Good Enough

Twisters opens today. So we’re selling a 2-pack of little twister-makers that also happen to brew cold brew coffee in, according to their copy, just 15 minutes.

Cold brew? As in the smooth, delicious, low-acidity coffee to be served over ice? Great! Made in 15 minutes instead of 15 hours? Even better!

But, of course, there comes the natural follow-up: Does these things actually work? After all, they promise something very cool! But, on the other hand, they’re here. Like, on Meh. Doesn’t bode well, right?

Wrong!

Before selling this last time, we tested one in-house and found the answer to the question of its functionality to be something along the lines, “Yeah, sure.” By which we mean, it works, though the promise of 15 minutes might be a bit of a stretch. We got the best results when we ran it for 25-30 minutes, about twice as long as promised, and yet also, hours and hours less than other cold brew options.

It’s kind of like an Instant Pot in that way. “Cook pulled pork in FORTY-FIVE MINUTES (plus the time it takes to pressurize, plus the time it takes to depressurize)!” And yet, also like an Instant Pot, we still deemed it to be a solid product and thought the resulting coffee tasted good.

But, of course, we’re going to be a bit biased. But you people aren’t!

So, here’s what you, our own customers, had to say the last time we sold the Presto Dorothy Rapid Cold Brewer.

We start off with this from @PooltoyWolf:

This thing is called Dorothy and it makes a tornado? There’s no WAY that’s not a reference to the movie.

Not a review of the product, but more a review of me, the writer of cheeky copy for a deal site who totally missed a chance to make this reference. Zero out of ten. I’d fire myself if I could.

Anyway, now for some actual thoughts.

After dunking on Disneyworld’s coffee (eat shit, Joffrey!), @guyfromhawthorn pretty much agreed with our findings:

I definitely concur that it takes longer than the directions say, but it does the job. It does work best if you can grind slightly coarser coffee than normal drip though. At the price, if you don’t have another means if making cold coffee and you enjoy that, it’s a pretty easy choice. Its only potential downfall is that the capacity isn’t huge, but I don’t know that the process would work too well if it was much bigger.

@Springbank came to a similar conclusion:

Finally gave this a try the other day, mostly just for functionality. I used some crappy coffee I had from Lidl that ended up being way too light a roast for my taste. I need to try it next with better coffee to really check it out. It functions fine, not too noisy, and cleanup is not too difficult. A bit better than a French press since the grounds mostly end up in the cup. The big difference is that my overnight maker uses a lot of coffee to make a concentrate that needs to be diluted. This makes a brew drinkable as is. I’m happy.

Also, according to @ehorwitz1, they can do iced tea, which is pretty rad if you ask us.

Really, though, @JaBbA64 made the best pitch:

This is definitely in the “Meh. I doubt it’s any good. Would be nice to have cold brew whenever I want it…wait. $20? Click.” zone.

You might love them. You might just like them. Either way, you’re only spending a 20-spot on TWO of these things. So go ahead and do as @JaBbA64 presumably did: click the buy button.