The Best Coffee Carafe

Buying Guide

Have you ever poured yourself a cup of coffee that has been sitting on a burner for hours to keep warm? Once you taste it, you instantly get a mouthful of something that tastes old, stale and burnt. While it’s still piping hot, that coffee has lost its appeal and flavor. If you want to be able to keep coffee warm for hours while maintaining its flavor, you need to put it in a coffee carafe.

A coffee carafe is a like a giant thermos which you can use to store and serve coffee. It features a double-walled design that offers plenty of insulation to keep the liquid inside hot and at a constant temperature. While the design of coffee carafes differs from brand to brand, most carafes typically use stainless steel as the material for both insulation walls. Others use aluminum, plastic or glass for the outer wall and stainless steel for inner wall. The key with the type of materials used is to ensure they can maintain a constant temperature. In the design, it’s important to have two layers of materials with room for air in-between the layers – this is what provides the excellent insulation.

When choosing your coffee carafe, consider whether you want the ability to brew your coffee inside the carafe or just pour it in when it’s made. Some carafes can actually fit under a drip machine, so the coffee can go in there directly. For others, you have to brew the coffee in another vessel and then pour it into the carafe once it’s ready to consume.

• When it comes to sizes for coffee carafes, you have a couple of options. What you need depends on how many people you’re serving and how much coffee they like to drink. For example, if you’re looking for a single-serve carafe, opt for a size that is around 30 or 40 ounces. If you’re looking to serve multiple people, then you should go with one that can hold at least 100 ounces or more.
• With smaller carafes, it’s easier to pick them up and pour the coffee into your cup. This is because the carafe is a smaller size and is fairly light. However, with a larger and heavier carafe, you want to avoid having to pick it up when pouring your coffee. Check to see what kind of pouring mechanism the carafe has. Ideally, you will want one that has a lever or button that is connected to a spout, so you don’t need to tilt or pick up the thermos.
• If you’ll be keeping the coffee carafe around small children or pets, it’s best to go with a leak-proof one. This way, even if the entire carafe is tipped over, it will not spill any hot coffee. This is a good safety feature to have.
• How long do you need to keep your coffee hot for? In most cases, the carafe can maintain temperature between six and 12 hours. After six hours, you typically end up losing some heat, but you still won’t have completely cold coffee at the 12-hour mark.
• Coffee carafes aren’t just good for serving hot coffee. On hot summer days, you can use them to hold cold liquids as well, such as iced coffee or iced tea, water and juice. They will maintain the cold temperature for several hours.