Hamilton Beach Coffee Makers have a coffee dispenser

Does Hamilton Beach promise too much?

The Hamilton Beach Brew Station 12 Cup Coffee Maker is unique amongst coffee makers

This coffee maker has no carafe, instead it has an enclosed brewing system with a thermal-lined insulation and the coffee is released into the cup by pressing on a dispenser.

This is a great idea, but Hamilton Beach needs to improve on their engineering of this product as it failed ten days after we bought it. Please read on for all details. The Braun coffee maker that we have, did a good job for more than six years. After thousands of coffee pots, one morning it sudddenly failed to work and we had to replace it. Looking in our local retailer we realized that they didn't stock Braun.

However our attention was drawn to a fantastic looking product, the Hamilton Beach Brew Station 12 Cup Coffee Maker, and soon we were carrying it home. What made us buy it, was the fact that it has no carafe.

The coffee in these Hamilton Beach Coffee Makers brews within the main unit and then is released into your cup by pressing on a dispenser, similar to the types you find at some coffee stores. The benefit is clear: you can pour your coffee with one hand and you don't have to worry about breaking the carafe.

A great idea!

For this exact model you can use a standard sized coffee filter and it has an internal warming tray to keep the coffee warm. Definitely, we think that the unit keeps coffee hot for longer than most of the units that we have owned before.

For days we enjoyed the hot, freshly brewed coffee and we thought that we made a good decision when we bought the product.

But our joy with the product did not last long

One of the strangest features of the unit was the double push of the on/brew button to get it started. Just like the double click of your computer's mouse to open a file, users must do the same to the round push-button at the front of the machine. No toggling on/off switch to deal with here!

Sadly, recently morning the switch did not work. Certainly, the light did come on, but no coffee was dispensed. We redid the whole process at least a ten times before we knew that the machine was not working.

There was water in the unit, the coffee grind had been put in the filter properly, and the light on the switch came on. Never ther less, no coffee was brewing.

All in all,

the Hamilton Beach Brew Station 12 Cup Coffee Maker is an fantastic idea, but the way the button is designed is a bad idea. I would suggest to improve the machine by replacing the switch with a mechanism that does what it is supposed to do. Our luck was, that we were able to return the coffee machine to BJ's and receive a full cash refund.

My resumee:

The design and features of these Hamilton Beach Coffee Makers leave much to be desired. The lack of features and fear of overflow/leaking have left me annoyed. If you want a reason to not buy it, don't buy it if you EVER plan to make 12 cups of coffee or even 10. But 8 might be ok if you use 1tbsp coffee and no more.

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