had a silly thought about making coffee-- mix the sugar and powdered milk in the...

[TreasonousBastard]

basket with the grounds when brewing it.

I plan on trying this sometime soon, but am curious if anyone else has.

I foresee several problems, but will give it a shot unless someone says they did it and spent some time in the hospital, or lost body parts.

[Wingus Dingus]

1. Are you talking about regular coffee maker coffee, with filters?

I wonder if the powdered milk would cause a problem with the filter.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Yeah, just a plain ol' Mr. Coffee type coffeepot. I have a French press, a percolator, and...

some other drip gadgets, but I thought the drip drip pot would be less messy.

Powdered milk shouldn't be a problem, but I'll find out.

[Wingus Dingus]

5. Hmm. If you are successful, you could put all sorts of things in there.

Cocoa powder, etc.

[TigressDem]

2. I have found it easier to put it in the carafe once a small amount of coffee is brewed...

Since most coffee makers will pause when you pull the carafe away, you can still put in enough for a full pot and since the level is low, just swirl it around to mix it.

Only disadvantage is MUST wash the carafe after each use or it builds up in a gross way.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Now I wonder why I didn't think of that!

[TigressDem]

8. You were moving in that direction anyway.

Most people don't adjust a full pot of coffee because if others will be drinking it, they may have different preferences.

But I have a tiny coffee maker and most times it's only me and hubby. I mostly do cream only, he will do cream and sugar-free sweetener or black with sweetener, but if I add a little cocoa powder and call it a mocha... it's good for both the goose AND the gander.

[TreasonousBastard]

19. Well, it's just me. But, I suspect I was lookingfor something unusual, not...

the same thing I do with an individual cup.

Just an old habit-- pour the coffee and deal with measuring out the sweet and white stuffs, stir it up, microwave...

Anything to eliminate a few steps.

[TreasonousBastard]

29. YES! Just made a pot this way and it came out perfect.

[Kali]

3. I know of several brands of Mexican coffee that are sugared

but not anything with milk. doesn't powdered milk dissolve better in cold water?

Trader Joe's has boxes of individual servings of instant coffee creamer and sugar, and I have done the same for travel/camping.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Nope, like everything else it dissolves better in hot water.

[Kali]

25. I was thinking of cornstarch

I guess...

[TigressDem]

10. I think powdered milk will puff up like it does in a latte and overflow the grounds bin. nt

[soothsayer]

9. I just put it in my cup first

Mixes itself when the coffee goes in

[TigressDem]

11. Ya'but a full pot already adjusted is kinda cool. nt

[soothsayer]

12. True. Then put it in the pot and don't clog your coffeemaker

Seems risky

[Major Nikon]

13. The only thing it can possibly clog is the valve under the filter holder if the maker has one

Even at that I suspect it would take a while. Nobody ever washes those things and they build up with rancid coffee oils anyway.

[TigressDem]

14. That was my suggestion.

Powdered milk would foam up just like a latte and make a mess in the bin the grounds and filter are.

[TreasonousBastard]

20. It doesn't foam in the cup unless I use the "foamer" gadget on it, so no reason...

to think it would foam in the basket.

[TigressDem]

24. Ah, well I stand corrected.

But in the carafe is still easier. LOL

[TreasonousBastard]

26. Yes- I was thinking of extra steps, but there are no extra steps with the carafe.

[Blue Owl]

15. Black or bust, baby!

[Starseer]

16. My experiences

I ran across the "adding sugar to the brew basket" method when I still utilized my Mr. Coffee brewer as my mainstay. It was one of those 8-cup white ones with the "New!" brew-and-pause feature, and a cute little red LED clock in the bottom right. I still have it in my office and continue to utilize the sugar-in-basket method.

Before I did it the first time, I was pretty skeptical. But I did have half a thought about the sugar balancing out some of the acidity that tended to run rampant in single-temperature extractions.

So, I used one level teaspoon of granulated sugar, spread evenly over the coffee in the basket. That way, the water hit the thin sugar layer before it hit the coffee. (NB: In later times, I used powdered and even confectioners' -- I was curious about the surface area effect, as well as the effect of the added starch in the confectioners' -- but granulated seems to work best.)

In a word, I was elated with the results! The change was dramatic. The acids were still there, but they had been balanced nicely by the faintest hint of sweetness. IIRC, it was straight-up Folger's ground coffee. Interestingly, I found that if I attempted to homogeneously mix the coffee and the sugar together, the smoothing effect was greatly diminished.

Anyway, just my $0.02. It surprised me. Oh, and remember to deal with the basket and grounds *promptly*. Sugary environments tend to promote mold growth in short order. Ack!

[TreasonousBastard]

21. Sounds great. If there is a real advantage to sugaring the basket it would...

be a good thing. I'm diabetic and use Splenda or similar, and most of them dissolve almost instantly.

[Mr.Bill]

17. I've put powdered chocolate mix in the basket.

It worked really well. Usually I put chocolate milk in my coffee, which provides just enough sugar for me. Five parts coffee, one part chocolate milk.

[TreasonousBastard]

22. Interesting. Maybe it's time for some mocha.

[Ka-Dinh Oy]

18. Am I the only one who cringes at the thought of powdered milk?

However, doing that with cocoa would be interesting.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

23. It might cause a regular drip coffee maker to overflow.

I tried something similar in the past, later needing to clean the coffee grounds that went everywhere around the coffee maker. Almost nothing was in the pot, to boot!

In my case, it was a coffee powder that I decided to use as a supplement for my small amount of coffee grounds. I didn't feel like driving to a store to buy more coffee grounds that morning, and I apparently wasn't bright enough to later mix the powder in a cup of watery coffee from the drip maker.

[TreasonousBastard]

27. Beats me why. Instant coffee is pretty fast dissolving, but maybe it clogged the filter...

or that little valve on the bottom of the basket.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

28. That was my reasoning too.

I'd originally bought the powder for my job, since it was a very quick way to have some coffee with water "coolers" which also had hot water dispensers. Then I brought it home when the job was usually so fast-paced that I didn't have free time to even do that.

It dissolved very fast in hot water, so I couldn't imagine it causing a clog. Yet it did.

It was some kind of cappuccino powder, actually, so it was light-colored like it had milk powder in it.

Edit:
It was this stuff.