Revitalize old rubber vac pot gaskets

I love vac pot coffee. What's not to love? It's fun to brew and the coffee is as good as brewed coffee can be, without the sediment you get with a press pot.

I also love to buy old vac pots, but as pretty as they are, if the rubber gasket is old and hard, they are just dust-catchers on the shelf because they don't create a seal. Without the seal, air escapes around the gasket and you don't get the vacuum necessary to pull the coffee back into the lower decanter. I broke an upper bowl on one that was difficult to remove after brewing. What a mess that was!

I recently ran across a solution for the gasket problem. Go to the auto parts store and get a can of transmission stop leak. This stuff works on the seals and gaskets in the transmission just as it works on your vac pot gasket. Take the gasket off the upper bowl of the vac pot and soak it in the stop leak for 2 or 3 days. I have had good results on one of my gaskets and I am now soaking the others. I don't know if it will work on cracked gaskets.

It won't make them as new, but will soften the old rubber just enough to make the seal. It may not work on all, but for about $4, it's worth the try.

The stuff stinks so don't do it in the kitchen. It's hard to wash off, but the rubber doesn't come in contact with the coffee, so it's safe. Let's rephrase that. I think it's safe, but you decide for yourself. There is a possibility that some residue of the stop leak could get onto the mouth of the decanter and into your coffee.

Please let other readers know how it works in the Comments.

Robert

At Last, a $20,000 Cup of Coffee

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

WITH its brass-trimmed halogen heating elements, glass globes and bamboo paddles, the new contraption that is to begin making coffee this week at the Blue Bottle Café here looks like a machine from a Jules Verne novel, a 19th-century vision of the future.

Called a siphon bar, it was imported from Japan at a total cost of more than $20,000. The cafe has the only halogen-powered model in the United States, and getting it here required years of elliptical discussions with its importer, Jay Egami of the Ueshima Coffee Company.

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