Coffee Catastrophe

We had a coffee catastrophe a couple weeks ago. We were having a friend whose wife was out of town for the week over for coffee. There was just enough of our coffee fresh roasted by Ralph's brother, a Christmas present, for an evening of coffee and conversation. As we were grinding this fantastic coffee a horrible grinding noise erupted from the grinder--like the noise when you suck something up into the vacuum that's not supposed to be there. We take apart the grinder and find chunks of plastic have broken off the hopper that holds the beans and funnels them into the burrs. There has been plastic ground into our coffee--the last of our wonderful freshly roasted coffee. You can see our dilemma: friend coming for coffee+no grinder+no ground coffee=disaster! Thankfully, some dear friends live near by so we ran over there to grind some other normal, less than fantastic coffee. PTL for friends who love coffee as much as we do!

So begins the dilemma--to repair or replace. We contacted Cuisinart and ordered a replacement hopper--they even called and asked about this catastrophe. When we got the replacement part, we placed in on the old grinder, filled it with beans, and. NOTHING. HAPPENED. We heard the motor moving but nothing was being ground. Turns out the whole casing around the motor had been cracked. This meant we had no coffee for house church on Sunday! Again, you see our dilemma: House church full of coffee lovers+no grinder+no ground beans=disaster! Thankfully, we are a house church full of people who love coffee so someone brought their blade grinder so we could have coffee. Cuz you know we can't talk about Jesus without coffee--it's impossible. :)

Now the dilemma is to replace with the same model we had, which lasted about 3.5 years or upgrade to one that, according to all the reviews I read, will last us about 10 years. As you might imagine, based on an entire post written around a coffee grinder, we take our coffee very seriously around here. That being said--we upgraded. :) It arrived today. It is a thing of beauty. The Baratza Maestro is amazing! I can forsee years of grinding beans to perfection for years to come and no more coffee catastrophes on our horizon (unless we *gasp* run out!). ;-p