Did Isaac Newton Invent the One Cup Coffee Maker?

I have pestered Dunkin Donuts operators from Maine to Florida with a hundred questions about water temperature, filtering, brewing time, coffee mugs, and Arabica bean coffee grinders. I have paid outrageous prices and sometimes begged for “magic” coffee beans from a dozen greasy spoons suspected as repositories of Secret Knowledge, and I must admit from more than a few four star hotel kitchens where a seven dollar cup of coffee just has to be more than a common hot beverage. Doesn’t it?

I have thrown a handful of coffee grounds into a saucepan of boiling water. I have measured with gram scales to 1/100 accuracy, and digital thermometers so accurate that the scale changes when you breathe. I have pressed, percolated, dripped and immersed more ground up, mashed up and pulverized coffee beans more times than any sane person should.

I am almost ready to admit that the perfect one cup coffee maker is beyond the reach of current technology. Perhaps beyond the reach of all carbon based life forms. If there ever is a radio message from SETI it will be an alien one cup coffee maker brand name that will perplex the scientific community for centuries.

Almost, I say. There are still a few models of one cup coffee makers for which Amazon and epinions reviewers remained strangely silent. Perhaps those coffee machines really did not exist and the ads were meant to throw me off the trail. Maybe the purchasers had to sign confidentiality agreements. Let us not forget that the greatest human brain in history, Isaac Newton, succumbed to toxic vapors while trying to change lead into gold. Some knowledge may be so great that merely possessing it challenges the Order of the Universe.

Maybe the best one cup coffee maker is not a coffee maker at all. It may be disguised as the new Bosch Tassimo hot beverage system. We have known for years that no human being can match the consistently good results of an electric rice cooker. Why over think a simple task?

You fill a big tank with water every few days. Insert a disc of Arabica or a disc of some fancy -puccinno or -presso and the Tassimo reads the disc bar code, figures the water amount, water temperature, and brewing time in its little silicon brain, and delivers one cup of hot beverage in about a minute.

Can Tassimo Hot Beverage System be the final answer to the best one cup coffee maker question?