Black & Decker Infuze Vacpot First Impressions

(Robert's note: This review first appeared in alt.coffee Newsgroup and is published here with kind permission of the author. Also, the Infuze has been seen at discount close-out stores at $29.95.)

Well, my family's been after me for a while to come up with a way of
making coffee for a crowd that's easy and relatively foolproof. A
couple of months ago, someone posted a link to the TechnoScout web page
listing the Black & Decker Infuze vacuum pot, so I ordered one. First
impressions:

* Packaging: a mixed bag. It's well done, with attractive pictures, and
it does a good job of protecting the unit during shipping. What it's
not so good at is allowing you to re-pack the unit for storage: there's
a bit of the ten pounds of stuff in a five-pound bag phenomenon.

* They seem to have studied the Bodum units with an eye to improvement.
It's a ten-cup unit, by American appliance standards. There's the usual
timer and keep-warm feature, which can be turned off. It's all plastic,
which is a little flexible and requires hand-washing, but the opening
of the carafe is large enough so that's not a problem. Durability is
yet to be seen. Like the Bodum unit, the heater is part of the lower
carafe. I can't see exactly how the attachment is done. The filter is
easily pulled out for cleaning, and the funnel can be removed from the
upper globe if needed for the same reason.

* Ergonomically, it's OK but not great. There's the aforementioned
flexibliity, and the carafe lid fits into a pocket in the top of the
upper globe when brewing. The carafe/heating unit fits onto a base with
the electronics in the same way that a cordless kettle generally works.
Getting the top off the upper globe is easy once you figure it out (pry
with your fingers at the handle attachment point), but the instructions
don't say, and if you pull at what seems the natural point, one of the
places on the side where the top latches into place, it doesn't want to
come apart. You have to wet the gasket, at least initially, and then
use some force from above, at which point the top snaps into the
bottom, seating completely.

* Performance: Very good for what it is. The plastic filter is a bit
coarse, so I used a grind slightly coarser than drip, about what you'd
use for a Chemex; on my Solis Maestro it was the coarsest setting.
Initial heating takes about five minutes when making the full 10-cup
capacity, then kick-up is rapid. The time up top is fixed at two
minutes to heater off, then another thirty seconds before it heads
south. The trip south is also quite rapid. The timer does not seem to
have the sensitivity to leveling that the Bodum units do. There's a
circular dam in the bottom, centered around the funnel. It appears that
when the water has boiled out of that well, it kicks off. In my initial
use, the coarser grind needed because of the filter was a good match
for the brew time, and the temperature measured at just about 200° F.
The coffee tasted very good at the suggested strength of one heaping
measure, using the supplied spoon, per cup. Because of the filter,
there was quite a bit of very fine sediment in the cup, about what
you'd see with a French press. It came out to general acclaim, though,
and my family is very happy to have a set-and-walk-away method of
brewing coffee.

* Price and availability: $69 from TechnoScout, plus the usual S/H; I
think it came to about $84 all told. That's a lot cheaper than the
Bodum of the same capacity, and while it's not as cool looking, it's
not ugly and a much better value.

David