Hamilton Beach Brew Station 12-Cup Coffee Maker - Good Enough to Buy it Again

After getting completely fed up with Black & Decker's piece of useless junk, the Cafe Noir, I decided to go ahead and spring for the Hamilton Beach 12-Cup Brew Station based on the marvelous reviews I had read at good ol' Epinions. For the most part, I was happy with that decision.

The Hamilton Beach 12-Cup Brew Station is a very nice art-deco looking machine in sleek black. It sits higher than most coffee makers, which may be a problem for some kitchens. Ours has very high cabinets so this model fit just fine, we did have to pull it out from the wall to fill the reservoir with water though. That's pretty much the norm with most machines though so no harm, no foul on that front.

The main plus to the Brew Station is that there is no annoying carafe to deal with. I'm a major clutz and cannot count the number of glass carafes that I've busted by accidently banging them up against something or other. With the Brew Station, the thingy that holds the actual brewed coffee is contained within the unit itself. There is a little dealy (ya like all my techno-jargon?) on the front much like a soda fountain. You push your cup against the dealy and coffee dispenses into your cup. Sweeeeeeet. It will dispense even while the coffee is still brewing. That's another plus of the highest degree in this household as we're not real patient in the morning. heh.

This dispensing part is, while being the best part, also the main drawback. I know others have not had this problem, so perhaps we just got a faulty model. It happens. But the thing is that it drips sometimes. I mean fairly badly at times. The majority of the time it behaves itself quite nicely. Just once in awhile the pushing-dealy gets slightly stuck and you have to depress it with your cup again to un-stick it so it'll stop dripping. All things considered though, I can live with this inconvenience, but that's why I'll be going with 4 stars rather than 5.