Originally published at: Makita's battery-powered coffee maker reviewed: "I don't understand why this exists" | Boing Boing
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Having just endured a multi-day power failure (Austin, TX), I can definitely understand why this exists.
Or at least one particular use case for it. But $189 is a lot of money for a coffee maker.
We got a this for use on the road. Much cheaper.
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I like it. It has kind of a Chappie vibe.
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I’ve been on a lot of work sites where there were banks of batteries constantly being swapped out. And the coffee part is a no-brainer. Maybe they could deal with the efficiency issue, though a heating element is a heavy draw no matter what you do, but this isn’t as silly as it seems. None of the guys I worked with would have a clue what an aero press was and would probably ridicule someone for bringing it. Makita they can understand. Especially if it helps the foreman keep their crew from leaving the site constantly.
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I think it is. If all it can produce is “it’s fine” coffee, why go to all the trouble and expense of “it’s fine” fresh brewed coffee rather than just bringing a thermos of coffee with you?
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If there’s a big bank of batteries, that means there’s power, so you could just use a regular drip coffee maker.
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In my experience there are generally two types of people on a construction site; the professionals who’ve made a career of it and the fuckups they hire to carry shingles and boxes of nails (ie. me)(ETA: thought /s was obvs, but I guess not). The former knows that saving time is money and the latter knows that wasting time is money. Neither one of them give a shit what the coffee tastes like, generally, but the former knows how long “coffee runs” take and that they often involve a joint or booze. I’m not saying this thing is a good deal, but I definitely get why a hardened, on-demand appliance that works with your current setup makes a lot of sense.
Also re: thermoses; fuckups don’t plan ahead. That’s why they’re fuckups.
ETA:
And every single outlet has a battery bank on it that someone will cut your hand off for unplugging. I’ve definitely seen coffee makers on-site and loads of thermoses, but this thing is compatible with all your other tools and is (theoretically) job-ready as opposed to a glass pot.
EETA: I don’t really give a damn about this thing and the target demographic is probably kids whose parent works in construction that don’t know what to get the for Christmas, but I don’t think it’s as silly as implied here.
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I looked at these a couple years ago but the yield per battery didn’t make sense.
We do a couple huge trade shows once a year, before covid we used to take a Mr. Coffee and then a Keurig and set up a nice coffee station but because it was the only coffee in the hall I couldn’t keep an eye on it and everyone would use it. It was also hard to find a hot outlet during set up.
The show right before covid I got tired of supplying everyone with free coffee with very little thanks, they kind of expected it after years of us doing it. I bought with a couple 68 oz Thermos brand classic vacuum insulated thermoses.
Those things are like tanks and keep whatever you put in them steaming hot for at least 12 hours. One gets filled with coffee and one with hot chocolate.
This was the first year since covid, everyone asked where the coffee station was, sorry.
All that being said if I was an occasional coffee drinker and my work van had a bank of batteries I would consider one of those. Or if I was a coffee drinker and I worked out of my vehicle I’d invest in one of those large battery backup inverter things or just hard wire an inverter to my work vehicle and use a Keurig.
Keurig side note, we’ve gone through a few of those, the last one that went bad we gave up and bought an Amazon Basics version, that thing has been great for half the price of a Keurig.
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Hey not fair! I was also good at pulling nails out of the scrap lumber so it could be reused and …um… holding up the ends of boards as they came off the table saw.
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You must have worked in a woke-ass site. I got in trouble for separating the vinyl siding that was still useable and trying to repurpose it for trim cuts. 
But you make a great point; if you know the crew, construction sites are a great place to glean free lumber. Entire sheets of useable plywood get used to stuff more crap into the roll off containers.
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Perhaps the best part of James Hoffmann videos is the secondary parody-remix channel someone created: Hames Joffmann
here’s the remix-parody of this Makita review:
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This is obvious, but any job site that is charging batteries will have an outlet you can use for a regular coffee maker. Battery powered tools are for hard to reach locations, scaffolding, etc., where you won’t be making coffee.
Even if you were building a log cabin in the remote wilderness where you hauled in tools you wouldn’t waste a whole battery on a cup of coffee, you’d just make coffee over a campfire.
Most work sites are serviced by those silver commissary “coffee trucks” anyway.
[ETA: I see he does address some of these points in the video. All I can say is I bet someone important at Makita came up with the idea and then had their R&D team make it, and it went into production simply because of office politics.]
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Or just bring your Ford F150 Lightning to the job.
Or work for people who are polite enough to offer you a coffee.
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We have power outages all the time here in Sierra foothills. I’ve adopted by using a camping grill. Bonus for cooking hot meals.
Yeah; while it’s a gimmick, it does have some niche uses.
Not quite sure what the draw on a standard Mr. Coffee is, but I could probably find out readily enough- I picked up one of those tool battery inverter systems in 2021 to ride out some of the power outages we get in the summer, and I have another somewhat smaller one for general use as well.
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Cheap-ass site. “Those boards cost good money, and you don’t, now get pulling those nails!”
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I don’t know. How about make it so every workplace has to have tea/coffee making facilities available by law? I can guarantee you that sites won’t shut down. Productivity would probably go up.
Can’t imagine not having tea at a site in Ireland. Unthinkable.
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For sure. I’ve built sheds out of “hey can I rummage through your discard pile?”
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