I've never used one like that.

Lol! We have a coffee connoisseur at this house. He is 18 and knows everything. He got into 'creating' his coffee a few years ago. He has some sort of system where he microwaves the water until it is a specific temperature as measured with a thermometer. While that is heating up, puts together his filtration system in this device he found some place on the internet. It uses a filter and you put the grounds on top and let the water filter through. Something is timed during during all of this. It's all an elaborate process. He's going off to college in a couple of months. I'm curious as to he intends to make his coffee there.

There is a small coffee shop just up the street from my father-in-law's place in Maine that is run by a retired couple who met while in the Navy initially through their shared love of coffee and their efforts to avoid the bad, awful Navy mess-hall coffee.

In the shop there is a big sign saying "No Percolators". If you ask about the sign the shop-owners will explain -- at great length -- exactly why they feel that a percolator does everything exactly right, if your goal is to make really bad coffee.

I've sometimes considered using a percolator, as my mother used to do when I was a kid. Haven't tried it yet but I'm glad yours turned out well, Sedona.

Adellabedella, that is hilarious. :)

Talk about nostalgia! My mom always used her corning ware percolator whenever we were having company. The smell and the sound was wonderful. And it meant there would always be desserts too!

My mom had a just-for-company percolator as well - made too much coffee for just family use. I also remember the sound and smell :-) And the coffee. It's been many years now and I have no idea if I would react the same way as I did then pre-Starbucks, etc., but I remember the coffee it made was delicious!!

It passed with flying colors! I set it for a medium brew and unplugged it after it finished perking. Later I noticed there was a lever I could have switched from medium down to reheat. I set it for reheat and it took about 3 minutes (I didn't actually time It, just guessing) to get piping hot again.

As you can tell this is an electric pot, there are some like the Corningware that sit on a burner. Corningware also had an electric percolator. I think the glass percolator lid has a lot to do with the appeal!

If anyone is tempted to try one, you can pick up nice ones ay yard sales and estate sales. For a wwhile I was buying DH all different brands of them so hel could find the perfect one! Never spent more than $3. I later sold the rejected ones at my yard sale for what I paid for them so he tried them for free!!! For the record he chose an older Farberware. I’m a tea drinker myself, but I love the smell of coffee brewing.

My mother always had a percolator.i think it was a Sunbeam.

Oh, how modern; An electric percolator! For a Maine woods cabin, I'd choose a percolator like the one my mother used. It had no electric wire or heating element. It sat directly on our wood burning kitchen stove. The boiling water 'percolated' burbles of hot water up the stem and dribbled into the top cup that held the grounds. There was a glass knob in the center of the lid and that allowed one to see the color of the brew as it spurted against the knob. Coffee was done when the color was dark enough to suit the drinker.

No need to unplug this model. You could pour right from the pot to cup.

The condition of the water affects taste. It was the opinion at our house that 'hard' water from our well made the worst tasting coffee; Rain water from the cistern was preferred. Water from our neighbor's well gave another different taste.

I have a vintage Corningware percolator for the stove-top that I have used during power failures. There MUST be coffee here first thing in the morning! DH really likes the taste of it and I strongly dislike it. It has a sweet boiled taste. I think DH secretly prefers it.

I have an old one that I bought at a garage sale for a dollar. It is the reddish orange color that's plastic. We used to have one at my parent's old beach house that was dark brown and just like this one only the color is different. It made the best coffee. For nostalgia reasons, I bought this one at the garage sale. These things last forever. The one I got makes great coffee, I do use a filter. If you don't have filters, I assume you can cut a round disk out of a drip filter and cut a hole in the center and use that for your filter. That's all the filter is, it's a round disk of filter paper.

Mine looks like the one in this article:

old coffee pot

I bought a circa 1960s perculator on eBay a few years ago and used it for about a year. It made wonderful coffee! The electric unit finally died.

I used 2 different electric, stainless steel, sunbeam peculators for years and still think they made the very best coffee. They both eventually died and I switched to a drip coffee maker. Still miss the oldies.

I bought a stainless steel percolator when I moved into my house in 1978. Got it at a thrift store, and it also made too much coffee. I think I just liked the looks and sounds of it. I wonder what happened to that?

For many years I've used an instant powdered coffee drink made with boiling water poured into a cup. However, I also have a small Italian percolator that sits on the stove burner. It's a "la Signora" caffetiera, made in Italy. Makes appx. two cups. Has the cutest little filters! You fill the bottom unit with water and put ground coffee in the top part, which screws on, looks like a small tea pot. The water heats and bubbles up through a stem to the pot to percolate the grounds. I use it now and then esp. when I'm out of my pwd. stuff and for company who don't share my taste for the other coffee. It makes coffee very quickly.

I used to have the one you put on the stove. The only advantage was if the electricity went off and you had a gas stove, you could still make coffee. I hated it. My kids were little and if I was distracted by them, the coffee would boil over, or perk too long and be too strong. Not long enough, too weak. I ever did find the exact right time. I LOVE my Keurig!

My la Signora:

Photo off internet.

Somewhere in one of my sheds I have a corning stove top and electric perk. They were my moms. I packed them up after reading something about the handles malfunctioning and comming off while pouring. My goal is to find them this summer when I clean the sheds and get rid of some....junk. This isn't the first time I've heard that perks make good coffee which is why I want to find mine.

Mama, are you suuuurrrrrrre you want to go through that shed??? You couldn't pay me a million dollars!

Schoolhouse, my sister has and uses a similar set-up and loves it.

My problem is I buy a small can of ground coffee just in case for guests, then it sits and sits and sits. As I do not drink that kind of coffee on a regular basis, I'm not sure if I'm serving old tasting coffee or not. To me it just tastes like coffee.

Oh I forgot I do have a 4-cup Mr. Coffee thing I use for guests too.

Percolators boil the coffee (and for too long) and that brings out bitterness. For me, no thanks. I think they fell out of common use because drip makers produce a better tasting outcome.

The La Signora appears to be similar to an Italian coffee maker I have that produces an ersatz espresso. The water goes in the bottom. The top part has the ground coffee AND ultimately, the brewed coffee but it starts out with no liquid. The water boils, goes up the tube to the top part, where it brews the coffee. The coffee remains on top and doesn't recycle through. It's not a percolator in the sense of how American percolators work.

About that La Signora -- my Italian friends have not problem calling that coffee "espresso." The type of roast would be the deciding factor. It's a beautiful pot and I prefer it to the 6/8 sided ones that are more common here.

Yes, a hexagonal (or whatever shaped) Bialetti is what I have. But I'd stop short of calling what it makes "espresso" The taste is quite different

Espresso machines use steam under pressure, which can be quite a bit hotter than the normal boiling point (212 F). Stovetop devices can only produce boiling hot water.

No matter what the coffee blend is, coffee produced with steam in an espresso machine tastes different from coffee produced from very hot water and usually is pretty good even if not using an espresso blend. You can also do the reverse, use an espresso blend (if not ground too fine) to make drip coffee. It tastes in that direction you'd expect of espresso but it's still different. I've done these experiments and that's what I found.

We used this when camping and in a pinch when the electricity went out (before we got a generator).

My memories are of the sound. Oh, yeah. One knew what was happening in the kitchen due to the sound of the percolator doing its thing.

Adella, what your son uses is called a pour-over system. Makes very good coffee from what I understand. Very similar to results from a French Press which I love and don’t make nearly as often as I should.

I do not care for Keurig coffee, but hey, anything that says ‘coffee’ will do in a pinch. Better than no coffee at all.

I remember my grandparents summer cabin had an electric percolator. I remember the sound and smell, but it was years before I started drinking coffee so no, I've never had perked coffee.

I have had 'cowboy coffee' made over a campfire ... everything tastes better outdoors with good company to share the experience with.

Well, la Signora makes a percolating sound. : )

I'm not sure if you're funning or missed the explanation before. The off taste from a percolator comes from the mechanism boiling the coffee as it brews. in the La Signora, only water boils, the coffee brewed from the boiling water stays up top, doesn't boil and doesn't recirculate. The sound is the liquid boiling up from the bottom, water-only in one case, brewed coffee in the other.

I can picture the metal percolator sitting on my mom's stove. The stove had an electrical outlet and she plugged it in there. It probably didn't hold more than 3 or 4 cups. I remember the sound and smell as well. Just great. I also remember her dumping the grounds and then washing the insides and filter thingy. Some grounds of course went down the drain. Over the course of the 44 years they lived in that house, grounds were going down the drain. Eventually the drain clogged and man what a mess came out of that pipe!!! I do think the coffee tasted pretty good though. I think they usually had Folger's, saving the red cans for the bacon grease!!

I was funning, Elmer. Yes, that's how la Signora works.

Ah, the percolator! My mother had SS one that she used all the time and years ago I had one that was plastic. Have to say though that the coffee was good. Add a sprinkle of salt to the grounds and your good to go! It can't beat the French Press though!

My mother used a glass one....I think maybe it was Pyrex. I don't drink coffee but my husband does. If I ever find one of those old glass percolators, like the one she had, I will buy it.

We have one that was passed down to us from one of hubby's relatives. It is electric and has a metal pitcher that one fills with water and a metal filter thingy on top where the coffee goes. It also has a setting for mild to strong. I always set in in the middle for medium coffee.

We don't drink coffee, so I have no idea if it makes good coffee or not. But, when I make coffee for guests, they always compliment the coffee. I figure it either makes good coffee or my guests are simply being polite.

I'm a big fan of percolated coffee. That's coffee, in my book, not this foo-foo flavored things that people pass off as coffee these days. Never had a decent cup of coffee from a Keurig yet. If someone offers me "coffee" from a Keurig, I decline. Besides being poor taste to start with, Keurig is nothing but a glorified fad of a drip coffeemaker. And what's the #1 problem with drip coffeemakers? The owners. Few clean them. I haven't met anyone yet who cleans their Keurig either.

Percolators? Great. Sitting at the cabin on a chilly morning listening to the bloop, bloop, the hypnotic smell, looking at the lake and wildlife. Percolated coffee doesn't need the pollutants to make it drinkable.

My favorite was a Proctor Silex glass electric percolator my mother had. I really believe the glass ones make better tasting coffee. It just made so much better coffee that even when it quit warming the brew (tho it still perked fine) I'd make the coffee and put it in a vacuum bottle to keep it hot. Got used to doing that so I'd do that afterward and the benefit of doing that was I'd never head out and leave the coffeemaker on. Well, usually wouldn't.

Yes, everyone has different tastes but I can honestly say that I can't name anyone I know who didn't prefer the perked coffee to drip. That doesn't mean they don't still use the current fad but that's a personal issue with them.

As I was thinking about people not cleaning the coffeemakers it occurred to me that part of the benefit of a percolator is that it's easier to clean. A clean pot makes better coffee, no matter the method. There's a number of elements to good coffee: First is a clean pot. Next is good water, Then good coffee and properly measured. Temperature and time weigh in. There's actually a lot more to it than putting a piece of plastic into the pet rock and pushing a button. Which, come to think of it, probably is another reason I don't like Keurig. I don't like food cooked in plastic containers and making the "coffee" from a plastic pod is asking for trouble.

My mother used a percolator, too! Her coffee was always hot, strong and delicious.

I'm not sure if you're funning or missed the explanation before. The off
taste from a percolator comes from the mechanism boiling the coffee as
it brews. in the La Signora, only water boils, the coffee brewed from
the boiling water stays up top, doesn't boil and doesn't recirculate.
The sound is the liquid boiling up from the bottom, water-only in one
case, brewed coffee in the other.

For most of the running cycle of an electric percolator, the water doesn't boil and brew at the same time. It begins to brew only after it starts boiling. It's the boiling that send the water up the tube to hit the lid, fall, and then flow over the coffee grounds.

Interesting, one of the advancements in higher end drip coffee pots such as a Behmor (as compared to a basic Mr. Coffee) is a pre-spray of the dry grounds along with a waiting period (mine is set for 2 min, I think) before the machine begins to brew. This is to give depth to the coffee flavor to replicate the richness that a percolator achieves automatically by recirculating.

"Interesting, one of the advancements in higher end drip coffee pots such as a Behmor (as compared to a basic Mr. Coffee) is a pre-spray of the dry grounds along with a waiting period (mine is set for 2 min, I think) before the machine begins to brew. This is to give depth to the coffee flavor to replicate the richness that a percolator achieves automatically by recirculating."

I have a different understanding. Predampening of the grounds (not a spray) is called "blooming" the coffee. It's done by putting in enough very hot water to get all the grounds wet, then waiting a few minutes for the water to drip out and allow the grounds to be exposed to air. This step releases gases and enhances the flavor extraction when the full process begins.

Blooming has nothing to do with emulating a percolator's process because that would serve to ruin and diminish the flavor potential. If you want to emulate the flavor imparted by a percolator, make coffee, then put it into a saucepan, bring it to a boil, and keep it there for 5-10 minutes. You won't like the result.

We have two coffee makers in the house - me and my wife, plus occasional extras when the kids visit. We use a for-coffee electric kettle with a narrow gooseneck spout, plus ceramic cones and paper filters.

With the broader discovery of better coffee in the US in the last 20 years, if percolators produced a better result, they'd be widely sold for home use and used in fine coffee stores (the boutique roasters, not Starbucks and the like). But they're not. Instead, what has proliferated is drip makers, especially those at the higher end (like Behmor that graywings mentions and others) that tout the ability to make better coffee by assuring the water is very hot, just sub-boiling. The popular coffee makers, like Mr. Coffee eta al, use lower temperatures and so don't do such a good job.

Good coffee has a much longer tradition in Europe than here and for non-espresso, you'll find press or drip processes in various forms have long been in use exclusively.

I used to have 3 Farberware percolators, a 12 cup, an 8 cup, and a 6 cup. (and lots of company.) All made good coffee. I used whichever one matched the number of diners.

grams had a corning ware pot that that was used daily. I still have one. It is where I grew to love the aroma of coffee. And we never minded the occasional coffee grounds that slipped thru the metal coffee holder ...