Home Café Single Serve Coffee Brewer Revisited Review

As often as we can, we will revisit different products we review. Even though we might not be keen on a product - it's good to have perspective, so I told my good friend Eric Lanoue about the Home Café and he thought it would fit his needs. He wanted to be able to brew decaf coffee for his mother in law without having to brew an entire pot.

His wife and he became so addicted to the Home Cafe, they bought another one so his wife could take it to work. Wild. Recently I've been contemplating buying a single serve machine for work because the coffee we have is so bad. Here are Eric's thoughts about Home Cafe.

From Eric:

I never imagined I would buy a single serve coffee machine, it’s a very rare occasion that my wife and I just drink one cup of Joe, so I never thought I had much use for one.

Recently, my parents began drinking that silly “Decaf” coffee, and it became a hassle preparing one pot of full octane java for myself and the misses, and one pan of boiling water, we don’t have a kettle, for the Decaf that my parents would drink while visiting. Soon enough, I was the proud owner of a shiny new Black & Decker “Home Cafe“.

Overall, I am very pleased with my purchase. The Home Café is easy to use right out of the box, and makes a decent, quick cup of coffee.

Operating the Home Café was pretty easy; a quick glance at the instructions was all it took to get the show on the road. The Water Reservoir is great, and I found that using two coffee pods, with the reservoir filled with 9 oz. of water was enough to make a relatively strong, travel size cup of coffee.

I found the brewing of the coffee a bit noisy. In fact, during my maiden brewage, I rushed over to the machine, thinking I had done something wrong because of all the commotion it makes. It was all good in the hood, and in about a minute, I had my first Single Serve Coffee, and not a bad one at that! In all fairness, that may be how these babies are supposed to sound, I really wouldn’t know. Clean up was a snap, no dripping or spillage, just dump the used pod and you’re done. Speaking of the pods, I think the package of 16 you can buy for about five bucks is reasonably priced, even if it’s just Folgers coffee!

My only real complaint would have to be the construction of the Home Café. It’s mostly plastic, and seems a bit cheap and fragile. The lever on top of the machine that needs to engaged to close it is very difficult to move forward, and when you do, your not sure if you have succeeded in shutting the lid, or just breaking it!

The Black & Decker “Home Café” is most definitely worth taking a look at.

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Posted by Jay Brewer at November 3, 2004 4:26 PM

I almost feel envious that there are people out there that have good experiences with the Home Café. I am not kidding when I say that I have been through 4 of these untis total. The first 3 from wal-mart and every single one of them leaked. I even followed the instructions on prepping the machine before first use. We thought maybe wal-mart just had abad batch and we contacted Black & Decker directly and they shipped us out a new coffee maker within the same week we called. Turns out, it's not just a bad batch, as this one leaks too. Every time I use it I have to empty the resevior at the bottom since it fills up with water. Sometimes it leaks from the top too. When it leaks from the top, we noticed it was because the seal gets stuck and it has to be pried apart carefully. For the money, I have to say, I was definitely not happy with this product at all and it really does go to show, you get what you pay for.

Posted by: cs at December 13, 2005 1:50 PM

I got this coffee maker for Christmas.
I was so excited. It ran threw the water test just fine. When it came to making a cup of coffee, I hit the brew button and the water was not hot. It only comes out once, which is defentally not enough for a cup of coffee, I don't know if I did something wrong or what, but they have bad Customer Service as well.
I would buck up and spend a little bit more.

Posted by: Embher at December 30, 2005 10:13 PM

Picked this up on a whim as it was on sale for 19 bucks on walmart in early November, have been using it since. We have a Braun drip that we put in storage for use for larger groups, but for a quick cup o joe it's not too bad. When/If this breaks, as I have read on many reviews, we will definitely look into a better quality machine but for now, we are using it and it fits our needs. We purchased the accessory that lets you use your own grounds and it works decently. I would rate it overall as a 5/10 for build quality, 5/10 for hot water production, and a 7/10 for convenience, for an overall rating of 6/10 or 3 out of 5 stars.

Posted by: Javaman68 at December 8, 2005 1:45 PM

Mine was a gift from my husband, but I thought it was pretty 'cheezey' for the money he spent. I think I'll stick with the Cuisinart Automatic GRIND and BREW I got for Xmas last year. We'll never buy (anything) Black and Decker again. What a tremendous disappointment.

Posted by: Tracey Sottak at October 16, 2005 12:43 AM