Hamilton Beach 40911 2-Quart Electric Iced Tea Maker

 (560 customer reviews)

I drink tea like you breath air, but I'll bet my air against your tea that this is the maker you'll want.

We had a Mr Coffee tea maker for years. It was fine at first, but increasingly problematic.

First, physical weaknesses: The pitchers crack and warp slowly but steadily, so won't last forever. You can replace them for about ten bucks, but with shipping that's half the cost of an entirely new unit. And you can't put them in the dishwasher, so you'll probably want at least several up front anyway, so that you can clean them.

Second, cleaning problems. Unlke the Hamilton Beach tea makers, the Mr Coffee bags go in the brewing housing, which has to be removed and cleaned separately from the pitcher. And if you forget to do that, you'll have yucky (even moldy) tea bags the next time you go to make tea, even if that's within two days.

Hamilton Beach instead keeps the bags' brewing area inside the pitcher itself, which you can refridgerate and...Read more

For years we have used the Mr. Coffee Iced Tea makers and have purchased two of them. This time around we chose to get the Hamilton Beach 40911 2-qt Iced Tea Maker. Even though I/we haven't used the feature that allows you to place loose tea in the basket for brewing we totally like the Hamilton Beach method of brewing tea over the Mr. Coffee. First of all the taste (using Luzianne Family Tea bags was superior to any tea we ever brewed using the Mr. Coffee makers. Also one very large drawback with the Mr. Coffee maker is that the basket, for the bags, sets inside the reservoir and maker and most every time you brew a pitcher and remove the basket you have leakage of tea down in the makers bottom which over time makes for a very ugly looking reservoir, where you put your clean water to brew your next pitcher. Because Hamilton Beach placed the basket directly inside the Pitcher itself there is never any tea that finds its way into the bottom of the tea maker. Also due to ridges in...Read more

Like many other reviewers, I was moving on from a Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Maker. There were many reasons for my retiring the Mr. Coffee, most of which are mentioned in other reviews, but primarily because the little spout that dispenses tea from the brew basket on my Mr. Coffee stopped dispensing. It was about 4 years old. RIP, Mr. Coffee.

Thanks to this new iced tea maker, I did not grieve long! Based on the sensational reviews that I read here, and the fact that the reviewers noted the same problems with their Mr. Coffee's as I did, I purchased this one and received it last week. I've spent the last week perfecting the process and am totally satisfied with the product and with the tea.

Good points:

It is very easy to keep clean. Because only water goes in the tower, there's no need to worry about cleaning it with soap and water. I often felt the need to clean out the tower of the Mr. Coffee because the brew basket leaked into it, and was always...Read more