Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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254 of 260 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect tea for this Georgia boy, June 6, 2006
I drink tea like you breath air, but I'll bet my air against your tea that this is the maker you'll want.
We had a Mr Coffee tea maker for years. It was fine at first, but increasingly problematic.
First, physical weaknesses: The pitchers crack and warp slowly but steadily, so won't last forever. You can replace them for about ten bucks, but with shipping that's half the cost of an entirely new unit. And you can't put them in the dishwasher, so you'll probably want at least several up front anyway, so that you can clean them.
Second, cleaning problems. Unlke the Hamilton Beach tea makers, the Mr Coffee bags go in the brewing housing, which has to be removed and cleaned separately from the pitcher. And if you forget to do that, you'll have yucky (even moldy) tea bags the next time you go to make tea, even if that's within two days.
Hamilton Beach instead keeps the bags' brewing area inside the pitcher itself, which you can refridgerate and prevent yuck and mold from occuring. Plus, the Mr Coffee station drips TEA on the counter as soon as you remove the pitcher, whereas the Hamilton Beach only drips WATER since the tea process is all contained in the pitcher itself.
Further, the Mr Coffee series requires that the pitcher get very close to the brew housing station, with the tea just BARELY getting into the spout, or else you'll get tea dripped on the counter WHILE brewing. That messiness increases as the pitcher begins to warp and crack. Hamilton Beach bests that both by including a pull-out tray that HOLDS the pitcher in the correct position, and by having the tea drip directly to the center of the pitcher rather than milimeters from the edge of the spout.
Above all, the Hamilton Beach series simply makes better tea. It includes a dial that allows you to make weak, medium, or strong tea, and that's all automated. The Mr Coffee series has no such setting, but requires you to "close" the brewing area for a period and then turn a dial to "open" before it starts putting tea in the pitcher. That manual step both slows down the tea production, and risks making quite the mess if you forget to go back and open the dial.
(The reviewer who used 14 bags for 2 quarts is doing something insanely wrong. Above all, they're probably using individual bags. You'll definitely want to get a few boxes of "family size" bags. I use 3 bags for 2 quarts, and it makes as fine a tea as I ever had growin' up in Georgia.)
Finally, the Mr Coffee pitcher is a large and obtrusive ROUND cylinder that takes up lots of space in the fridge, even when there's only a glass or so left in the pitcher, plus a handle that takes up excessively additional space. The Hamilton Beach pitchers are instead elongated OVAL shapes, that fit in more places in the fridge, even in the fridge door, and are *shorter* so that you can put them on a shelf with a lower overhead.
Mr. Coffee: bigger mess, more manual, more cleaning, more risk, lower longevity, and lamer tea.
Hamilton Beach: no mess, no manual revisit, easy to clean, no risk, lasts longer, better tea, and more options when you make it.
No contest!
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104 of 105 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EUREKA! I'VE FOUND IT!, May 14, 2006
As ice tea is the only way I make it through my work day without taking a nap after lunch, getting the magical stuff brewed properly every morning is of great importance to me! After a couple of false starts, I found the Hamilton Beach. Best of the three systems I tried.
My first Mr Coffee tea machine was a good start, but I was disappointed in the way it worked... The hot water blasted out the side of the little spout in the brew chamber and would run down the side of the filter basket instead of going through the tea leaves. Weak tea!
Found the Salton tea maker and tried it. Better, BUT... It had a "brewing pause valve" on the bottom of the brewing basket, so you could remove the pitcher before the end of the cycle if you wanted. This valve would fail to engage in the pitcher lid sometimes, and tea would overflow from the brewing chamber back into the water, making a mess of my morning!
With desprate determination, I turned to the web and found the Hamilton Beach! I buy loose tea in bulk, rather than using bagged tea... The Hamilton Beach brewing basket has a permanent wire screen filter. GREAT! Put a couple heaping teaspoons of tea in it and filled the water chamber.
Fired up the brew cycle, and watched the action. Instead of the clear water that would come from my Mr Coffee at the start of its cycle; rich, dark tea poured down into the pitcher... This was more like it!
I don't do the ice cubes in the pitcher trick... Ice tea gets diluted and cloudy if you chill it this way before you are ready to drink it. Just let it cool while I have breakfast and pour it (room temperature) over a glass full of ice with a shot of lemon at lunch time. Take it to work in a sports bottle.
Ice tea at lunch has saved my job, and this tea maker is THE BEST! Thanks Hamilton Beach!
WB
San Diego CA
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35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
We made not only the right choice but the Best Choice!, November 3, 2006
For years we have used the Mr. Coffee Iced Tea makers and have purchased two of them. This time around we chose to get the Hamilton Beach 40911 2-qt Iced Tea Maker. Even though I/we haven't used the feature that allows you to place loose tea in the basket for brewing we totally like the Hamilton Beach method of brewing tea over the Mr. Coffee. First of all the taste (using Luzianne Family Tea bags was superior to any tea we ever brewed using the Mr. Coffee makers. Also one very large drawback with the Mr. Coffee maker is that the basket, for the bags, sets inside the reservoir and maker and most every time you brew a pitcher and remove the basket you have leakage of tea down in the makers bottom which over time makes for a very ugly looking reservoir, where you put your clean water to brew your next pitcher. Because Hamilton Beach placed the basket directly inside the Pitcher itself there is never any tea that finds its way into the bottom of the tea maker. Also due to ridges in the bottom of the Mr. Coffee maker it's usually almost impossible to totally clean the pitcher and restore it back to the clean condition at the time you first used it. This feature alone makes the Hamilton Beach a better buy over the Mr. Coffee but I thought, before my purchase, that surely the two would make equivalent tasting tea but using both Lipton and Luzianne Family Tea bags the Hamilton Beach not only brews the tea faster but the taste IS Better. On the Mr. Coffee the strength of the tea is controlled by a sliding knob on the front of the maker whereas with the Hamilton Beach it is three rigid clicks of control on the bottom of the basket (mild, medium, strong), we usually use Medium.
We enjoy "Sweet-Tea" being from the South and anyone that makes good sweet tea knows you sweeten it while it's hot at the time of brewing. Our method is to first fill the pitcher to the line and fill the reservoir and refill the pitcher to the same water level and then add 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups of sugar and stir with a whisk until very well mixed. Once the tea is brewed you have to stir the tea again but you get perfect sweet tea every-time. If you enjoy tea, even if you never considered an electric tea maker, the Hamilton Beach will be one purchase decision you will not regret. Having two Mr. Coffee makers before this Hamilton Beach I don't see myself ever purchasing another Mr. Coffee unless they make many changes to their product and even then taste is the final decision maker. I HIGHLY recommend the Hamilton Beach model and would gladly buy it again even if it was higher priced than the Mr. Coffee, it's totally worth it.
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