Having recently retired from Scouting (my son made Eagle), my biggest pet peeve early on was bad coffee. Didnt seem to be a bother to anyone else, but I wasnt going camping if I couldnt wake up to good coffee! I bought us a coleman stovetop drip coffee maker. It is essentially a drip coffee maker, with a metal base. the top is plastic and made exactly like any other drip machine. swingout filler and filter cup, etc. 50 bucks at Dicks, you can probably find it cheaper. Best move ever. I went a step farther and got a single burner stove from a catering friend and kept a "dedicated" coffee burner.

If you don't drink coffee, you won't want to spend money and give room to a grinder. I suspect you are talking about making coffee for a dinner party? If so I would buy an inexpensive automatic drip pot...like Mr Coffee, or Black and Decker...whatever size fits your use. The MOST important thing about good coffee is a clean pot...no old coffee oils please. I can't stand some people's coffee because they either use a pump pot and the pump part is full of stale coffee oils, or the pot is dirty. And the next thing is make it strong enough! If you make it too strong, a little boiling water will fix it for most people, but too weak and you can't do a thing. Coffee? Almost any good quality coffee will do for non coffee afficianodos. I suggest you start with Starbucks Breakfast blend for the widest appeal. Linda C

I do vinegar. I've owned many coffeemakers and always use the same method. Fill it at least halfway with vinegar and then run it. Whole kitchen stinks. Then I just keep running full pots of water through it until I can stick my nose into the water reservoir and not smell vinegar, however many rinsings that it takes. Might take two. Might take five or six. Wiping interior of the top cover with paper towels to get the vinegar condensation in between rinsings. I also remove whatever parts that hold the coffee filter, etc that can be removed and use a sponge 'scrubber' to make sure all of the residue is gone out of the 'grooves'. I do not find that merely washing parts in the dishwasher sufficient to get rid of that greasy residue. Works for me.

Most of the time I use the Aunt Jamima mix where you do have to add egg, milk and oil. My kids don't care, but I do eat a couple and I don't like the texture of the "complete" mixes. But I am willing to try the Krusteaz complete mix if I see it next time. If I don't have any mix, I will make them from scratch. But I am just as likely to be out of one ingredient or the other. Sometimes I add stuff to the mix, like vanilla or fruit or cocoa. But once I reached for the vanilla and accidentally grabbed the peppermint extract. Didn't notice until they started cooking and smelled kinda different ;o) I let a kid try one, but we ended up throwing it out and starting over... from scratch, that was the last of the mix. DS spent the night with a friend a few weeks ago and his mom made pancakes "from a can that looks like whipped cream, you spray it on." Sure enough, next time I was in BJs I saw it, in a can you hold upside down and push the nozzle. So I agreed to try it. The kids still didn't care, but I thought it made tough pancakes, not fluffy. Last week I saw the same stuff featured on the Today Show with Kathy Lee and Hoda. I will not buy it again. That's my review: thumbs down.