It sort of works, but not well. Different kind of teas need to steep for different amounts of time. I can put my loose leaf tea into some kind of infuser in the carafe, but then I have to time when to pull the infuser to stop the tea. Not to mention, the coffee pot doesn't output an appropriate temperature water.
The work I do requires a heavy concentration investment. Interruptions are a big pain in the neck. Having to stop working for 1 minute to manage my tea making really costs me about 15 minutes of productivity.
There's an easy way around the steep time problem in a coffee maker. Fill the coffee maker to maximum capacity. Use a clock/timer to measure how long it takes to empty. With these machines brew time is proportional to how much water you add, so if your coffee maker takes 8 mins to complete (6-10 is typical) and you want to brew for 4 minutes, just add half the water. You don't have to put the tea in an infuser and stand around, just use a coffee filter and put the tea in the basket, no waiting around. You can't really get around the temperature, they generally make water at 190f or so, which will work for black tea but perhaps not green.
You probably have a coffee maker at home, so you have nothing to lose by giving it a good cleaning and trying this method.
Most electric tea makers are really just coffee machines under a different name, they brew at similar temperatures (maybe slightly cooler) and are the exact same inside. If you must have a tea machine though, I would suggest this:
http://www.amazon.com/Hamilton-Beach...5115250&sr=8-6
I own one of these and it works good. I got mine at a local Giant grocery store, if you have those nearby, you might be able to find one. It was like $24-27 IIRC. It's also very highly rated on Amazon. It's listed as a 2 quart tea maker, but it only makes two quarts of iced tea in one cycle, not hot tea. To make two quarts you fill the pitcher with ice to the proper level and fill the machine with 1 quart of water. So if you drink hot tea you'll only get 1 quart of hot tea after you set it up and walk away. The pitcher has a 1 quart water mark on it, so you could also add 1 quart of cold/hot water to the pitcher if you want to get 2 quarts without standing around to fill it and run the cycle again for the second quart.
The tea basket lies in the top of the pitcher and has a permanent filter, no need to buy any. The basket is nice and big which gives loose tea plenty of room to unfold. at the bottom of the basket is a "brew strength selector" with a mild, medium, and strong setting. All this does is restrict flow from the basket to the pitcher, which causes the water level to rise faster and higher. It probably doesn't affect the actual brew time by more than a minute or so.
I've measured the water temperature in the brew basket with mine, I don't remember the exact temperature but it was around 175-185 F.
One downside to the machine is that the pitcher isn't dishwasher safe. I've put mine in the washer and the plastic will start to cloud and will probably crack if you keep using the dishwasher.
This machine takes about 6 minutes to brew the 1 quart of water you can add to it. So again, if you wanted a brew time other than 6 minutes, you would still need to vary how much water you add, just like a coffee maker.
So go give the coffee maker a try! I think you could even do green tea in it, just keep it to like 3 minutes. I've tried a full 6 minute brew of green tea in a machine and it didn't turn out very good.
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