One of the things I've noticed about myself lately is that I drink way too much coffee. It's not really a bad thing, in my opinion, because what I consider too much isn't what others might consider too much. I don't like cold coffee (iced coffee or anything like that) because then I drink more than when I drink hot coffee. Although I've cut down to under 10 cups of coffee in a 24-hour period, I have a different reason for saying it's too much. All types of coffee (whether flavored or not) are starting to taste the same to me.

Let's Try Hot Tea

I don't always drink hot coffee. By saying less than 10 cups a day, I'm leaving the actual number open to interpretation. I've been known to drink no coffee at all for days at a time, but when I do drink coffee, it tends to be 4 to 6 cups a day.

When it comes to iced tea, however, I only drink it when it's hot (when I've spent a lot of time outdoors) and that's only when I don't want to drink plain cold water. I never drink hot tea and I recently started wondering why.

In some places, people drink hot tea like I drink hot coffee. It can't be bad or they wouldn't be doing it. I'm going try to switch to drinking hot tea for about a month, instead of hot coffee, to see if I'll like it better. I'm not going to use instant tea; I'll be using tea bags and this is going to take some work since I'm not familiar with doing it by the cup.

Tea Varieties

Just like coffee, there are many varieties of tea. Of course, I'm talking about tea that comes from a tea plant, not some other concoction called tea.

I don't like flavored coffee and I don't like flavored tea. While I prefer the regular black tea, I'm not opposed to green tea or other versions.

I'm limited in what kinds of tea I can drink by the availability of what I can buy locally. Black tea and green tea varieties are in abundance while the others are not. I also have to be careful that it's not tainted with added flavoring that I don't like, like lemon (or raspberry or just about any fruit flavor). I don't mind cinnamon, but I don't like it like that very often.

Coffee or Tea instead of other Beverages

People may wonder why I talk about coffee and tea. Well, it's because I don't talk about other beverages. When it comes to expenses, even though coffee isn't that cheap anymore, it's still cheaper than a lot of other beverages.

I don't drink plain water, coffee or tea exclusively. I also drink fruit juices and on occasion, some kind of alcoholic beverage. My primary beverages, at least in the foreseeable future, are always going to be plain water, coffee and tea, so I'd be lying if I said otherwise.

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I recently received an e-mail message from a visitor concerning "ready-to-drink" coffee and tea. I didn't know he was talking about self-heating cans. I thought he was talking about iced coffee, or cold coffee in a can. I plead ignorance – innovations like hot coffee in a can wouldn't appear as quickly in my neck of the woods, the Philippines, as they would in Australia or the United States.

Research – Cold Coffee in a Can

If you're familiar with the Starbucks Frappucino line, you're probably also familiar with other coffee brands in a can. I've been familiar with them since 1987, when I was stationed on Okinawa. In fact, the canned coffee brand I popped out of vending machines was UCC Coffee.

As you may have guessed, I wasn't impressed when I returned to the United States in 1988 and found iced coffee in the local supermarkets. It was already old hat to me. Even when the Starbucks coffee started appearing everywhere (in bottles), I was less than enthusiastic about it.

Research – Hot Coffee in a Can

Since I missed the big start of hot coffee in a can, I had to do some research and I didn't know where to start until my e-mail contact mentioned Hot-Can. It was interesting information, to say the least.

The idea isn't new. Self-heating containers have been around since before World War II. What's new is the technology behind it, which was only developed within the last decade. An eye-opening article, "Kitchen in a can for people on the go", explains it very well.

I didn't see any hot coffee in a can products before I moved away from the United States and I haven't seen any since arriving in the Philippines. This tells me that they're just barely taking off. Well, since Nestlé joined in, and Nestlé Philippines is a prominent company in the Philippines, I expect that I'll find these products somewhere soon, even if I have to look for them specifically.

Price Points

I don't know how much the hot coffee in a can sells for. Since I buy most of my food at the Royal Subic store at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, I expect the price to be comparable to the prices in the US, Australia and New Zealand since they import from those places (among others).

It wouldn't do me any good to find the prices online – they may or may not even be close to what I would pay here. Nevertheless, I'm interested in taste testing some hot canned coffee as soon as I can.

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When you hit the middle age years, like I have, you start to take things for granted. One of those things happens to be hot coffee. I like my coffee hot, even though I've consumed iced coffee on occasion. In Japan, iced coffee is way more popular than it is in the US, or just about anywhere else. In the US, however, hot coffee is preferred by the average coffee drinker. Keeping coffee hot can be a challenge, depending on what you use to make it and where you intend to drink it.

A thermos is not necessarily a Thermos

The first vacuum flasks were made by the Thermos Company in Germany in 1904. Over the years, the word "thermos" became a generic word to mean any kind of vacuum flask. In fact, the US declared it as a generic trademark in 1963 and now the word can be used alone or as "thermos bottle" and it means the same thing.

I thought it was a just an American thing, like so many things I've become accustomed to since I was a child. For instance, when I was a kid, my siblings called every kind of soft drink a "Coke" because Coca-Cola was the most popular brand at the time. One of my older brothers would send me to the neighborhood market to buy him a Coke and I would have to ask him "What kind of Coke?" because he didn't always mean Coca-Cola.

My in-laws here in the Philippines share the same hot water dispenser, from my mother-in-law's house. Trekking back and forth to her house can be a pain, so they don't do it often. One day, one of my brothers-in-law came out of his house with a hot cup of coffee and I knew he hadn't been to her house in hours. I asked him how he was keeping his water hot and he told me he was keeping it in a thermos. Obviously, thermos has become a generic word in the Philippines as well as the US.

How a thermos is used

Despite what you may think, I'm not talking about how to add and remove beverages from a thermos. I'm talking about how they're used in certain environments, based on what I've seen.

When I was young, I saw my father packing a thermos in his metallic lunch box before heading off to work each day. It was kind of vacuum flask that had a screw-in stopper that was covered by pop-on/pop-off metal cup. The thermos had a metal exterior as well. Nowadays, you can find a thermos made of mostly plastic.

When I was in the military and went to certain functions (where a conference table came into play) as well as after the military and working for various companies, multiple thermos bottles were kept nearby in order for hot coffee to be available at all times and without having a coffee maker in the room as well. Some of these functions took place in rooms where it wouldn't be a good idea to have a coffee maker area set aside. Rooms with computer equipment, for example.

Using a thermos can save you money

I don't have a thermos bottle yet, but I plan to get a large one. A hot water dispenser uses a lot of electricity due to the heating coil involved. Maybe not as much as a hot water heater, but still more than I like to pay. If I just want hot water, it would be so much more economic to boil water or make hot water through a coffee maker than to use a hot water dispenser. A thermos can keep hot water hot or hot coffee hot for up to eight hours, but by the 8-hour mark, it's usually just a little warmer than lukewarm. That's still better than cold, especially in a cold environment.

I wouldn't be storing hot water in a thermos. It makes more sense to store hot coffee in the thermos unless I'm intent on drinking instant coffee and that doesn't work well unless I'm in the house. I sometimes spend a few hours outdoors with relatives, in the early morning hours after daylight appears. Having a thermos nearby would keep me from having to go back and forth from the house for refills because I usually drink two or three cups of coffee during that part of the day.

I definitely need a thermos.

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I'm preparing to buy a new coffee maker in order to save money on my electric bill. That may sound a bit strange from a person who's been drinking instant coffee for more than three years already. How could I possibly save money by buying a coffee maker that requires electricity in order to operate? Believe it or not, the hot water dispenser that I use to make hot coffee uses more electricity than a coffee maker ever will.

My Electric Bill

There are two items at my house that are sucking up the juice: My hot water dispenser and my hot water tank. The reason is because the heating elements are constantly on (unless I'm a victim of yet another weekly power outage).

I know these two items are the primary culprits because the only other things I have on constantly in my house is my refrigerator and my PC. When I bought the hot water dispenser, my electric bill jumped up by about $20 USD per month. That's just too expensive, in my opinion, for the convenience of a ready supply of hot drinking water.

There is one other way to heat the bottled water and that's by using the microwave oven, but that kind of defeats the money-saving idea. The tap water gets pretty hot, if I let it run for a couple of minutes, but there's no telling what kind of nasties are in it along with the water. No thanks, but I prefer the safety of the bottled water I buy (at about $4.00/200 pesos for 25 gallons, I might add).

Sorry, but I won't sacrifice a hot shower for anything. Not even to save a few more bucks.

Which Coffee Maker or Coffee Maker Brand

There is one other reason I want to buy a new coffee maker: I'm tired of drinking instant coffee. I'm tired of making it by the cup and I'm tired of forgetting how many spoons I put in (when interrupted by relatives) the cup. Not only that, but a couple of in-laws leech instant coffee from me on a regular basis.

A small, 4-cup coffee maker just won't do. I can polish that off within an hour of waking up in the morning. I don't fancy myself making more than two 8 or 12-cup pots of coffee per day. With carafes of those sizes, my in-laws can steal some of my coffee each day and it won't interfere with my daily routine.

Now, I live in the Philippines. I've been to most of the stores where coffee makers are sold and I've seen some Japanese brands as well as American brands, but I didn't see any Mr. Coffee. It doesn't matter, because I prefer buying a Cuisinart coffee maker and I think that's a brand I spotted at the SM Mall in San Fernando, Pampanga the last time I was there. I probably wouldn't have to go that far again (about 50 kilometers) and can probably find one locally, but I doubt the local stores carry Cuisinart coffee maker accessories such as replacement lids and filters.

Back in 1988, I gave a Cuisinart coffee maker to a fellow US Marine at Christmas time because he drank more "lifer juice" than I ever did. When I left that base in 1992, he was still using it and it still worked like it did when it was new. In contrast, I had a GE coffee maker that bit the dust within four months during that same period. I don't remember what brand I bought to replace it with, but I spent more money on it than I probably should have.

Checking Review Sites and Prices

I wouldn't be doing this if I was in the US. In the Philippines, however, I have to check prices before going on any kind of specific shopping run because I know what gimmicks the sales people pull. One of my nephews worked at a local appliance store and the way the sales associates made more than their paltry wage was to jack up the prices (no prices tags on the items).

To be forewarned is to be forearmed, or something like that. So I headed over to TestFreaks, a site I'm already familiar with, and checked out the Cuisinart coffee makers. After selecting the model I want, the Cuisinart DTC-975 (because of the thermal carafe), I headed over to PriceGrabber.com to get a feel for the median price. It appears I can expect to pay between $60 and $90 USD for it.

The Filipino Art of Haggling

I don't know if I'll be able to get that exact coffee maker model. It depends on import stocks. I'll still get a similar model, with a thermal carafe, for around the same price or even less. I learned the Filipino art of haggling from my wife and I'm getting pretty good at it.

The secret is to buy multiple items. When I do that, and haggle along the way, I usually get the prices knocked down for each item. I live on a fixed income and every dollar (or peso) counts. As the expression goes, a penny saved is a penny earned.

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It's summertime in the Philippines and it's just too hot to drink coffee (hot coffee) except for when it's before 9 am. Only someone more insane than I would any drink any kind of coffee other than iced coffee after that hour of the day.

I switched from hot coffee to iced tea and plain ice water when the weather started to become unbearably hot. Lukewarm water, or even chilled water from the dispenser, just doesn't cut it.

Does Hot Coffee Cool You Down?

If you listen and believe some of the old-timers, it does. It really doesn't. It makes you sweat (perspire) and air blowing against the sweat is what cools you down. What happens if you're already sweating? It does nothing for you at all, except make you feel hotter than you already are.

If you're already hot and you drink hot coffee, you're going to sweat profusely. Sweating causes dehydration and sweating profusely can cause you to dehydrate faster than you may realize. That's a dangerous situation to be in, regardless of what you drink.

Iced Tea and Iced Coffee

In some places, iced coffee is preferred over iced tea. The Philippines is not such a place. Iced tea (with lemon) is served in every restaurant I've been to here. Iced coffee is never served (but you can buy it in the stores).

I don't know about anyone else, but iced coffee just doesn't work like iced tea. Iced tea cools me down quick. Perhaps it's because I drink it faster than I can drink ice water. I can't do that with iced coffee and as expensive as iced coffee is, I really wouldn't want to do that anyway.

I still have an iced tea maker sitting in the kitchen that I haven't used even once. I still have jars of instant Nestea in the cabinet and I won't be using the iced tea maker until those jars are empty. I still don't have any teabags either. I'm sure I'll be doing the iced tea making thing when the instant tea runs out. That is, if summer continues to drag on like it did last year.

Iced Tea instead of Ice Water

I have never been able to drink ice water quickly, although my wife can guzzle a glass of it without stopping. I don't know why I'm any different. I can drink iced tea like that, but not ice water.

Ice water would be considered healthier, but if I want to cool down, nothing works better or faster than iced tea. I've tried it with fruit juices and other things and still go back to drinking iced tea.

(Image source: The Myth of Perfection: If You Want to Live, You Have to Grow at Totalpossibility)

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