Of course the three groups that hate them most are: 1/Companies that sell Coffee, 2/Companies that make/sell Drip Coffee Makers and 3/Companies that make/sell Paper Filters for those Drip Coffee Makers.
Perhaps you may remember your Grandparents used a percolator..drip makers weren't greatly available then.. and if you had a drip pot it didn't use a paper filter. Or perhaps you might remember the old Maxwell House commercial with the coffee burping into the lid of a coffee pot.
Percolators can still be found....Farberware still makes them 4,8, and 12 cup models (I managed to get a 12 cup for just under $70) and a lot of caterers still use them but most of us have no use for a coffee pot that makes 60 cups or more at once.
I brought one of those big ones to my place of employment and I'm the "Keeper of the Coffee Urn". Yes I own the pot..$75 at SAMS Club...Everyone chips in and I can make 2 Gallons of coffee every night and supply Sugar (Cream is WAY too expensive..triple the cost of the Coffee...bring your own) for about $15 a week. Everyone chips in to cover it and my "Reward":>P is I don't pay for what I do drink as the Urn is mine. Enough coffee for 35 drivers and we cut the coffee expense by 80% getting rid of the outside service.
And if you want a percolator for a fire or gas stove (non-electric) you can get them from the better camping supply houses all of them not cheap and why??
Think about the standard drip coffee maker you see in the store that sells for $12...does anyone really believe that it can be manufactured in China..shipped to the US...sold to a distributor or chain store that adds a 30% markup for the stores profit and sells if for the aforementioned $12 and actually BE making a profit??
NO.
The people who make drip coffee pots are actually in the business of selling Coffee Filters...not coffee pots. No aftermarket for "supplies" to subsidise the price of the machine. (Is a Wii or XBox or DVD player really any different?? All useless without the games or DVD's you have to buy)
Actually for a couple of years until the patent ran out the biggest maker of drip makers (that even has Coffee in its name) was the only source for the filters as they were a specific size just for their machines. You would spend 20 times what you spent for the machine on filters before it broke(*) and you had to buy a new machine.
Percolators last for decades...I have a 50 year old 4 cup Farberware my grandmother used every day for more than 35 years and it still works perfectly though I use it just for heating water and I use a 12 cup daily for making Tea...loose Tea works just as well in a percolator as ground coffee.
Companies that sell actual coffee hate percolators now because in a percolator the water/partially brewed coffee is cycled over the grounds in the basket multiple times before its done brewing while in a drip pot the water goes through the grounds once...therefore you need MORE coffee to get a pot of the same strength.(#)(&)
(*) The "broke" drip makers problem about 85% of the time (the other 15% is most likely a broken glass carafe) is lime buildup on the heating element...in a drip pot the water is in direct contact with the heating coil whereas in a percolator its not. Cured of course by running a pot of vinegar through the thing just as the manufacturer recomends in the owners manual..but how many people bother to READ it today???
(#) The finer the grind of coffee the less you need to use (more surface area for the water to contact) and I've found the extra fine Expresso grind works great...trick being to wet the peroclator basket down with water before pouring the ground coffee in..very little of the extra fine expresso grind will make its way into the pot through the basket openings..it sticks to the basket and swells as it absorbsthe water.
(&) It has also been our experience that some of the much cheaper coffees (we experimented at work until we found the one everyone liked best...$1.99 for a bag that makes 2 gallons) actually come out tasting better from a percolator than the more expensive ones from a drip pot.
So "Praise the Percolator"!!
