from the iconic iMac and is fully functional, including a screen that can be imprinted with an image of your choice, which also tilts open, allowing you to make your single cup of coffee. It has a bluetooth audio receiver and can be connected to you iPod as well. It is custom made and you can actually order one for yourself for roughly 300 – 400 Euros.
We’ve written about the usb powered coffee mug on this blog before, but this is just as cool. We read about it at the CNET gadget blog and were really impressed. The self-stirring coffee mug from ThinkGeek eliminates the need for spoons, straws, stirrers, sticks, and dare we say fingers. Just drop in the desired amount of cream, sugar, salt (hey, whatever floats your boat) and let this coffee mug do the rest.
The mug is stainless steel and features a snapping lid. It uses AAA batteries and a small fan-like device at the bottom of the mug to mix everything together. You simply press the button and let it go.
From ultra-luxurious to just plain weird, from insanely expensive to stunningly beautiful, these coffee makers are the coolest, most
innovative, weirdest, and most original coffee machines we’ve ever seen. This is the first in a 3 part series of posts about the weirdest, most innovative, coolest coffee makers ever. Part one of this series has 16 of the most interesting coffee makers we could find. Now we found 45 in total, and they’re all just as cool as these (if not cooler), but we’ll be blogging about them in the coming weeks. Some of these coffee makers might look familiar to you because we’ve written about them here on TheCoffeeMakerStore, but most of them won’t. Believe me when I say that they’re really cool.
Challenge: We worked long and hard to bring you this list of insane coffee makers, but it doesn’t stop there. After the conculsion of this 3 part series, anyone who can make a list just as unique will win a free Nintendo Wii or Flip camera from TheCoffeeMakerStore. So go ahead, send us the coolest coffee makers you can find!
This crazy looking coffee maker comes from ByteMods. It’s custom made from a Compaq Deskpro. The designer floppy drives and
put in a heating element by cutting the computer open in front. Incidentally, this interesting coffee maker actually brews coffee with
a VisualBasic script that enables a COM port on the pc.
This incredible coffee maker has been making a HUGE splash in leading tech and design blogs all over the world… and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a concept motion-activated coffee maker by Douwe Egberts and was presented at Dutch Design Week in the fall of 2009. The “BeMoved” coffee machine has an iPhone type of interface that features shooter-style games and a motion sensitive camera and touch screen. Not only that, but it displays weather, stocks, and traffic info.
Just like the last about innovative and uniquely designed “BeMoved” coffee machine this single serve coffee maker called the “Caffe Inn”, was created by French designer Charles Teyssier. It brews coffee and drips it from a spout at the top. You simply put a coffee mug right below and activate it. It comes in a variety of colors and just screams “chic”. Thanks to Naresh for blogging about it.
This Nespresso Crystal coffee machine is one the goofiest coffee makers I’ve ever seen. This $4,000 coffee machine is a real spectacle. It’s made from 3100 Swarovski crystals. They basically took a regular Nespresso machine and added a ton of crystals to the front and sides. I read about it over at UberReview.
Check out these Bugatti coffee makers. These Italian beauties are dripping style and classAt $1300-a-piece beauties are THE high rollers coffee machine. With slightly more capacity than a single serve coffee maker, they’re sleek and stylish and can make two cups of coffee at a time. It uses ground coffee and coffee pods. It also froths milk and can be used for coffee, cappuccino, and tea.
Need a shot of espresso? This pocket-sized espresso maker can literally fit in your purse and be taken anywhere. It’s probably the smallest espresso maker in the world. At 30 centimeters, the Mypressi Twistespresso maker is an award winning espresso maker and becoming popular with home espresso drinkers. It’s pneumatically poweredby an air cartridge that’s artfully lodged in the handle. It can make a double espresso or two singles at a time.
The Presso espresso machine is being touted as an eco-friendly manual coffee maker (which I guess it is) This little espresso maker just needs hot water; it produces enough pressure to make high quality espresso from the comfort of your own home. Energy-consumption wise, it’s really no worse than making a cup of tea. Most coffee makers still consume energy even when they’re in “off” mode. It’s relatively easy to use also. Just pour hot water in the cylinder and lift both lever arms. Then you lower the lever, trapping air and forcing the water past the coffee. This machine costs about $100. Thanks to Re-Nest for sharing this with us.
This espresso maker is super compact, giving you a chance to make espresso in your cramped kitchen. Designer Vincent Palicki created this concept coffee machine. This device allows you to make both coffee and espresso. You can switch whether it’s a coffee maker or espresso maker by rotating the upper part. You can see more pics here.
This high-tech looking espresso maker comes from designer Adam Zerbib. Its futuristic design is really cool. Part of its design is to include the coffee cup holder. It’s futuristic and modern but its tree-like design takes up more space than usual because of its cup holder. You can read more here
The Barista espresso maker is innovative and compact. Its circular design is definitely cutting edge and makes storing the small coffee cups easy and space efficient. It includes a brewing unit, docking station, and five espresso cups. In docking mode it attaches to a wall outlet and works like a normal espresso maker. When in docking mode, this machine is attached to the wall outlet and performs like a conventional espresso machine. When in portable mode, the coffee beans remain pre-grounded and the water is kept into a thermos pre-heated in order to enhance the portability of this machine and avoid unnecessary energy consumption. Many thanks to Tuvie for writing about this machine.
This medieval looking espresso maker looks like it can do quite a bit of damage. Modeled after the mace weapon of medieval times, the top part of the Etienne Louis coffee maker actually opens up, allowing you to add hot water to it. Brewing is pretty simple actually. Read more about this weird looking espresso maker at Luxury Insider
CoffeeGeek wrote about the Bodum coffee maker, which is about as basic as coffee makers get. It has a rubber grip that keeps you from burning your hands and a spout that prevents spills. It’s easy to use and to clean. But like French press coffee makers, this machine requires a coarser ground, which can leave sediment in your coffee. All in all, its a simple, basic coffee maker. What’s even better is that since it’s glass, you can recycle it when you want to get rid of it.
The Aerobie Aeropress coffee maker is good for a few reasons. First, it makes coffee incredibly fast because water and the grounds mix together for about 10 seconds. It then uses gently air pressure to push the mixture through the filter, taking only 30 seconds to brew your cup of coffee. Apparently “total immersion” of the coffee bean and the quick brewing time, in addition to the low temperature result in a smooth cup of coffee without the acid and bitterness of coffee brewed in a regular coffee maker.
If you’re interested in ice brewed coffee, the Coffee Snob Cold Drip Coffee Maker. Similar to the Aeropress Aerobie, coffee makeryields a smoother, less acidic brew because it uses cold water. Brewing coffee with cold water eliminates the undesirable oils and acids found in hot-brewed coffee that are not extracted at low temperatures.
I don’t really want to stare at two naked aliens brewing my coffee, but whatever floats your boat, I guess. Designed by Guido Venturini, this stylish and easy to use Inka French press coffee maker is definitely unique. These little coffee machines go for about $88 a piece.
The Imo coffee maker is pretty cutting-edge. It dramatically reduces the size and completely reinvents the shape of a traditional coffee maker. It was created by designer Alisson Wilson Ströher. It was designed to push the boundaries of design and function. It’s able to make coffee with a very small, un-noticeable water reservoir. What’s really cool is that it’s arm can extend and retract as seen in the picture.It only costs about $130.
Ok, so your coffee maker is broken and you need a little caffeine boost. Don’t worry pilgrim, making your own cup of coffee is simple if you follow these easy instructions. American cowboys are known as rugged outdoorsmen. The iconic image of a cowboy is with his horse beside a campfire in a desert valley. Being the tough guys that they were, they could whip up a cup of coffee with the bare essentials, a saucepan, water, and coffee beans. Here’s how you can do the same.
If you’re just making coffee for yourself, grab an old saucepan, and fill it with two cups of water. You’re going to add four or
five tablespoons of ground coffee for every two cups of water. Boil the water and then quickly take the pan off the stove. Then you’re going to let the grounds naturally settle to the bottom of the pan, which shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Next, you carefully pour the water into a cup, and whala, you have a cup of cowboy coffee! To make it even more fun, make it over a real fire.
The Original Cowboy Coffee is done like this:
4 quarts water
1 1/2 cups freshly ground coffee
1 egg shell
1/2 cup cold water
Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan or coffee pot. Add coffee
grounds and egg shell to boiling water. Return to a boil, then remove
from heat and let stand for 2 minutes. Slowly add cold water to settle
grounds to the bottom. Strain if desired.
Useful Tips:
The key to any coffee is to make sure the water is hot, but doesn’t actually start boiling. Boiling might make the coffee bitter, so your best bet is to heat it enough so that the coffee grounds move throughout the water, without it actually boiling or bubbling violently.
I read a post online where someone asked what they can cook with a coffee maker. He moves around a lot and doesn’t want to buy a hotplate, he’d rather just use his coffee machine as a hotplate and cook something really fast. The responses were pretty funny, but essentially you can cook the following things on a coffee maker:
Ramen noodles
Macaroni and cheese
Frozen vegetables
Oatmeal
Canned soup
Rice
Hot cocoa
These are typical answers and you can easily imagine making them in a coffee maker if you were forced to live like a hobo for some reason. But what really threw me for a loop was the most creative answer… fish! Apparently, if you fire up your coffee maker, you can just melt some butter and place a thin piece of fish on the coffee warmer hot plate. Now if that isn’t a creative use of a coffee maker, I don’t know what is!
Here’s a list of unique coffee tables I read about the other day on a design blog I came across. There are 12 in total, but I’m showing the ones that struck me most.
This paper plane shaped coffee table is one of the most unique I’ve ever seen. Unless you have an ultra modern house, it probably won’t fit in with your current decor. Innovative nonetheless…
This coffee table is called the “Endless Nile”. It comes in white and a wood grain color and is just beautiful to look at.
This coffee table is really cool because it uses a technique of bending thin layers of wood veneer. It produces up to 10 times the amount of usable wood from a log. Not only is the design cutting edge, but so is the technique behind it.
What a great idea! An instant way to eliminate the clutter of coffee table books. You can easily store magazines and newspapers here too. I’d easily put this in my living room.
This coffee table would work great in a bachelor pad or college dorm room, but I’m sure my wife wouldn’t go for it. It’s still pretty cool.
This is one of the most chic coffee tables I’ve ever seen in my life. I would get it in an instant. The Virdo fireplace table only uses gelled ethanol fuel and produces a smokeless flame. Soooo cool.
This beautiful coffee table, called the Bone coffee table, is ideal for sitting on the floor as seen in the picture.
A little too ugly for me. No thanks…
This coffee table reminds me of a school desk. I can easily hide my books and magazines.
The Ferrari coffee table is ideal for Ferrari fans. It’s made for a BBS wheel with a Goodyear tire used by Michael Schumacher’s fleet in the 1997 F1 season.
Coffee makers keep getting cooler. From crystal studded coffee makers to touch screen coffee makers to voice activated coffee makers, manufacturers keep pushing the boundaries on design and usability. We’ve even written about foods that you can cook with a coffee machine on this blog from pasta to eggs to shrimp
But what about other things you can do with a coffee maker? Here’s a quick list of things you can do with a large 30 cup coffee maker:, especially at large gatherings:
Make Hot Cider: As the seasons change and the weather gets colder, hot cider is just the thing to keep yourself warm this winter. To make cider in a coffee maker you just need to remove the percolator stem and baskets and pour the cider into the canister. Add the desired amount of brown sugar and cinnamon and let it heat for an hour. Whala… hot cider in a coffee maker.
Cook Hot Dogs: Birthday parties and sleepovers aren’t the same without hot dogs, especially in the summer. The next time you have a bunch of kids over just throw some packages of hot dogs in your jumbo coffee maker. Cook them for about 30 minutes and you’re all set. That is if you like boiled dogs over grilled ones.
Drink Dispenser: Coffee makers aren’t just for hot drinks. Why not make lemonade or juice mix in your 30 cup coffee maker? As long as it’s unplugged it should be safe and your drinks will stay cool.
Hand Washing Station: I’ve been to plenty of picnics and outdoor gatherings where water to wash your hands was scarce. We resorted to using the water cooler to wash our hands before eating after a game of football. This is just a variation of that. You can fill the coffee maker with warm water and add a little soap. It might not be a bad idea to turn the coffee maker on and off intermittently. That way the water stays warm but never gets hot enough to burn someone.
Cooking at Camp: If you’re going camping, you could resort to one of those small portable coffee makers. Or you could really honor your coffee addiction and lug a huge coffee machine to cook for the entire camping crew. From pasta to soup to hot dogs to fish to warming water for instant oatmeal, the coffee maker is a perfect tool. If you’ve ever been camping in November, you know what I mean.
Wash Clothes: Ok, this is kind of helpful. Have you ever run out of socks and underwear at camp? The best way to get them clean quick is to heat up some water in a coffee maker, throw in a bit of soap and just let it simmer for a while. It probably wouldn’t hurt to open the coffee machine up and stir it around for a while. Why not put in some elbow grease and scrub them a bit. You probably won’t be able to use if for coffee later, but it sure beats being stuck without clean undies, doesn’t it?
What other creative uses for a coffee maker can you think of?
For those of us who sleep with a coffee maker on the night stand, this voice activated coffee maker is pretty handy. This cool coffee machine switches between manual and voice-activated at the touch of a button. It’s a standard 10 cup coffee maker and it uses a plastic filter. The filter is dishwasher safe and means you don’t have to keep buying disposable paper coffee filters. It’s companct stainless steel design fits in well with most modern kitchens and it’s moderately priced at $99 and available at Hammacher Schlemmer
Voice activated devices haven’t always worked as good as hoped, but the simple commands that this coffee maker should make it easy to work with. Unlike most other voice activated electronics, it talks back to you, confirming what you asked for. It’s ideal for the days when you just can’t wake up and have to hit the snooze button on your alarm. Maybe the smell of fresh coffee a few feet away is enough incentive to actually get up.
I visited my father the other day for dinner. When it was time for dessert, he asked if I wanted coffee so I said “yes”. When I drank it, it tasted a little different. It had the hazelnut cream and sugar taste I was expecting, but the flavor wasn’t quite the same. When we asked what it was, he told us he made black tea and added coffee creamer and sugar! Pakistani and Indian culture is known for its chai; tea brewed with half water and half milk, so he figured he was onto something here.
So when I read about red espresso, I had to laugh. Apparently it’s rooibos tea made into an espresso. You can make it in a regular espresso maker because it makes a crema like coffee espresso, except it has a deep red color, which can be attributed to the rooibos plant itself. Red espresso doesn’t have any of the caffeine of coffee and has almost ten times the antioxidants and minerals of coffee (and even regular rooibos tea because of the way it’s ground and prepared). Like traditional espresso, it can be used to make iced teas, shakes, mochas, etc.
Not sure if it’s your cup of tea, err, espresso, but it’s worth trying out.
We wrote about the touch screen coffee maker a few weeks ago and just stumbled across this cool little coffee mug. It’s a novel concept: email, stocks, weather, news, and traffic on your coffee mug. That’s what the Yuno PC mug promises. It was designed by California State’s Jason Farsai and got lots of coverage in tech blogs. Even though it’s a concept, and the fact that you can check the same info from your computer and cell phone, it’s pretty compelling just for novelty’s sake. How cool would it be if it played music too? Not sure if it’s on the market yet, but it’ll make a good gift and definitely be a conversation starter at the office.
This self-heating and self-stirring coffee cup is one of the more innovative devices I’ve seen in a while. Not only does it stir your coffee and keep at warm (about 40 degrees Celsius), but it’s USB powered and easily rechargeable. Available at usb.brando.com, it works at the push of a button. Just pour your coffee, cream and sugar then press a button and the lid will start stirring. It has adjustable settings: Stir, Heat, or Stir and Heat. It’s only $37 bucks, and if you’re trying to reduce the environmental impact of coffee, at you know you don’t need disposable cups, plastic stirrers, etc.
This company sells other cool USB related products like this coffee cup warmer as well. Again, it’s USB powered and acts as a 4 port USB hub. At $22, it also makes a unique gift.
This Tassimo coffee maker system is pretty innovative. Similar to coffee makers that use coffee pods, this machine uses “discs” with barcodes on them. The coffee machine will then read the barcode on each disc and adjust the amount of water, brewing time, and temperature to the specific blend. Because the brewing happens in a mini-brewing chamber inside the disc itself, and because it’s a single serve coffee makeryou can rapidly make drinks, one after another, with barely any cleanup. The discs come in a variety of flavors from Arabica coffee, tea, chocolate beverages, etc. Here’s a link to a demo of this ingenious device.
You probably already know that of the 2 million weddings that take place each year in the US, coffee makers are hands down the most popular gift, even if the couple isn’t necessarily known for drinking coffee. While we didn’t get a coffee maker for our wedding, we did eventually sign up for a Gevalia membership, and we aren’t even coffee drinkers! Either way, since coffee makers are such a popular item
Whether you’re buying a coffee maker as a gift or for yourself, you have more choices than ever before, including combination machines and high-quality models that can control the variables of brewing to extract the maximum flavor and aroma hout of the coffee beans. With the dizzying amount of features, here are a few tips to make it easier to choose your next coffee machine:
Look for a vacuum thermal carafe, it will keep your coffee hot for hours without the cooked taste that results from a glass pot kept on a warming plate.
Consider 10-cup machines that have a special 3- to 4-cup brewing cycle. Many people find that smaller machines are too hard to tweak to get the perfect taste and temperature. Alternatively you can think about coffee pod machines or single serve coffee makers that use a single coffee pod to make just one cup of coffee at a time. They’re a real time saver and are extremely popular.
Think espresso. A high-quality espresso machine can make delicious gourmet-quality, pressure-brewed coffee as well as a variety of your favorite espresso-based drinks. Some of the more noteworthy ones include the BMW espresso maker, the smallest espresso maker, and the eco friendly espresso maker.
Since the coffee maker is showcased on the counter and the carafe is an important serving piece in your dining room, look for coffee makers that offer stylish designs with high-quality materials such as stainless steel. May we suggest the “iced out” coffee maker or possibly the Buggati coffee maker to kick up your style?
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