For the past 12 years, I've had a Braun FlavorSelect coffeemaker. It did a great job, made good coffee, made decent tea, and had nice features like a replaceable zeolite water filter in the water tank. About a week ago, it stopped brewing.
Well, I fussed with it some, restarted the cycle, and it brewed a pot. Then stopped again the next day. We tried restarting it several times with no success, ran some dilute vinegar solution through it, tried to brew again, no joy. Ran a full tank of straight white vinegar through it, at the end of which water seemed to be flowing fairly freely. Tried to brew again ... no go. I tried to take it apart to see if something internal was clogged, but it turns out you cannot disassemble it without removing one deeply-recessed screw with a special 3-lobed head. Clearly, Braun does not intend it to ever be end-user serviced. So, we started looking around for a replacement.
Turns out I can buy a new FlavorSelect online for about $50. However, Costco had a Mr. Coffee FTX20 12-cup coffeemaker for $35. We have a perfectly good spare carafe and two "permanent" filters for the Braun, though, so if price was close, we'd be better off with the Braun. I wasn't sure about buying a Mr. Coffee, but then we found we had a $10 off coupon from Costco, making it half the price of the Braun. So yesterday, we went to Costco to (among other things) look at the Mr. Coffee model.
There's a few differences. Its front-panel clock is an analog LCD instead of digital; but it's backlit unlike the Braun's, and is also used as a timer to show how long ago the coffee was brewed. It only keeps the coffee warm for two hours, not four, and only has two flavor settings ("regular" and "strong"); but the temperature of the carafe warmer is adjustable, and the water tank level is easier to see and can be read from both sides. It uses a basket-type filter, not a cone, so it wouldn't take the filters that fit the Braun; but it does come with a permanent filter included. It doesn't have a 3-month zeolite filter in the water tank, but does come with a 1-month activated-carbon filter that goes under the showerhead (and we use prefiltered water in it anyway).
The big cosmetic issue was that while the coupon showed a black coffeemaker, all the boxes we could see were white ones. Sure, white appliances look nice ....when they're new. But white plastic invariably yellows with age, which is why if I have to buy a plastic appliance, I try to buy it in black. We thought about going to ask one of the staff ... I looked all aroung the display, even lifting up boxes to look into the middle of the stack, and ... wait a minute! There, down on the bottom layer, in the middle of the stack, was one single FTX23, in black.
So now we are coffee-enabled again. Auf wiedersehen, Herr Braun; hello, Mr. Coffee.
And you know what? It makes pretty good coffee, too. And that's the important thing.
