Makes a great cup of cappuccino! (Morphy Richards 47008)

Member Name: FairyG

Product:	Morphy Richards 47008
Date:	19/09/08 (241 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Has a good milk frother.

Disadvantages: Hotplates need cleaning a lot.

This is a great little coffee maker! It's got a ten cup water reservoir, but these would be small cups, so really it's more like five good sized cups or mugs. There are two main things I like to know with a coffee maker. Is it simple to use? Is it easy to wash? I think it's a yes to both of these.

To make the coffee just lift the lid and spoon the filter coffee into the mesh filter in the top. Pour the required amount of water into the reservoir beside it. There's a gauge at the side, the same as on a kettle, to show how much water there is. To make cappuccino, pour milk into the little jug. Then switch it on and wait for the coffee to trickle through and the milk to heat up. There are two options for coffee making, one quicker and one slower, depending on how strong you like your coffee. It just takes two or three minutes to make two mugs of coffee. When the milk is hot and a little steamy (not boiling), just lift it up to the frother just above it, switch on the frother and give it a whizz for about a minute. I pour the frothy milk into the cup first, then pour the hot coffee through it, but you can do it the other way around.

When it comes to washing, there's a mesh filter, for the filter coffee, which is easily removable and washable. The milk frother has a mesh cover which can be twisted off in a second, for washing. This really needs washing every time you use it. When you take it off you can see the frothing blade. This is a bit of a nuisance to unscrew, but doesn't actually need taking off to clean as it can just be wiped with a damp cloth. The milk jug has a non--stick coating, so that's easy to wash as well. So, although it might sound fiddly at first, it's really not a big issue to wash out both jugs, the frother cover and the filter. I don't make cappuccino every time, sometimes it's just black coffee.

It works well as a coffee filter, although if you use fine ground coffee, you will find some grounds in the bottom of the jug. It glugs and gurgles a fair bit as it's filtering, but it's not annoyingly noisy. The milk frother makes a loud whizzing noise, but that doesn't take long anyway. The biggest drawback is that coffee and milk drips onto the hotplates. If you don't wash it off straight away it starts to dry on and gets harder to remove.

I've had mine nearly two years now and used it every day and it hasn't let me down. I've found it's best to use skimmed milk to get a good froth. Also it doesn't froth very well if the milk isn't warm enough, so it just takes a bit of trial and error to get that right and you can make the perfect cup of cappuccino. It's also great for frothing up hot chocolate!

Summary: Easy to make coffee or cappuccino.

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