Gevalia 12-Cup Stainless Steel Coffee Maker Product Review: Looked Great While it Lasted

When our piece of crap coffee machine did me the favor of dying so I could toss it, the first thing I did was send in the little card to Gevalia for the special deal where you get this free 12-Cup Stainless Steel Coffee Maker (CM-500W) for trying their coffee. Not one to be able to go without coffee every morning and thinking this card lost in the mail somewhere, I went out and bought the Brew Station. As luck would have it, this Gevalia package arrived about 2 weeks later. Now, I was going to just leave it in the box and put it with the extra microwave we acquired as possible future Christmas gifts to somebody, but then we kinda hosted a bunch folks for a reviewer's get-together. We needed to use both pots to keep that crew happy. Out of the box came the Gevalia Stainless Steel Coffee Maker.

Gevalia is a Swedish Company, as a rule Swedish products are superior to most other countries. I am not just saying that because I live in Sweden now, it is part of what I love so much about this country.

So anyway, I was living in DC and took this out of the box... Man, this thing looks sharp! If you buy it by itself from the Gevalia website, it'll run you a cool 90 bucks. It really looks like it's worth it, too. I mean that Stainless Steel is all shiny and cool lookin' and stuff. It has a row of buttons just above the 12-cup carafe for setting both the time and the timed brew feature. Here's where we start to realize that it doesn't walk the walk. I mean, it works and all, but the buttons are cheap and don't have the greatest contact with whatever it is they contact so ya gotta kinda play with them to get it to set.

The clock itself is digital and is just above those pretty-but-annoying buttons. I had no problem reading it, and it seemed to always keep good time. The auto-brew works very well once you manage to get it set. It stands just about exactly as tall as our Brew Station did, which is a bit higher than most coffee makers at 16 1/2 inches tall. If you have low cabinets, this could be a problem for you. The top lid flips up to reveal the removable cone basket and water reservoir.