Hamilton Beach 40911 2-Quart Electric Iced Tea Maker

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 12 x 7.7 inches ; 4 pounds


• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)


• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.


• ASIN: B00008VSCO


• Item model number: 40911
  

Price : $21.67
You Save : $8.32 (28%)

Product Description

Amazon.com Review
Coffee drinkers have their automatic brewers, why shouldn’t tea drinkers? Ideal for family gatherings or summer picnics, this ingenious Hamilton Beach machine brews up a pitcher full of iced tea in less than ten minutes. After the pitcher is filled with ice cubes, tea (either loose or bags) is placed in the special paperless filter, and an adjustment for mild, medium, or strong brewing is selected. The lid snaps on. A receptacle slides out from underneath the heating unit which then holds the pitcher snugly in place. Water is added to the heating unit, the power button pushed, and the hot water drips through the tea filter into the pitcher of ice. When brewing is complete, the power automatically shuts off for safety. Complete directions for use are embossed on the slide-out receptacle, which eliminates worries about losing a user guide. Although the iced tea maker looks bulky when assembled, the pitcher inverts snugly over the heating unit for compact storage. Able to fit in most refrigerator doors, the 2-quart pitcher features a hollow, comfortable handle and a thumb release for the lid, but is not dishwasher-safe. Assembled, the machine measures 17-1/2 by 11-1/2 by 4-1/2 inches. --Ann Bieri
Make perfect iced tea and chill instantly with this electric easy to use iced tea maker
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Hamilton Beach 40911 2-Quart Electric Iced Tea Maker

 

Product Features

• Measures 17-1/2 by 11-1/2 by 4-1/2-inch; wash only by hand.


• Slim, 2-quart pitcher fits in refrigerator door


• Indicator light and automatic shutoff


• Adjustable brew-strength selector


• Fresh-brewed iced tea from leaves or bags in under 10-minutes

Customer Reviews

I drink tea like you breath air, but I'll bet my air against your tea that this is the maker you'll want.
We had a Mr Coffee tea maker for years. It was fine at first, but increasingly problematic.
First, physical weaknesses: The pitchers crack and warp slowly but steadily, so won't last forever. You can replace them for about ten bucks, but with shipping that's half the cost of an entirely new unit. And you can't put them in the dishwasher, so you'll probably want at least several up front anyway, so that you can clean them.
Second, cleaning problems. Unlke the Hamilton Beach tea makers, the Mr Coffee bags go in the brewing housing, which has to be removed and cleaned separately from the pitcher. And if you forget to do that, you'll have yucky (even moldy) tea bags the next time you go to make tea, even if that's within two days.
Hamilton Beach instead keeps the bags' brewing area inside the pitcher itself, which you can refridgerate and prevent yuck and mold from occuring. Plus, the Mr Coffee station drips TEA on the counter as soon as you remove the pitcher, whereas the Hamilton Beach only drips WATER since the tea process is all contained in the pitcher itself.
Further, the Mr Coffee series requires that the pitcher get very close to the brew housing station, with the tea just BARELY getting into the spout, or else you'll get tea dripped on the counter WHILE brewing. That messiness increases as the pitcher begins to warp and crack. Hamilton Beach bests that both by including a pull-out tray that HOLDS the pitcher in the correct position, and by having the tea drip directly to the center of the pitcher rather than milimeters from the edge of the spout.
Above all, the Hamilton Beach series simply makes better tea. It includes a dial that allows you to make weak, medium, or strong tea, and that's all automated. The Mr Coffee series has no such setting, but requires you to "close" the brewing area for a period and then turn a dial to "open" before it starts putting tea in the pitcher. That manual step both slows down the tea production, and risks making quite the mess if you forget to go back and open the dial.
(The reviewer who used 14 bags for 2 quarts is doing something insanely wrong. Above all, they're probably using individual bags. You'll definitely want to get a few boxes of "family size" bags. I use 3 bags for 2 quarts, and it makes as fine a tea as I ever had growin' up in Georgia.)
Finally, the Mr Coffee pitcher is a large and obtrusive ROUND cylinder that takes up lots of space in the fridge, even when there's only a glass or so left in the pitcher, plus a handle that takes up excessively additional space. The Hamilton Beach pitchers are instead elongated OVAL shapes, that fit in more places in the fridge, even in the fridge door, and are shorter so that you can put them on a shelf with a lower overhead.
Mr. Coffee: bigger mess, more manual, more cleaning, more risk, lower longevity, and lamer tea.
Hamilton Beach: no mess, no manual revisit, easy to clean, no risk, lasts longer, better tea, and more options when you make it.
No contest!

Like many other reviewers, I was moving on from a Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Maker. There were many reasons for my retiring the Mr. Coffee, most of which are mentioned in other reviews, but primarily because the little spout that dispenses tea from the brew basket on my Mr. Coffee stopped dispensing. It was about 4 years old. RIP, Mr. Coffee.
Thanks to this new iced tea maker, I did not grieve long! Based on the sensational reviews that I read here, and the fact that the reviewers noted the same problems with their Mr. Coffee's as I did, I purchased this one and received it last week. I've spent the last week perfecting the process and am totally satisfied with the product and with the tea.
Good points:
It is very easy to keep clean. Because only water goes in the tower, there's no need to worry about cleaning it with soap and water. I often felt the need to clean out the tower of the Mr. Coffee because the brew basket leaked into it, and was always careful with the cord. No such problem with this one.
Having the brew basket inside the carafe has completely eliminated the leaking I noted with the Mr. Coffee. I have Corian counters and often found the need to scrub them after brewing with the Mr. Coffee due to leaking.
As another reviewer noted, the tea is dark and vibrant as soon as dispensing starts. With the Mr. Coffee, it did not retain the water and tea long enough for brewing to truly to get underway. I always used the Mr. Coffee on the strongest brew setting just to get medium-bodied tea. Not so with this Hamilton-Beach. I use the medium and get medium tea.
The size is a plus. The water heating tower is small enough to fit in a cabinet, and the carafe is small enough to fit easily in the fridge with all the other beverages. The Mr. Coffee carafe was large and unwieldy.
My favorite feature so far with this model is that I can use loose tea in the brew basket without using a coffee filter. There is a built-in mesh filter in the brew basket. I prefer loose tea (the quality tends to be better than the tea you find in bags) and this just simplifies the brewing process for me.
All in all, I am very happy with this purchase and would recommend the Hamilton Beach Electric Iced Tea Maker to any tea lover.

 

Hamilton Beach 40911 2-Quart Electric Iced Tea Maker

 

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