I just replaced the second set of decanters for the office coffee maker. Yesterday, some clueless individual left less than a cup of coffee in my new decanter. It was starting to burn, but not as much as I did when I realized someone almost destroyed my new decanter.
This reminded me of a way I came up with to save decanters: make the burner weight-sensitive. Put it on a spring where the filament doesn’t make contact below a certain weight. That weight would be the equivalent of one cup of coffee plus the decanter. No decanters would ever break. No fires would start. Problem solved.
A better approach is to do away with the glass decanter completely. Thermal decanters keep coffee fresh all day long, where coffee that cooks in a glass decanter goes bad in an hour or two. Thermal decanter coffee makers are also more energy-efficient: they’re on only when they’re brewing. You don’t have to worry about them starting fires.
But maybe I just have too much time on my hands.