In-Room Coffee Makers
 

Maybe coffee pots aren't sufficiently high tech to be discussed here, but I can't think of a better place to piss and moan than this forum since I'm having a problem with what hotels seem to think is an advance in technology.

I like a cup of good coffee first thing in the morning. At home, I make a cup of coffee, take it to my computer, and sip while reading the morning's junk and real mail.

In my continued efforts to make my hotel rooms a little more home-like (I bring my own unclogged shower head, too), for the past several years I've been bringing some filters and coffee from home. Since for quite some time, hotels, at least the ones I stay at, put coffee makers in the room that used the common 4-cup size flat bottom filters (Mr. Coffee, Hamilton Beach, Black & Decker brands - they all work about the same), so it was easy to use my home brew system rather than use the pre-measured filter-packed crummy coffee provided by the hotel.

A while back, I started finding in-room coffee makers that have the filter basked, filter, and coffee integrated into a single disposable rectangular tray (I think I first saw these at a Courtyard) and attempts to rework those to use my own coffee have resulted in a mess and about half a cup of bad coffee.

More recently, I've been encountering another fiendish version which uses a single serving pre-packaged pod-sized portion of coffee that drops into a small version of the standard filter basket. This also makes a poor cup of coffee, and I've been unsuccessful in attempts to use my own coffee and either my own filter or by disassembling the supplied filter. That also makes a mess.

I acknowledge that this style of coffee maker is attractive to the hotels since it doesn't use a carafe (the coffee goes directly into the cup) so that's one piece they don't need to wash, but it sure makes for bad coffee.

What to do? What to do? I've had rare success by asking at the front desk if housekeeping can find an old style coffee maker for me. Generally they don't understand, though, and just shrug and say "well, this is what we have."

Once this year I stayed in a hotel that had a Keurig instant one-cup coffee maker that wasn't too bad but still kind of weak. This was a fancy resort-like place that I only stayed in because I had some points with the chain due to expire and no other reason to use them.

Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency between properties in a chain, or even the "grade" of the property that determines the kind of coffee maker they have. I think I first encountered the integrated rectangular basket/filter/coffee makerse in an Embassy Suites (that previously had the Mr. Coffee pots to which I had become accustomed). The cheap Comfort Suites in Las Vegas that I stay at when attending trade shows switched to the little round weak pods last year, and what prompted this post was a stay at the Hotel Indigo in Baton Rouge (an Intercontinental) last week.

For a while I was bringing a filter cone and appropriate filters and heating water in the microwave oven in the room, and I've also used that approach with a French press travel mug, but I could (because I'm that kind of a person) easily go overboard bringing way too much stuff along with me to cover various possibilities.

Can anyone sympathize with me here? Or should I just change my ways, put on my clothes first thing, and go out for a decent cup of coffee?

Way too complicated. Your choice, accept the free coffee supplied in the room or go buy a cup at the hotel restaurant, down the street or whatever.

The "old style" are not only expensive to maintain and have extra parts to wash, but you can bet that the carafe's aren't put through a commercial dishwasher, but are rinsed out in the room's sink. I wouldn't drink out of one of those filthy things if you paid me extra to do it.

Many of the new coffee pots are obviously too difficult for the average stupid person to use. At my last stay in an Embassy Suites, some genius had put the coffee filter pod into the water reservoir instead of the basket. Of course housekeeping didn't find it either. Thankfully I noticed it while pouring in the water and was able to fish it out and rinse out the coffee maker before using it.

My advice is to go out and buy a cup of coffee, although like you, I enjoy a cup of in-room coffee upon waking up. In Europe, the norm seems to be a hot pot and a packet or two of instant coffee, so at least you have some degree of control over the cleanliness.

Have you tried putting 2 packets into the coffee maker simultaneously? If you use both the caffeinated and the decaf packets, stacked one atop the other, you get stronger (darker) coffee.

I've never had one overflow, but I suppose that could happen.

Much easier/cleaner soloution. Buy one of those travel hot pots-or an imersable water heater and put the filter packs directly in the hot water cover and let set a few minutes,remove filter pack. Much better tasting/stronger coffee IMO.

+1
OR
Get a french press or Chemex.
As a tea drinker I can feel your pain.

I have tried putting 2 pods one on top of the other in the machines common at Hiltons and they have too much resistance and the coffee squirts out the gap where the pod holder swings out to fill. But what does work is to use one pod with 1/2 cup water and another pod with another 1/2 cup of water. Another thing is that most European hotels have single serve instant Nescafe and I have been known to hoard the extra's and add them to the brewed in room coffee here in the US for extra strength.

Get a travel french press. You can heat the water in the coffee pot or microwave or bring a $2 immersion heater. Bodum makes them in both plastic and stainless so they don't break.

Yes when I am on biz trip and I need a good coffee in the morning I boil water in the microwave to brew my bring along blend as well as a Melitta #2 plastic filter holder and #2 filters.

Before in room coffee makers 1970's I had an single cup travel Melitta drip brewer. It came in a travel bag with coffee container jar, filter holder and sugar jar and a real ceramic mug. I miss that.

Aeropress is another popular option for travel.

I have used similar systems (one I bought at Starbucks about 10 years ago) at home and on the road. With the right grind, the coffee is excellent. Now that I'm no longer a coffee fiend due to intolerance of caffeine (a terrible affliction!) I don't worry about such things...

Works for us.
 

The Mrs. and I stay frequently at Hilton properties, and we enjoy a good cup of coffee as soon as we get to our room. Hard to find a good brew for years, but here's what we've done to at least make it more drinkable.

On the two cup brewers, we only brew a single cup at a time, otherwise when trying to brew both cups from the two bags (one in each slot) we always seem to wind up with half a cup (or less) each, no matter how full we fill the water reservoir. So we brew one cup at a time, filling the water tank almost to the line for two cups. Still not a great brew, but passable.....although..... we found what seemed to be messing up the taste of a decent cup of coffee in many of the hotels (not just the Hilton properties)! Those little plastic cups of "coffee creamers" in all the hotels really ruined a decent cup of coffee for us. About a year ago, we tried an experiment of bringing our own milk, then our own condensed milk to try in the room-brewed coffee. 85% improvement and much more drinkable coffee. Not perfect, but a major improvement over putting the hotel's creamer into the room-brewed coffee. Actually, in one hotel we'd stayed at, where the coffee creamers came in a cardboard three pack along with the sugars and stirrers, the dates on the packs were 2006 to 2008, and this was this year. So while those coffee creamers may still be useable due to something in them that prevents spoilage, we found that they really wrecked a decent cup of coffee.

Of course this may not work for those who are arriving directly from a flight for a quick overnighter before flying out again (we drive to a few of the hotels not more then two hours from here for overnighters or short stays) or when we fly anywhere, but in those cases we try to find a tuck shop or market nearby to get a small container of milk or cream to use in the room.

Makes a big difference in the coffee for us.

bj-21.

Thanks for the advice, but I wouldn't want to stay in a hotel where I didn't have to put my clothes on before going to the restaurant. ;)

True, some are pretty nasty, but I always wash them out myself before using them. I've seen far dirtier coffee pots in offices. The carafes for the hotel pots tend to be pretty clean, it's the funnel part that doesn't get a good cleaning.

The ones with the rectangular tray have everything in one piece so you can't double up on the coffee. The one I had this weekend with the round pods doesn't really have space for two pods. I've tried it, and that's one case where I had an overflow problem. The coffee gets compressed more than the water flow can handle. The real mess comes when I've put coffee into the place where the pod goes, tearing the pod open, discarding the supplied coffee, and just using it as a filter.

I would occasionally use two packets of the kind that they give you to put in the flat-bottom (standard) filter basket, but double strength bad coffee is still bad coffee. And I've tried using just half as much water with the small pods, but oddly, it's still too weak.

My first in-room coffee rig, from before the days when a coffee pot became standard equipment, was an immersion heater, a Melita filter funnel, and a cup. That was pretty easy to pack since I the heater is tiny and the cup and funnel are hollow and hardly take up any extra space in the suitcase. It was sometimes hard to find something to heat the water in, though.