Patent ID: 6931984

Claim:
In a beverage brewer that is fully functional and capable of performing all brewer operations and having a water tank for holding water that is to be passed through beverage ingredient, the improvement being a controller, comprising: means for automatically disabling at least one fully functional brewer operation in response to occurrence of a preselected condition including at least one of the conditions of (a) performance of a preselected plural number of brew cycles, (b) passage of a preselected quantity of hot water dispensed into contact with the ingredient during a plurality of brew cycles, (c) passage of a preselected quantity of mixing liquid through a by-pass to a beverage container during a plurality of brew cycles, (d) passage of a preselected quantity of hot water passed through a hot water faucet, (e) passage of a preselected continuous period of time in excess of time needed for a plurality of brew cycles, and (f) performance of a preselected amount of use in excess of a plurality of brew cycles since the last scheduled maintenance procedure; means for receiving an enablement code from an external source; and means responsive to receipt of the enablement code for controlling the automatically disabling means.