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What is Your Favorite Way to Make Coffee?
markov_chain asks: "For a while I've been making coffee using home-ground whole beans and a standard drip maker. I settled on this method for its simplicity and good taste, even after trying numerous other methods (such as the French press, gravity percolators, and pressure percolators), each coupled with either pre-ground or whole beans. So far, the fresh ground beans are the only factor that made a significant difference in taste. However, when I recently spotted a a site that vaguely extols freshness, I began to wonder how much the freshness of the beans themselves affects the quality. Normally I thought the whole beans would retain the quality far longer, due to less surface area exposed to air, but clearly there still must be a decline; worse yet, it is difficult to gauge that decline since the sellers usually do not advertise the age of the beans. I would now like to pose a few questions. What is your preferred coffee-making method, and how does it compare to other methods you've tried? What are your favorite beans?"
I have to agree that fresh, home ground beans beats packaged ground any day. I also think the intense aroma given off when grinding the beans adds to the enjoyment of the first cup.
I found that I had to play with the grinder setting for a while before finding the ideal setting. However, I also found hat the optimum setting varies with the type of bean. I recently changed to a decaffinated bean after getting heart palpitations from too many cups.
At first I found the brew somewhat insipid, but after experimenting with a finer grind, I now get the same intense flavour of regular beans.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
It's in the roast -- the method of roasting -- as much as the variety. Freshness counts, variety counts, but it's the roast that matters the most. I've experienced Jamaca Blue Mountain both in a mild roast and in a dark roast, and they could be two entirely different coffees. The mild roast made me want to compose a sonata, and the dark roast made me want to go scrape barnacles off an oil rig. I ended up doing neither, because I couldn't afford the next cup.
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I use 1 teaspoon of water for every tablespoon of ground beans. I use whole beans, but keep an extra tablespoon of ground beans around to start the process because I don't have a grinder. After the first cup, I can grind the beans with my bare hands from the twitch alone.
I can affirm that the pump-powered espresso machine is the best way to brew coffee ever(However, it's expensive.). If you're still a drip coffee fan, go for the french press. All of the essential oils and flavors stay intact, unlike filter-brewed coffee.
two teaspoons of coffee, slow stream of hot water and some milk
1. Open can of whatever was on sale at Meijer
:p
2. Make coffee
3. Pour enough milk/sugar in that I don't taste the coffee
4. Consume
I'm way too tired in the morning to do much else or worry about the freshness of my beans.
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
With a little spurt of Jack Daniel's
If you can find someone to supply you with green beans, your can roast your own in a hot air popcorn maker. The beans float once roasted and you can control how dark a roast you want.
You'll also want a very fine grind to get the maximum flavor out of your beans.
Real men suck on plugs of grounds. Liquid coffee's for sissies....
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A French press setup with freshly ground beans is the ticket. The coffee steeps like tea, then you press the grounds down to the bottom, leaving the rich goodness up top. You will have higher cholesterol drinking like this though; the oils are not filtered through paper.
- Get Turkish ground beans
- For two mugs, dissolve one spoon of ground beans and half a teaspoon of sugar in a small amount of milk in a mug
- Heat pan
- Pour viscous mass into pan
- add two mugs of milk
- heat until the milk rises to the edge of the pan
- pour divine coffee into mugs, while avoiding the dregs to leak into the mugs
- enjoy
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Turkish Coffee. Definitely my favorite, but rarely make it these days. I get mine from this site:
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http://www.natashascafe.com/
Finely ground, boil a couple times. My small "ibrik" makes about 3 espresso sized cups per batch, but trust me, that's all you need. Unfiltered too - you end up leaving a sludge at the bottom of your cup.
In regards to the original question, I've seen the coffee fool site, haven't tried starting with unroasted beans. I have had the best luck, drip coffee wise, using this:
http://www.cuisinart.com/catalog/product.php?prod
and grinding the beans fresh. There's definitely a difference to me using freshly ground vs. pre-ground. Cleaning the coffeemaker every couple weeks by running vinegar through it, then a couple carafes full of water helps too.
Store bought coffee, even whole bean, is often weeks old, months even for the canned stuff. However, the bean peaks in freshness after a short resting period of a day or three and only lasts in peak freshness for about a week. After that it rapidly stales because the chemical processes set in place continue even after the roast is complete. So, you may never get much of a difference between store-bought whole-bean coffee and preground - both will be mostly or completely staled and bland. Fresh roasted coffee tho - that you will detect a difference right away.
Never store your coffee in the freezer or fridge. No matter how well you seal it, moisture can still get in. Also, moisture gets in when you open the package. Nothing stales coffee faster than moisture. So - roast what you can consume in a week and only that. When you're done with that, roast for the next week and so forth.
http://www.sweetmarias.com/ is the premier source of green tho I get my Kona direct from a farmer I know - they also have a decent home-roaster's forum too. You can roast with a West Bend Poppery I or II popcorn popper - I started off with the Poppery II - and there are roasters in levels of sophistication all the way up to the fancy drum roasters. I have a pair of Alpenrosts that work fine for me for the moment. I'll upgrade when they die but they're perfect for my coffee currently. Store your coffee in a button-bag and press out the air and keep it in a cool dark location. I use the coffee press exclusively because I like a heavier bodied coffee. Home roasted coffee tastes like it smells - hot, tepid or chilled. Zero bitterness and wonderful taste - something you'll never find in a store-bought coffee.
I lately have mostly been making Vietnamese style coffee (hot or iced, with or without sweetened condensed milk).
http://www.toddycafe.com/.
Brew an entire pound of coffee in one shot, then dilute a cup's worth whenever you want some. It's easy to adjust the strength, and all you need to do is heat the coffee to your taste (or stick in a couple ice cubes for iced coffee).
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I like to push the GO button on the coffee machine at work.
grind a roast of your choice to the finest powder, the finer the powder the better the buzz transfer the grounds to a mirror, piece of glass, or other smooth surface use a razor blade, credit card, or other planar surface to cut lines Snort and enjoy!
I don't drink coffee at all, but my Mom swears by fresh roasted green coffee.
Nothing beats a single-cup Melitta drip cone. If you go to a good coffee shop and ask for a regular coffee, they'll make you a single cup with a filter cone. I used to watch the coffee shop girls in Japan and they make filter-cone coffee with such precision, it's incredible.
Some people say that drip filters leach too much from some grounds and too little from others. So just swish the water around in the filter while it's brewing, make sure the grounds get all mixed together instead of sticking to the sides of the cone. Makes a big difference.
a summer of experimentation revealed that water temperature and grind have more impact than other factors unless you're roasting your own beans (they go stale within 72 hours of roasting, but unroasted beans will stay fresh for weeks).
the finer the grind, the more surface area. the hotter the water, the more acids. boiling water will turn the best freshly roasted/ground coffee into something that tastes like it came from denny's. also, coffee grounds have a "useful flavor life", the first 500-600mL will have most of the flavor, anything extra will taste bitter.
i pre-mix turkish grind with water at 140-160F, let sit, then pour the resulting sludge through a melitta #6 filter cone; i used to pour directly into the cone, but discovered signifigant flavor loss where the grounds weren't getting wet. (fwiw, the melitta filter cones are a perfect fit for 1000mL griffin beakers.)
Okay, I had a girlfriend in college who worked at New Haven, Connecticut's snootiest coffee roaster. She and they gave me a fairly complete education in coffee. Here's the scoop.
Coffee beans lose 90% of their varietal aromatics within 3 days of roasting if unground, and within four hours if ground. Coffee quality is at least as much a function of the care taken in combing over the beans for clinkers as it is in the quality of the beans. A single clinker, that is, an immature bean, can ruin an entire pot of coffee, imparting a bitter, burnt flavor. They will look lighter in color, may be smaller, and will be lighter in weight than other beens, and you can remove them yourself. Obviously, if you are buying a blend with lighter and darker beans, they will be harder to find than a single varietal.
Method of brewing is important, with the major factors being the temperature of the water and the length of time the water is in contact with the grounds. Water temperature should be between 195 and 205 degrees Fahrenheit, and ideally should not stay in contact with grounds for more than six minutes. After that amount of time, the grounds start to release more bitter compounds.
As for the taste of beans, you will find there are three distinct coffee producing regions. Central and South American beans have low acidity, medium to high body (that is, the feel of the coffee in you mouth. If it feels thick, that is high body. If it feels watery, that is low body.) and tends towards spicy flavor notes. Eastern African coffees tend to have high acidity, low body, and winy flavor notes. Southeastern Asian coffees tend to have medium to low acidity, medium body, and earthy or nutty flavor ntoes. Of course, I am talking about Arabica beans from these regions, not Robusta, which all tend to taste like hay.
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Please. Unless the grounds come out of a civet cat's rear end it will never pass my lips.
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OK, I'm not affiliated with this company I just like their products:
Go to Sweet Marias and order up some green beans and a buy a roaster. For cheap stuff, I prefer Ethiopian Yrgacheffe, but the selection is large and there's plenty of other beans and blends available. For the roaster, I have one of these. It's a nice cheap way to try roasting. If you're really cheap, many hot air popcorn makers will roast just fine too. And finally, for the perfect cup you'll want to try one of these Vacuum Coffee Brewers that are pain to clean but brew the best damn cup this side of a French Press.
Hmmmmm coffee... yum!
Also, the Rancilio Silvia and Gaggia Classic are still IMO the best single boiler home espresso machines on the market. I've had a Silvia for almost seven years and it's taken one hell of a beating every day, with no downtime. Thing is built like a tank.
Home ground through a drip coffee maker is just too easy. Cleanlyness is usally the only critical factor there. You can get a wee (wee) bit different flavor using other methods, but I've not tasted anything that was identifiably better. Maybe a french press, maybe, but stray grounds, time and mess usually make that not worth the effort.
Fresh beans (roasted that day) are good for a couple to three days. After that they start to taste a lot like everything else. Not bad, but the interesting parts that make a particular bean unique mellow significantly. I've found a pretty good shop in town that roasts their own and just take whatever they did that morning.
You could roast your own, but you're back to time, mess, and a house that smells strongly of coffee roasting.
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French Press.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
I'm a tea drinker now, but when I used to be a heavy coffee drinker, I'd grind my own beans from a local roaster and use it in an aeropress. it's basically a giant syringe with a small coffee filter at the end instead of a needle. you take the rubber stopper out of one side, pour grounds and hot water in like a french press, but the rubber stopper forces the water through the filter at the bottom with pressure and all you're left with is a puck of moist grounds and some intense espresso below. coffee, made by diluting the espresso, tastes exceptionally smooth but maintaining its potency. seriously, i used to get really loaded using that. good stuff.
Ultimate favorite is the Toddy Coffee Maker. Google lists lots of sites. It cold brews coffee into a coffee concentrate over a period of 24 hours. Then to make a cup of coffee you add a shot of the concentrate to a cup of hot water/zap it and drink. Very smooth especially with Columbian coffee, minimal acids and LOTS of caffeine. Cold brewing preserves lots of flavors and oils too. Downside is that the concentrate needs refrigeration as does the reusable filter for the coffee maker. Without refrigeration, or after a while even with it, the concentrate ferments/gets rancid sort of like old iced tea so you have to drink enough to keep it fresh. Somewhat inconvenient but really really good.
Drip brewed using the fine screen rather than filter paper is the 2nd best, particularly with lots of finely ground coffee. I like it best about halfway in strength between regular drip and expresso. Unlike a paper filter, the screen does not perform chromatography on all of the tasty oils in the coffee so more flavor gets to the coffee.
I spend a lot of time in the wilderness and my choice there is a stainless steel percolator on a gas burner with very low flame. If the flame is too high the coffee tastes scorched and bitter, but if it is just enough to perc every 1-3 seconds it produces really strong full flavored coffee. I wait about 15 minutes of percolating. More boils off too much flavor, less makes it weak. YMMV I don't know whether electric percolators work as well, my recollection of electrically percolators is that the coffee tasted bitter but it was decades ago. I have looked longingly at the backpacking expresso maker sold at backpacking stores, and wonder if it really works. Maybe somebody here has used one and could comment.
Now, for the beans vs. ground topic. I have long been a fan of grinding beans but the Costco Columbian ground coffee is so good that it is hard to tell from fresh ground beans. There are good beans and poor beans and maybe I hit a run of poor beans, I think.
Strong, with some Hershey's cocoa powder and milk. And fresh grounded for the smell.
...and get the barista to do it.
It doesn't matter how hard I try, I can never seem to get the Java Chip to turn out right when I attempt it myself. And being addicted to chocolate flavoured coffee, I have no other choice.
For pure style you can't go past Cona vaccum brewers; they're just fun to watch. Conveniently they also make great coffee, and are pretty consistent at doing that: the design ensures you always get temperature and extraction rate perfect, and the result is an incredibly clean cup of coffee that is never too bitter.
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The thing that has made the biggest difference for me was switching to a burr grinder from a blade grinder. I didn't believe that it would make that big of a difference, but even a cheap (for a burr grinder) $50 cuisinart grinder makes a huge difference in terms of the flavor and mouth feel of the brew.
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As for the brewing, I've become quite enamored with my vacuum coffee machine; I use the Bodum Santos Electric:
http://www.bodumusa.com/shop/line.asp?MD=3&GID=52
It is geek-a-rific to watch, and it brews a fabulous cup o' joe. (And it is programmable---so the process can be over before I wake up.) Purists complain that the electronic versions aren't as good as the manual ones, but I'm not a purist---and mornings aren't the time for me to be messing with the burners.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
You can't beat an espresso machine. The problem is that espresso is really easy to screw up, and it tastes really bad when you do. You quickly move from grocery-store-bought beans to fresher locally roasted beans to home roasting. Even when home-roasting, the beans go downhill after about a week after you roast them, so it's best to keep your batches relatively small. The last key is to get a decent burr grinder. The little spinny things produce horribly uneven grinds, which is a nightmare for espresso. 1. Do espresso 2. Get a good grinder 3. roast green coffee beans yourself
I purchased a Aeropress from Thinkgeek and it seems to work pretty good. Inexpensive, easy to use and clean. The only fault I have found is that I tried some beans from the supermarket and it made really nasty coffee. No matter how fancy a maker you have, if you have bad beans, it will not help.
If you start getting all lah dee dah about it, you're defeating the object: to overclock your brain and get stuck into something. The only reason I even bother boiling the damn water is that I don't trust the coffee beans to be safe to consume otherwise.
I brought a box of chocolate covered espresso beans in to work one time and a co-worker hand a handful before reading the label and realizing that *4* beans was about one cup's worth of coffee. Good times!
My current company has a pump espresso machine in the Oregon office. That's a sweet piece of machinery. Unfortunately after using it I've realized how inadequate my old $90 cheapo steam machine is and am now going to have to shell out a fat chunk of cash for a REAL espresso machine. *sigh*
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm in no way an authority on coffee beans, but I do believe I make a mean French press of coffee. It's relatively simple: one tablespoon of coffee for every six ounces (or 180mL for we metric folk) of water, let the freshly-boiled water stand for ten seconds to bring it down to maximum flavour extraction temperature, and then let the grounds steep for four minutes. Press and enjoy! There's no way that anybody could force me to grind two tablespoons of coffee a day, though, so I just grind enough at one time for three or four days. I've come to grips with the fact that I probably can't tell the difference anyway.
If I'm looking for something a bit more like rocket fuel (even though French press coffee does have a great kick), I turn to my Nespresso Essenza C100. It's tiny as hell and punches a heck of a lot of pressure through it, resulting in an espresso the likes of which I've never seen outside of commercial machines.
Ah, but it's good to have vices!
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
Now that warmer weather is here, I sometimes like to take a couple of spoonsful of instant coffee, (yeah, yeah, but try it this way - you might like it), in the bottom of a 16-oz tumbler and add about a half-inch of milk and enough sweetner for a whole glass. Microwave it until it boils (usually about 20-30 sec, so watch it closely), then take it out and swirl it to make sure all the coffee nuggets have dissolved. Put it in the freezer for 10 minutes to bring it back down to cool. Fill the tumbler the rest of the way with ice-cold milk. Enjoy.
"I'm way too tired in the morning to do much else or worry about the freshness of my beans. :p"
But they were fresh the night before.
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I prefer to grind my coffee beans very finely, and use the drip method of brewing.
Of course, you have to choose the coffee beans too. Personally, being from New Mexico, I like light roasted pinyon blend coffee....
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
We roast our own coffee, purchasing green coffee beans for ~30%-50% less than roasted (and stale) beans purchased in a store or coffee house. Roasted beans begin losing their flavour within the first week after roasting even if kept in stainless steel or glass air tight containers (NEVER plastic or paper. The acid picks up the flavour of the paper or plastic). By the end of the second week the oils in the beans has begun to turn rancid. This accounts for the strong harsh stale flavour many people associate with coffee. Oils in ground coffee will begin to turn rancid overnight and be stale within 36 hours.
Also, we use unbleached coffee filters in a standard drip coffee maker, with distilled water. Bleached coffee filters with treated water can both leave an aftertaste, as well as raise the level of chemicals in the brewed coffee.
For our roaster we use a simple hot air popcorn popper. It takes me about 30 minutes once a week to roast a weeks worth of coffee.
Cold drip coffee is my favorite by far. I use CDM Coffee & Chicory or Union Coffee & Chicory. As a New Orleanian I was raised on chicory coffee. (Insert "I thought y'all were raised on Bourbon St." joke here). Cold drip chicory coffee has a very nice bitterness that is muted compared to hot brewed coffee. Hope you find the magic brew you're looking for.
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I recently discovered the Aeropress,a neat device from the good folks at Aerobie in Calif.Just add espresso to it with 170 degree water,stir,and 20 seconds later a simply wonderful cup of coffee is born.It makes only a single cup at a time but is very fast ,incredibly easy and at $30.00 it beats the hell out of $2000 French espresso machines.Yum!!
My favorite way of making coffee is to buy the fair trade organic coffee beans I bought on sale for $7 a pound and keep them in a 2 pound sealed ceramic jar. I then take a handful and put them in my Braun handheld coffee grinder (bought for $15 in Canada about 25 years ago and still working fine), swirl it and turn upside down to get a really good grind as I grind it, then tamp it lightly into the espresso cup (? that thing you put the fresh grounds in), and make a nice espresso latte - double or triple - with foamed 1 percent organic vanilla soy milk, and a shot of caramel, french vanilla, or hazelnut syrup.
Yum!
If it's the weekend I put it in a large soup cup and stir it with those pastry long cookies they sell in tins, or eat it with english muffins soaked in organic butter - but if it's a weekday I grab an organic apple for breakfast and eat it while I walk to work, as I also drink the latte from a Seattle International Film Festival cup I wash and reuse at day's end.
I used to drink Twinings tea (various) when I lived in BC, or get a nice coffee and a donut (non-glazed) from Tim Horton's, but that's what I do here.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think that home-ground drip coffee makes sufficiently good coffee, as far as opportunity cost is concerned. Some of the other methods make slightly better tasting coffee, but they're also much more intensive. I use one tablespoon of coffee beans for each cup marked on my pot, and I use a burr grinder, as the grounds don't expand nearly as much as with a mill grinder, meaning that I can make more strong coffee per pot. If I make 6 pot-cups with mill-ground coffee, the grounds fill the filter almost to the point of overflowing, and that's with a #4 filter and a 10-pot drip maker. If I instead use burr-ground coffee, the grounds do not expand nearly as much, meaning that I can make a full 10 cups of strong coffee without any risk of the ground overflowing.
There are many sites on the interweb that go into great detail on this subject.
Some simple guidelines:
1. The Bean
a. Coffee loses flavor and potency as soon as it has been roasted.
b. It loses it fastest once ground.
c. Find a local coffee roaster in your town who roasts what you like, and buy only as much as you will consume in a couple of weeks. There is not usually any savings for buying in bulk, so I prefer to buy half pounds to maximize the freshness.
d. Grind right before you brew. This keeps the coffee as fresh as possible.
e. Store the coffee in an airtight opaque container.
f. If you must buy more than you will consume in a short period (going on a long voyage). Store it in the freezer.
Note: Make sure that you only buy Arabica beans. Robusta beans are low grade, usually large bulk coffee vendors will mix the two, but if you are buying from a local roaster, they will probably be using either all arabica, or mostly aribica. There are some reasons to use a portion of robusta in the brew, but you can read about that elsewhere.
2. The Roast
a. There are several types of roast, all dealing with how long they are roasted. The lightest roasts will generally have the fruitiest flavors, but will really show the quality of the bean. Medium roasts are best for revealing the nuances of the bean, while conveying the most caffeine. Dark roasts (such as French Roast) almost completely eliminate the bean flavor, and really you will only taste the flavors of the roasting itself. I prefer the french roast at work because the bean quality is pretty low, and I find that the columbian medium roast has a bad taste. Oddly the dark roasts have slightly less caffeine than the medium roasts.
3. The Grind.
a. The grind depends upon the brewing method. If you are making espresso's, then you probably don't need my advise on how to grind, but for this response, espresso gets the finest grind. If using an automatic drip, you want a medium/coarse grind. This is what the typical bagged ground coffee looks like. Finally if you are using a french press ( my preference ), you want a coarse grind that won't clog the plunger's mesh.
b. Never grind beans straight from the freezer. If you are storing them in the freezer, take out the days worth of beans before you go to bed and let them come to room temperature.
c. If you have the space and can afford it, buy a burr grinder. It will create a more consistent grind size than the cheap $10 s-mart hand grinder. If you must use a cheap hand grinder, I recommend shaking it during the grind to keep the beans moving, and practice how long you must grind to get the size that you want. Large boulders of coffee bean don't give up their flavor readily.
4. The Brew.
Many scholars have gone to battle over the best brewing method. The ideal brew uses 200F water and the minimum time needed to extract all of the flavor, but none of the bad.
a. This is the basis of the design of a modern espresso machine that pushes 200F water under pressure through the packed grounds to extract the rich caramel goodness.
b. If you are using a french press, the recommended method is to preheat the glass before you introduce the grounds and steeping water. I pour a measure of hot water from my tea pot into the glass then pour it out; add the ground beans and fill with 200F water; cover and let steep for about 3 minutes, then plunge and enjoy.
c. The third preferred method is the automatic drip. The main problems with most automatic drip machines are:
1) They do not get the water hot enough for proper extraction.
2) The
Never heard of toddy coffee makers
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Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I drink tea.
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http://www.afactor.net/kitchen/coffee/kaffeeKantat e.html
My favorite way to make coffee is to let them do it at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans at the French market. It's actually a coffee and chicory blend, and half milk (I suppose you can order it black). Along with an order of beignets, let them bring it, sit back, listen to the jazz, and watch the people walk by on Decatur.
Unfortunately, I don't live near enough new Orleans to do that more than once a year.
I prefer pressed, but settle for drip cause it's less work for me. Too much trouble to grind it myself. I've recently switched from grinding it in-store to buying the blend from Cafe du Monde over the internet. http://www.cafedumonde.com/
I like your style, but I am a bit more cautious.
I use a Chemex coffeemaker, which is every chemistry geek's dream. It is a very simple all-glass vessel that accommodates a lab-grade folded square filter. You pour hot water through the grounds and end up with a very nice cup o' joe. It looks elegantly labware-like.
I like it because the water never touches metal or plastic, which impart a flavor. I like it because the lab-grade filters make for a very mild flavor even with lumberjack-strength brew. People marvel at how good my coffee tastes "for how strong it is."
I suppose if you want to be truly geeked-out you could use a vacuum pump and extraction funnel. I've done that myself to show off, but it is a lot of work to do before I've had me coffee!
Man, you really need that seminar!
That's my order...
.5 lb at a time. Grind as needed daily. You can make pretty decent espresso with a home single boiler machine. Pays for itself quickly if you are used to stopping at the local coffee shop every morning.
;)
I have a Gaggia Coffee DeLuxe from wholelattelove.com. I use only fresh locally roasted beans, never buy more than
If I don't have access to that I use my glass Bodum french press. Coffee is so much better steeped than dripped.
Yes, I'm a coffee snob. And a beer snob. And a bud snob. Only the finest
My setup:
In detail:
Grind the beans, boil the water then wait a few minutes for it to cool a few degrees, pour and enjoy fresh.
Fresh ground beans (burr coffee mill - NOT a chopper) + 10 cup GB Espresso Coffee maker (or french press if gas burner isn't handy)...
;-)
Started in Italy... never going back to vac pack drip
there is no substitue.
A single clinker, that is, an immature bean, can ruin an entire pot of coffee, imparting a bitter, burnt flavor. They will look lighter in color, may be smaller, and will be lighter in weight than other beens (sic), and you can remove them yourself.
Sounds like a quaker. They may also be somewhat malformed when compared to the rest of the beans (which helps when hand-sorting).
----
I didn't have a girlfriend in college.
So I've been doing this for about 5 years:
- French press
- Cheap blade grinder (yes it's hard to get a consistent grind, but with a french press you don't need it fine)
- electric water pot for boiling fresh filtered water
- Peets (www.peets.com) coffee shipped monthly directly to work (whole bean). 1lb lasts about a month, give or take a few days.
The keys to good coffee are:
- Good, fresh beans, ground just before use
- Fresh filtered water, boiled
- Proper grind, which for the french press is coarser then espresso (super fine) or drip (medium-fine)
A french is probably the best economical means of extracting the flavor from the beans. Paper filters in drip makers absorb the oils which makes the coffee bitter and drip doesn't let the water have enough time to absorb the oils anyways.
I keep a coffee grinder and hot water boiler at my desk/break room. As I boil the water, I clean the pot from the previous day. After cleaning, I grind the beans, which is just about the time the water is boiling. Put beans in pot and pour water over them. Stir. Let steep 3 min. Push down the plunger, pour in cup, and drink right away. You may want to consider a vaccum thermos if you like drinking coffee all day, since coffee exposed to the open air will make it go bitter.
I do this every day, even though we have a high end italian espresso maker & burr grinder in the office since the beans they use in it are crappy (Starbucks french roast in 5lb bags).
This makes really really good coffee. You will notice that the coffee is better with a fresh bag. Honestly, the quality at the end of the bag is still way better then what I get out of the corporate drip machine (who knows how long that pot has been sitting there). If you're really that serious to care, you can either buy 1/2lb bags twice month or start roasting your own beans. Whatever you do though, use good quality fresh whole beans. I personally hate Starbucks, but I know some people have aquired a taste for burnt beans. But whatever you do, don't go to the supermarket and buy what they have on the shelf... could of been there for months.
Also, remember to not grind the hell out of the beans... a french press takes a corser grind then drip or espresso so that the filter mesh can do it's job. If you're drinking a lot of sluge, you're grinding them too much. If you're not getting enough flavor, you're either not letting it steep long enough, not stiring or not grinding enough.
After the initial startup costs (french press grinder and hot pot for boiling), it runs me just $20/mo including shipping for the Arabian Mocha Java. If you're willing to pick up the beans at the store yourself, you can probably shave off $4 or so. For what it's worth, I just store the beans in the bag they shipped in and keep them in my desk.
I store my whole beans in the freezer, and I find that it's important to defrost the beans before I ground them. For some reason beans at room temperature grounded taste better than freezer-temp beans. I'll leave it to the bio-chemists to explain why, but it definitely makes a difference.
My favorite coffee comes from a can of Lavazza ground espresso made in a Bialetti mokka pot. The pot was $20, the coffee is about $5.50 a can. It takes 20 minutes to make on a stovetop, and it's nice and strong. I know it isn't as fresh as some methods, but it tastes good enough to me, plus it gives me a great buzz.
easy - buy local coffee that has the roasting date stamped on the bottom of the package, then you can be sure.
of course, maybe i'm spoiled, but stumptown coffee is great.
I decided to quit smoking a couple of days ago, and coffee is a "trigger".
I so liked my coffee too.
Beer too.
Fuck.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Here's the way my Dad got it, back in WW II: take a coffee pot, put in your grounds, a pinch of salt and an egg. Boil it until done, with the egg to catch the grounds. When the pot's empty, put in more grounds, another pinch of salt, another egg and do it again. Repeat until there's not enough room for another pot, then dump out the grounds and start over. There's not much coffee in the last pot, but it's very strong. Tastes good, I gather, at about 2 AM when you're on a graveyard shift on a cold night. Never tried it myself, but I've always wondered.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
If you're rich or insane, you can use a nice bottled water, but tap water that's made a trip through a Brita or similar filter seems to work just as well.
Seemed obvious, after...
I used a drip coffeemaker for many years but grew dissatisfied with it. Tried lots of different beans but they seemed to have little real effect; some pots were better than others but not remotely as good as the kind of coffee you get in a good dessert restaurant. Also I had to turn the hotplate off quickly or it would give the coffee a burnt taste.
Now I use an Aeropress and it makes excellent coffee. No bitter edge or sour acid, just smooth flavorful espresso. It is easy to adjust the strength to taste. You can also control the smoothness or "bite". Only drawback is it takes a week or two to fine-tune your technique and get a consistent result.
The best coffee I've ever had is 1 cup brewed individually from a #2 Melitta Drip.
You have a lot of control over strength, and if brewing for several people you can brew each person their own strength.
you just boil water...then....grind immediately before pouring water through.
I buy coffee from a local roaster and get it on their roasting day (the smaller shops will tell you when they get fresh deliveries. I'm lucky enough to have a place that roasts on site (most cities do..you just have to look). a small local coffee shop has a certain smell to it that can't be beat. (I live in Austin, TX and go to Anderson's)
If you have a Peets Coffee in your area, or you don't mind having them shipped to you (http://www.peets.com/) they do the best dark roasts.
I take a K-cup of whatever variety I've been liking lately (usually the Green Mountain Sumatran Reserve), and feed it into my Keurig one-cup system. Simple, fast, pretty good, and a fraction of the price of getting fancy-ass coffee out somewhere else.
I have been known to grind and brew from beans on occasion, but that's become rare since discovering the Keurig. I have one in my house and I bought another one for the office.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I get my beans from Sweet Maria's http://www.sweetmarias.com/
I roast it myself with a table top roaster that does about one pot worth of beans.
Once the beans have cooled down I grind them to a nice fine powder
Then I put the powder and about 8 cups of water in a sauce pan
Bring it to a boil while stirring continuously.
Shut off as soon as a boil starts, if not slightly before it starts to boil.
let is settle a bit
Some people like to pour it through a filter to get the sediment out.
I prefer it straight into the cup from here.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I agree that the roast is incredibly important, but other factors are just as important.
You could get the worlds best roast, grind it finely and leave it in a paper bag on top of the fridge and after a few weeks you may as well be drinking the filter percolator crap from McDonalds.
Freshness is as important as the roast. The oils that make a good coffee beans are volatile and grinding them and/or warm storage allows the oils to vapourise easier, that's why grinding coffee smells so good. Freshly ground coffee that has been stored in an air tight container before grinding is excellent.
Once it's been ground, the actual method (is a "french press" a plunger???) is less important, although the grind should be adjusted to the method. Finer for espresso, courser for a plunger, extremely fine for a turkish style.
As far as beans go, I live a long way from Jamaica, but I find East Timor produces some excellent coffee, and buying it helps the people their and their economy recover from some serious trauma.
I don't therefore I'm not.
I have a super automatic espresso maker (Jura-Capresso Impressa E8) and load it with Blue Mountain espresso roast beans. I get a perfect 2oz shot of espresso in 30 seconds. It's smooth and rich, and not at all bitter as you would expect from that large Seattle based coffee chain.
For regular coffee I have a Keurig single cup coffee maker. It uses "k-cups", which are a huge convenience. I still have a regular automatic drip coffee maker that I keep around in case I have company that might want regular coffee.
-- Will program for bandwidth
only if the electrical engineer asks really, really, nicely.
i use a modified paint stripper to roast my own beans every few days. i leave them whole, grind them in a burr grinder when ready to brew and brew with a hand-me-down espresso machine that i don't quite have the hang of. i'm still learning how to get everything consistent, but it's a load of fun and i'm even enjoying drinking my brew. the roast is definitely a big, big part of the result, as well as getting the grind right.
on a related note, i've got a friend who's in the process of designing and building a fairly impressive solar roaster for he and his brother's coffee shop. in fact, there was a brief news piece about him on cbs recently.
at work I use ground coffee in an Aerobie coffee press. low temperature brewing in an aerobie inverted press makes the least acid coffee I've ever tasted. I have stopped adding milk since I got my aerobie.
And for the grammar nazi's my pet peeve is that fresh as normally used should be an adverb not an adjective. it's not fresh baked bread it is freshly baked and fresh bread. it's freshly ground and fresh coffee.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
After grinding my beans, I dump them into a Melitta filter in my drip brewer (Braun KF-400), which I have already filled with an appropriate amount of filtered water (prevents mineral scaling of the coffee maker's innards). Then I turn on the switch and wait till its finished brewing. I like to have everything ready on the coffee maker so there is a minimal amount of time from finishing grinding the beans to actual brewing. The KF-400 runs about 20 bucks or so, and has no bells and whistles (except for an auto-shutoff)- but then again, why would I need an alarm if I grind my beans in a separate device every morning? Added bonus- the drip method is not particularly sensitive to particle size, and besides, I am not making espresso, so what do I care if the powder is a bit "uneven"?
The result- good coffee on the cheap, with just a hint of aromatic oils floating on the surface. Stauf's has a lost of different varieties of coffee, so not getting a large amount of beans allows me to sample new coffees all the time. The only downside to this whole process is that it happens when first waking up- despite that, I've gotten the whole ritual down to about a 2 or 3 minute process of setting up the coffee maker, getting the beans and grinding them, and then transferring them to the filter and pushing "ON". Then I do my SS&S, and when I come out smelling like roses, my coffee is ready to drink. Voilà!
Head over to alt.coffee. These guys know everything there is to know about making coffee, from the gadgets (which many of them hack for a good cup) to the beans and the soil they grow in.
I've switched over to green tea in the morning (trying to give my stomach a break), but for coffee I still prefer a good medium roast (done by a local coffee house while I wait-- I usually get a week's worth at a time.) and a standard GE drip coffee maker. It reaches the required temperature and produces a good cup, so I don't see a need to buy anything fancier.
And ground beans? Once ground, you have about 20-40 minutes before they start going bad. I cannot fathom how people can stand to drink that canned pre-ground crap. It's a step up from freeze dried, at least.
I would now like to pose a few questions. What is your preferred coffee-making method, and how does it compare to other methods you've tried? What are your favorite beans? Start with green, unroasted beans. Kept in a cool, dry place, green coffee has a practically unlimited shelf life. Set water to boil while roasting beans to desired darkness. Grind to desired coarseness immediately when roasting is complete. Place in coffee press immediately. Add very nearly boiling (i.e. 211degF water) to coffee press. Allow to brew for 2-8 minutes. Time varies with coarseness of grind and desired strength. I like very nearly turkish grind, brewed 4 minutes. Pour and drink immediately.
The key word above is (obviously) immediately. Extremely fresh coffee is incomparable. It's 15 minutes from the time I pour the green beans in the roaster to the time I'm sitting down with my finished coffee. There's nothing like it. You know it's fresh when you can discern the faintest hint of carbonation due to CO2 trapped by the roasting process.
My personal favorite coffee is a 50-50 mix of Yemen Matari Mocha and AAA Kenya, roasted just until the beans start to get shiny.
Here is a good resource on how to be the master of your own coffee.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I buy my coffee from a local roaster which never sells beans that were roasted more than 4 days ago. They also carry a number of varieties that aren't so common anywhere else. My favorite is the Harrar, which is Ethiopian but very different from the more common Yirgacheffe. There are very distinct notes of blueberry -- when it's been given a light roast. Roasted dark there's nothing special about it.
At home I brew using a vacuum brewer. They have the advantage that the water is always the right temperature just by the nature of the process -- and also, it's just plain nifty in a geeky kind of way. The disadvantage is that the coffee needs to have a very uniform grind. Some are more sensitive to this than others -- my Bodum Santos is moreso than most -- so the cheapo blade grinders don't work well. You need something like the KitchenAid burr grinder. But the coffee they make is very good.
And the brethren went away edified.
A Coder's Guide to Coffee
Original Kuro5hin article, with subsequent commentary.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Lots of good comments here.
e s/Pump+espresso+machines/Products/Vivo+F880/Vivo+F 880.htm
For me, two most important things:
Freshness, the most important. This cannot be understated. A friend of mine has a small home coffee roaster. I thought I'd had good coffee before, but after tasting freshly roasted, I could never go back. You won't believe the difference between freshly roasted and something from a can.
A good point to be made is that coffee really shouldnt be very bitter. Case in point, the first thing I noticed when drinking fresh roasted coffee was how little sugar it needed. If you have to drown out the bitter taste with lots of sugar, you can't taste the coffee anymore! That's why Starbucks sucks.. it just tastes like burnt coffee (because it is).
The other thing is a good brew method.
Personaly, I have a Krups pump espresso machine that makes the best damned coffee I've ever had. I only paid $50 for it on ebay since I couldnt find it anywhere else. They have a newer model that looks like mine, but seems to cost more and is hard to find: http://www.krups.com/All+Products/Espresso+Machin
Its cheap, its not real fast, great for making one or two cups at a time, but it works well for the price and its not big. Stay away from all the steam espresso machines, get only a pump one.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
A French press is by far the best way to brew coffee (unless, of course, you have a real espresso machine). The best coffee I've tasted is Green Mountain Coffee's Fair Trade Ethiopian Yrgacheffe. Always keep your beans in the freezer and grind them right before brewing.
Second this! I picked up a hand grinder off ebay, and with that, my Aeropress and a milk frother (of the hand plunger type) make a cup of coffee that my barista friend said was the equal of any she'd ever tasted.
I ordered "fresh" coffee from the Coffee Fool and it was absolutely horrid. Never do that again. Anybody have a different experience?
I prefer plain ole Starbucks Italian Roast (pre-ground). I use a espresso maker and make an Americano - one cup at a time.
I have learned that cleanliness of the coffee maker is essential to that sweet cup of joe.....
I'm currently a barista at a place called Winan's (By the way, as a college student, free caffeine rules ;) ...It's a small franchise based out of the Mid-West (Ohio, USA) of the country and we specialize in fine chocolates and coffees....Yadda yadda yadda. I've had my good share of quality beans (all arabica of course) and we usually get the beans green, roast them at our place in Piqua, Ohio and receive them within a few days of being roasted. I'd say typically we sell or brew the beans within 2 weeks of bean roasting. Granted, sometimes shorter than that, but also sometimes longer. A less popular bean might take around 1 month. Regardless, I think that the fresher they are, the better. Beans do lose quality (IMHO and in regards to total body and taste,experience...) over time. Also, a lot of the larger companies over-roast beans purposely. First, it's burned so you can't really taste when the bean is indeed stale. It gives the beans longer shelf lives for those companies. Another thing that's bad about over-roasting, is that it further removes some caffeine. I also think that many people who want to be coffee snobs, think that the darker a roast is, the better it must be. That's a totally false concept. The body of the coffee, has nothing to do with how "dark" a coffee tastes. The body is how it effects the pallet. Finally, for a true coffee lover and if it's just you who is wanting a great cup of Joe, a French Press is really a step up. Brewed drip coffee is still great though.
Oh yeah, I am one those coffee snobs. But I don't mean to be, I swear!
emacs
are there other ways?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I'm shocked no one has mentioned Bialetti's Brikka yet. They're stove-top espresso makers. They're like a moka, but with a pressure valve, so that the steam has time to get really hot, and pull more oil from the beans. Really great, I own the 2 cup version. Also check out their online fan club.
Like teabags, but with coffee. Better than instant, and almost as convenient. With my unsophisticated palate further refinements are wasted on me. I like my coffee, like I like my women, ground up and stored in the refrige--- wait a second, some thing's wrong there...
My preferred method is to go down to Single Origin Roasters and have them do it for me. Anyone else in Surry Hills in Sydney agree?
Though it hurts the wallet like to dickens (ducks and hides)
My wife will accept Lavatzza espresso grind cooked in a Mokka though she would rather have Illy. Both Lavatzza (Espresso) & Illy (almost any)do a good job of pulling bad beans out of the grind.
Every morning I pull coffee out of my fridge, grind it, dump it in my insulated French press, and pour in boiling water.
It sits for a few minutes and then I plunge it and head off to work with my morning coffee.
Excellent coffee.
Direct away from face when opening.
Drive up to the microphone thingy, and tell the coffee maker "Large triple triple, please!".
Then she's all like "That'll be a dollar thirty-nine, please advance to the window!".
And that's how I get my coffee. Mmmmmm-M!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Still sitting on the shelf while I drink a nice cold DC. I prefer my caffeine cold!
In order of preference, french press, Chemex, turkish pot.
Decaf Sumatra, Bourbon Santos, Starbucks' summer "gazebo" blend.
For mass quantities, strong chock-full-of-nuts in a Capresso Armoa Classic.
Always fresh ground. With experience you can tell when beans start to "go".
Don't put them in the freezer - the defrost cycle sucks air out of the fridge and also from the bag of beans (thanks to those equalization valves).
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
1. "Can I have a cappaccino please."
2. Pay for it.
3. ???
4. Drink it.
But that's pretty rare, I drink Tea or Hot Chocolate (Milo) 99% of the time.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Really. The best way to enjoy the true taste of coffee is to roast your own. Check out http://www.coffeeproject.com/ - they used to have a starter kit for about a hundred bucks. Even if they don't offer it any more, buy a cheap roaster and some green beans. It's worth *every* penny. You'll NEVER go to Charbucks again.
At home, I have a good espresso machine, and I use that. Starbucks sold this machine years ago; it was so good they now put their own name on it and they still sell it. Mine says "Estro Vapore" on it, but the new ones say "Starbucks Barista". Highly rated on coffeegeek.com.
b arista
- TM-p/aer01.htm
Note that other models of espresso machine have come and go, but this one has been selling for at least a decade now.
http://coffeegeek.com/reviews/consumer/starbucks_
At work, I use the AeroPress. It was invented by the same guy who invented the Aerobie flying disc toy. The Aerobie web site has various flying toys... and one coffee maker. US$30 suggested retail, quick and easy to use and clean up.
http://www.aerobie.com/Products/aeropress.htm
Here is the review that convinced me to buy one.
http://www.dansdata.com/aeropress.htm
I bought mine from a mail-order company on Whidbey Island (in Washington state) called Locals Only Coffee. They offer a deal where you can get an extra pack of filters for only $2 when you buy the press.
http://www.localsonlycoffee.com/Aerobie-AeroPress
REI also sells this now.
http://www.rei.com/product/745004
The coffee beans I use are from Caffe Appassionato. I use their house brand, "Appassionato Blend", ground fine. Even though I live in the area and could theoretically get the beans from a local grocery store, we just order the beans direct from the company by mail.
When you get the beans mail order, they come in a sealed foil pack, and I believe they replace the air inside the foil pack with nitrogen to keep the beans fresher.
I have an espresso grinder with a "doser"; so at home, I can grind just enough beans each day that I am always brewing from fresh-ground beans.
For coffee at work, I grind every few days and keep the ground coffee in a tightly sealed jar.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
First off, the fresher the better. Coffee is chock-full of volatile oils that give it that wonderful aroma and flavor. Unfortunately they breakdown over time, say, after a couple weeks. Extremely dark roasts kill most of those oils during roasting, leaving wonderful bean-shaped lumps of charcoal, although it does prolong the useful, but not as tasty, shelf life of the beans. I prefer to buy from roasters that ship same day.
I prefer using a manual lever-operated espresso machine. My main machine is a la Pavoni Europiccola. I bought mine used off eBay a while back. As they're fairly simple devices, they last forever. Replace the gaskets every few years, replace the heating element at longer intervals, and it's as good as new. My grinder is the cheap and trusty Rancilio Rocky. I use a nice Reg Barber tamper, and standard brown demitasse cups. I prefer drinking coffee the consistency of melted butter. It's easy to achieve with this combination.
I can't stress this enough. KEEP YOUR EQUIPMENT CLEAN. As mentioned earlier, coffee oils go rancid. When mixed with heat and water, that gunk clings to metal and plastic like nobody's business and will make even the best coffee taste worse than the worst coffee on a clean machine.
I just drop a buck fity on the counter at the Quicky Mart and some guy with an accent slides a cup to me with a smile and a "Tank you vedy vedy much!" Is that cool or what!
That's an excellent setup. :) Gadgets are not required.
My preferred method of making coffee is handing my AMEX card to the barista at Starbucks.
I prefer my coffee iced, if you have time to make it in advance. Booze optional, but suggested.
http://shockley.net/capnjack.asp
http://www.mv-v.com/blog/2007/05/16/internet-news/ news-brews-rss-to-coffee-machine/
My dream coffee: I rub the beans I stole from now-dead pirates in Salma Hayeks cleavage. Then add saliva and drink the results.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
naked
Most mornings, I walk into work, pour up the last of what's left from the night before, and toss it in the microwave for a minute. Then I check what the grounds in the basket look like... if they've only been used once, I'll add half a pot's worth to it and let the coffee maker do its job. If it's more than once, I'll dump those and start fresh.
It's all about the caffeine... to hell with everything else. I'd drink sewage if it were properly caffeinated.
If you are into good coffee just go to a decent cafe and buy one. In my experience, you can not get a good coffee from a coffee chain. It takes a passionate local roaster and a barista who grinds for every cup and lives for coffee. A good sign is that most people just order a shot of espresso.
The smarter home exchange, http://switchhomes.net
Have an apron-only clad french maid make it for me.
/ducks
I just shovel whatever coffee I can find into my mouth and then chew and suck on it like a wad of tobacco. No need for a mug and no need to spit.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Have you really had Kona coffee, not just the 10% crap that many sell these days? Kona has a microclimate that is just right, coupled with perfect mineral composition, leading to what I think of as "perfect" beans. Just as different weather and soil can lead to "perfect" wine making grapes. I do admit, it is what you do with the beans next that leads to the magic...
And while a cast-iron pan is a wonder for cooking damn near everything, you cannot evenly roast with it. Hell, I have two home brew coffee roasters at home. One butane, one hot air. Both makes a wide range of wonderful roasts, with noticable differences with both meathods. And I care not only about location, but size. I prize Kona because its "perfect" bean is the smallest I have ever encountered, enabling a better medium roast without undercooking, or a perfect french without burning. I have found small beans all over the world, each making a fine cuppa', but it is Kona that still makes my heart sing.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
At home nothing beats my Senseo...just add a little Douwe Egberts (from Belgium no less; I like the Dark roast) and let the coffee goodness flow.
I must say, as a software engineer, this is one of the most useful and informative Slashdot threads I've ever encountered. Definitely belongs in YRO, though ... my right to a good cup of coffee is not to be infringed.
... not something you get with your average Mr. Coffee.
... that's what popped my breaker the first time.
For my part, I have a Bunn VPR-series restaurant coffeemaker. I bought this machine about ten years ago (got sick of replacing coffeemakers every six months) and it a. makes great coffee and b. is built like a tank. Stainless steel all the way though, no plastic anywhere in the coffee path. Came with a complete maintenance and repair manual
I remember calling up a local restaurant supply house one afternoon to order it. I was going to just pick it up on a will-call, but they said that delivery was free since I was nearby. To my surprise, the president of the company showed up on at my back door the next day. He said he didn't know of any restaurants in the area and wanted to know who was buying a big Bunn! Real nice guy, brought over some of his company's best coffee to try it out with. The first attempt resulted in a nice pot of cold coffee, since it drew so much current it tripped a circuit breaker. I ended up putting in a separate branch circuit for it. In any event, he left me with several cans of their custom blend, and a three-year supply of filters! Well, I guess it wouldn't have been a three-year supply for a restaurant but that's how long the case lasted me.
I'm still using it to this very day. You do have to use it regularly though. The Bunn design has a low-powered fifty-watt heater that keeps the reservoir near brew temperature, and if you don't make a pot it will run dry after a week or so. That would probably be bad for the element. When you pour in cold water to brew some coffee, a 20A heater switches on
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I have never had coffee in my life you Insensitive Clod !!!!!
First, start with quality beans. I prefer buying green beans from http://www.sweetmarias.com/ and roasting them myself. I use a medium-sized (14-16") stainless steel bowl with a wire mesh colander inserted inside and a $20 heat gun from the local hardware store to roast (stirring constantly with a wooden spoon that's nearly worn to the nub). It takes about 15 minutes to roast a 1/2 pound batch. I prefer beans from northern Guatemala or the neraby Oaxaca region of Mexico but this is a personal preference. This is, by far, the most important thing you can do for your coffee drinking experience. There's nothing as exquisite as a cup of joe made with freshly ground beans you roasted yourself. The beans are ready to brew about 12 hours after the roast and maintain good quality for a week.
The next thing is a good burr grinder. Burr grinders, unlike the whirly blades, make for a very even grind. A good burr grinder will allow you great flexibility in setting the grind size. I use a manual burr grinder I bought from eBay for under $20 shipped. I have been tempted to attach an electric screwdriver in place of the handle but haven't done so as of yet.
Once the beans are roasted and ground, I use a device called an Aeropress to actually brew and strain the coffee. It looks sort of like an upside-down french press but brews a totally different cup than a french press (which I also use on occasion). I don't use the paper filters that came with the Aeropress opting instead for a reusable nylon filter material commonly used to filter fish tank water. I can't recall for the life of me what size filter I use but I bought two sheets and cut out a filter. I bought enough material to make about 20 filters but I've found that these things clean-up well and I'm still using the first one I cut. I brew with 200 degree water for 2 minutes and dilute with left-over hot water. The Aeropress makes the best cup of coffee I've ever had outside of a machine known as the Clover (which, makes THE BEST cup of coffee you'll EVER have). While the Clover is very difficult to find and costs many thousands of dollars, the Aeropress costs like $25. I thought the price was a bit steep for a big plastic syringe but once I made a cup with it, I realized it was worth every penny. Just ignore the crap on the box that says it's an espresso maker... It makes an incredible cup of coffee but it is NOT an espresso maker by ANY stretch of the imagination.
The best thing you can do is ensure you have the freshest quality beans possible. If you start with Folgers or similar, the rest really doesn't matter.
I also use a french press on occasion and, every now and then, a small 4-cup Krups drip machine with a swiss gold #2 cone filter.
The trick with drip machines is to make sure the water temperature is at least 195 degrees and no more than 205 degrees before it starts brewing. I achieve this with the Krups by leaving the lid open with a small plastic cup from a hotel room with a slit cut down the side to place over the brew head to make sure the heated water is recycled back into the reservoir until the target temperature is reached. I started out with a thermocouple inserted into the tank but quickly learned that the machine started sputtering water a certain way when it got up to 200 degrees. It's more work than a high-end drip machine but it isn't that hard and the machine cost me something like $15 at Bed Bath and Beyond after their 20% off coupon. If the Krups broke tomorrow I'd easily buy another of the same model. Using it as it was designed makes a mediocre cup at best, but with my method I'd put it up against a $200 temperature-controlled machine any day of the week.
But all of this is for naught unless you start with FRESH QUALITY beans. If you don't want to or can't roast yourself (it really is easy though a bit messy) find a local shop that moves a LOT of coffee and buy from them. You're better off with a freshly roasted bean that might score an 85 over a bean that scores 98 but was roasted 3 months ago.
One of these days I plan on buying a decent espresso machine but a quality machine costs $250 at the low-end and the prices go up rapidly from there.
Each person has his or her own personal styles. Experiment. Get variety packs. Freshness matters for some people -- roast within a year of picking, grind within 2 weeks of roasting, brew within 2 hours of grinding. Personally, I don't follow those at all -- I care, but not that much. Without getting into superiority contests, some people just don't care -- my mother prefers instant Folgers to anything I drink.
I prefer Green Mountain Coffee to anything else I've consumed. I've had everything my grocery stores in three states and two countries will sell me. Lately, I've preferred lighter roasting over darker roasts, with my recent favorite flavor being Green Mountain's Ethiopian organic.
I don't like the metal or plastic flavors that many coffee makers instill, so I've been enjoying a Chemex coffee maker since 2001. Simple, gravity drip. There's some science behind it that may as well be snake oil, but I really like it.
I went to a "coffee class" when I was living in Japan. The instructor swore the best way to make coffee was to drip it. You had to pour just a little bit into the ground beans, to get it to bloom. Then you could pour in slowly as long as the grounds were floating. You don't let it fill up, you certainly don't let the water get to the edge of the filter, just a slow but constant flow. Before all the water finishes dripping, you remove it from your drink. If done properly, you can see a dry ring of unused grounds around the edge of the filter. Otherwise, all the bitterness is released and flows to the coffee. I think he was crazy and he couldn't pass a double blind test.
My last coffee preference -- if you're in Japan and get coffee in a can from a vending machine, Boss makes the... least bad.
Did anyone notice that this submission is a thinly veiled attempt at an advertisement for the site that supposedly 'extols' the benefit of fresh coffee?
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
The replies here show that many prefer a drip system, which I think reveals that most Slashdotters are in the US. I think people *learn* to like coffee the way it is made where they live. Personally, I find the concept of a drip system awful. No matter how fresh the beans or how recently ground, if you have coffee that has been in contact with water for more than about 30 seconds, you get some pretty bitter products leeching out. Then the brewed coffee can sit on the warmer for half a day or more! I think the US (and to some extent German) palates have developed a taste for this bitterness. In fact, even the espresso's or cappuccino's I've had in the US seem extremely bitter and almost undrinkable to me, which I think indicates a national preference for this taste. On the other hand, the French/Italian preference of ripping out espressos in just a few seconds produces a very smooth coffee, with a good creme, that has less of the caffeine leached out, thus they can drink many of them. Then there's UK coffee, which still seems to mostly come in freeze-dried kilo sized tins ;) (great tea though!)
So, is coffee preference about taste, convenience, or nationality?
OK, this is the half-italian style, like my heritage. Get a Mokka pot, also known as a stovetop espresso pot (it isn't really espresso, more pressure percolated). The Italians in the know use the aluminum ones, the taste is better, the steel ones cost more. I use steel because I'm aluminum-shy. A 4-cup model does me two cups. Buy vacuum packed whole beans, one pound bags. Make sure they're fair-trade and shade grown, so you cup doesn't have the bitter flavour of exploitation or deforestation (hey, those birds migrate through my forest in the summer). A medium roast has more complexity, but a dark roast has that espresso flavour kick. Not too dark--or you'll get that Starbucks charred flavour with hints of unlovely burlap. Fill the pot to the level of the safety valve, no more. Grind the beans fine but not to dust. Use them immediately. Don't pack a Moka pot down firmly the way you would an espresso maker. The trick with a Moka pot is to never ever let it boil dry, take it off when it starts making the spitting sound. Best to use a medium-high setting on the stove, not maximum. When you're done, rinse the pot out right away, don't let it sit, and don't use soap. The slight residue from the oils sticks to aluminum better, thus the flavour improvement. If you're going for a cappucino or latte, you can heat milk in a small pot and use a small battery powered whisk to get a foam that's even better than steamed milk. That's it, ciao!
Damn those pesky terrorists
Step 1: Put on my shoes.
Step 2: Walk downstairs to Starbucks.
Step 3: Order coffee and pay with my employee id card.
It doesn't get any better than that.
I get green coffee beans from Sweet Maria's and roast my own once a week. I brew it one cup at a time in a french press.
Roasting and brewing certainly have a large effect on the flavor (and texture) of coffee, but no-one has yet mentioned the water they use. Too much chlorine ruins a good cup, while flat, filtered water without minerals (especially a little salt!) can turn the coffee insipid. Good tasting tap water works, but even better is good tasting spring water. See this article on Emperor Qianlong and tea water.
True that! If you're used to spending your hard-earned bucks on lightweight plastic technology thats worth nothing in three years time, go and buy a Rancilio Silvia. They are full of heavy brass for heat retention and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. I've hammered mine for years, even replaced the seals quite a few times, and I would say it makes as good coffee as any large machine in a cafe.
They do seem to have some quirky Italian-ness about them, including fairly incomprehensible instructions (and mine's got a couple of screws missing from the factory!) but thats part of the weird attraction really - like owning a ferarri or something I would imagine. There's even a hacker community - you can find web sites of people hacking them to install solid state temperature controllers.
The only downside is that it uses the same boiler for heating water and for steaming milk, so you can't them both simultaneously. No big deal for one or two cups but any more and you are standing there for quite a while.
IMO the most essential part of the whole deal is a good burr grinder - which you then need to set to just the right degree of grind. Thats easy, just make 10 or so cups of coffee until you get the coffee pouring through at just the right rate.
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
Noting that the most expensive coffee in the world is an Indonesian Blend that passes through the digestive track of a local monkey. I'd hardly call these beans "fresh".
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
AEROPRESS FTW! For all you hackers, this is the coffee gadget for you. I experimented for a good 2 weeks before I settled on a perfect brew, changing around the amount of grounds, the temperature of the water, the amount of water, the amount of stirring and steeping, the length of the press. And, to boot, you get the best coffee you've ever had, hands down. The way it brews cuts down on the bitter aftertaste, so you get nothing but coffee flavor. Of course, if you like that taste, you just brew it with hotter water. This is starting to sound like a shill, but honestly, I can't live without it.
My recipe:
2 scoops freshly ground coffee (currently I have some Hawaiian beans, and some Tasmanian Peaberry, yum!)
175degF water to the top of the 2
10 second stir
nice firm 20 second press
dilute 1:1 with water for a nice americano
little milk, little sugar, and thats what I have every morning. Delicious!
- my userid is lower than yours
Wow! So much experience here! So much information. When I get it all compiled into a short book tonight, and get it to the publisher, just email me, and I will be happy to send you a copy of my new best seller, "Making The Perfect Cup" - Oh, and if anyone wants credit in the book, for your comments and great experiences, just let me know.
=)
Regards to all,
(name withheld)
In May of '03, I received a Rancillio Silvia espresso machine and Rancillo Rocky grinder as a college graduation gift.
:)
:)
Since then, I've brewed a double shot every morning, and I eventually got good at it. It's an art, just like any other hobby, and I really love it.
I now drink the free trade / organic Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from Supreme Bean. I also drink their organic Dulce Terra Espresso and Espresso Norte, a lighter roast. If you're in Los Angeles, check 'em out... they roast the best beans in town.
Second off, it should be hot, and third off, it should be black, no sugar.
I can understand, but not relate, to the cult of coffee to this extent. I've had awful coffee, and gotten used to it, purely out of necessity (having to work overnights and go to school during the day), so perhaps my standards are much lower than average.
Still, I know good coffee from bad, and this is what an admittedly dogged-palate person does:
one can Lavazza Espresso or Medaglio D'Oro or El Pico (espressos only)
one drip coffee maker, Krupps, permanent filter, carafe (so once brewed, no add'l heat)
filtered water
I drink it with no sugar, no milk, nothing. If it can't stand on its own, it isn't worth drinking. Anything else is dessert.
-BA
If there's no water nearby, I simply skip step 2.
-- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
I have ordered Peet's Major Dickason's Blend ( my personal favorite) on line and tried ordering it via express shipment for an extra $10 or so. The vacuum sealed bag came with a date stamp less than 48 hours old and the coffee was noticeably tastier than a similar package purchased at the grocery store. This is a pretty easy experiment you can try at home. I have started to feel that any of the drip coffee's I try at home don't hold up to a good vacuum press espresso machine...but can't quite bring myself to justify $2K or more for big lump of chrome in my kitchen.
I roast green beans in a FreshRoast+8 every two or three days to get the maximum freshness. It takes about 15 minutes to roast enough for 10-12 cups, or about 2-3 days worth for me. SweetMaria's has the best green beans that I've found so far. As far as a favorite bean, I lean toward the Yemen Mokha, but this is really up to your personal taste.
Grind the beans in a good burr grinder, if you can, but a cheap blade grinder will work if you are using a drip maker. The exception to this is if you are going to make espresso, where the grind is of critical importance. If you are grinding for espresso, beprepared to spend from $200 to $450 for a decent grinder. CoffeeGeek has some great reviews of the different grinders.
Press pots are good, but you have to really like gritty coffee, as the screen is not fine enough to filter the coffee 'dust' in all ground coffee. An improvement on the press pot is the Aerobie AeroPress, in which the coffee is forced through a paper filter.
By far, the most important part of good coffee is a good, well-roasted, extremely fresh bean.
While I will admit that the "kona blend" or other such kona mixes are not anything special, true, fresh 100% pure kona is very, VERY hard to beat. The stuff you see in the stores in the USA or anywhere for that matter are not fresh. It spent a month on a boat getting to where it is, and in many cases more then a month on the boat. The good stuff needs to be bought direct in Hawaii. How do I know this? Because my work regulary sends people to Hawaii and usually we have them bring back a few pounds of the good stuff direct. Freshness matters with coffee. Even more so with kona in my opinion. It loses a lot of flavor when it is old.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Ethiopian Harrar is definitely my favorite bean so far. Harrar is a "dry process" coffee. I don't know why wet processed coffee has such a different flavor-- suffice it to say, Harrar has an extraordinarily full flavor and really intense, earthy aroma. My brother belongs to a local coffee roasting club, and we trade off each month's allotment, since it would just be too much coffee for the one of us alone. Harrar is by far my favorite.
I keep my beans in the freezer, in airtight packaging (although not the nitrogen-flushed foil packaging I keep my hops in; yes, I grow my own hops; and yes, I am crazy). I assume that the flavor components of coffee beans break down much like lupulin's assorted flavor components do in hops; that is, faster in the presence of warmth and oxygen. I keep thinking that maybe there's a book out there like this, that would explain the breakdown rates, ideal temperatures for brewing, brewing chemistry and so on, only for coffee. There probaby is, but I'm too lazy to look for it.
I have never felt the need to plunk down the change for a burr grinder (I've already spent way too much on grinders for barley, to fuel the other hobby that relaxes me after all the coffee), but I've been able to get a consistent grind with a spice mill and some careful shaking and pulsing of the grinder. Of course, I might simply not know what I'm missing.
In my opinion, the most intense flavor (for a regular cup of coffee) can be had with French press or something similar, assuming you don't mind coffee grinds in your cup. But I'm relatively happy with my electric percolator. I found that the Mr. Coffee automatic drip that I used before this produced somewhat uninteresting coffee. The difference is probably the temperature of the water-- a percolator tends to boil the coffee a bit more, and thus add some acidity. Fortunately, I tend to stick to lower-acid, darker roasts. But the acidity probably accounts for the "interestingness" of the flavor. My brother keeps telling me that the coffee should also taste more tannic with a perc (which you would mostly taste as bitterness), but I don't detect it. He's right, of course-- as a homebrewer I've learned (the hard way) that tannins are more soluble in boiling water than in cooler water, but perhaps there aren't enough tannins in the coffee beans I buy to make a difference. Or maybe I just can't taste them.
Anyway, I have a modest setup, but it is of course, all about the beans. Yes, fresh beans do make a difference. If you don't believe me, find a place that roasts its own coffee (or roast it yourself), and give it a try. Some people don't seem to care either way, and of course, your own brewing tastes are highly subjective. My girlfriend's parents are completely happy with Maxwell House, despite me having introduced them to some of my favorite fresh beans. YMMV.
This "coffee" that you're discussing: it that anything like the brown/black stuff in the big pots in the mess hall? Can't say that I really care for that stuff. ;-)
I love the Mr. Coffee Simple Brew. It's a single cup pressure brew machine that works like the pod machines except it uses regular ground coffee instead of pods, although it can optionally use pods.
I love my coffee. Roast my own, as apparently many others here do. Yay us.
My favorite is Aged Sumatran. Three years old, kept in controlled humidity during that time. The age produces an extremely low acidity, and a mustiness (almost composty) that I love. Only problem is my wife hates it. We just went through some Mexican Chiapas which was very chocolately and rich.
The roast is important, I prefer lighter roasts. More of the varietal flavor remains, and it has a higher caffeine content. Heat, you know.
Espresso is my first choice of brew. One cup at a time, and I can experiment with blends efficiently. French Press is second - the body of a french press is ideal.
Filtered drip coffee has fewer of the good oils that are in unfiltered coffee, and much less of the really fine particulate matter. The difference between the two is like the difference between heroin and a poppy seed muffin.
That said, your grinder probably matters more than your beans, up to a certain threshold of freshness. As has been said before, burr grinders do a better job than whirling blades. This isn't just a "bean heating" issue, though, especially if you brew in a Moka. The more even grind from a good burr grinder allows the pressure under the grounds to build up better, without weak spots for the steam to escape through before it's really ready.
Although I do enjoy a coffee made with fresh ground beans, in a French press, black, no sugar, no cream, I have found something else that I like. Mix instant coffee with milk, Mix with Hand blender for a couple minutes. Makes a great cold coffee drink at a fraction of the cost of what they'd charge you for something similar at Starbucks or Tim Hortons.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
three words: "Craigslist Casual Encounters"
Assuming quality, freshly roasted beans, the grinder matters far more than the method of brewing. You must throw away your cheap blade grinder and get a quality (50USD or so) burr mill grinder. Burr mill grinders ensure a consistent particle size, whereas blade grinders have extremely varied grind.
If you want to really get into coffee, coffeegeek.com is the place.
I'm not affiliated with them at all, not even as a customer. I ran into that site when it came up as a Google ad; so I guess their Google ad dollars paid off in a way. However- their pitch was very vague, without details of flavor decomposition like some folks posted above, without distinction between pre-ground and whole beans, and yet their product seemed way overpriced. (I currently buy from coffeebeandirect.com, which seem reasonably priced and quick). Therefore, that was a dig at their site, not praise.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
I have a long and illustrious history of caffeine addiction. It did not help that both my family and my godfather's family owned coffee plantations (I was born and raised in Puerto Rico). I was drinking coffee by the time I was 6.
I think the worst was the $7/day Starbucks habit during my dot com years. Company went down, I had to find a job elsewhere and instead of having a Starbucks across the street, I found myself in the one lousy spot in Arlington, VA where you actually have to walk a 1/4 mile to find a Starbucks. Right around that time I found out I was lactose intolerant, which completely ruined the cappuccino magic for me, lactase be damned.
I started buying drip coffee from places closer to the office, but I was never happy. None of these people mastered the concept of consistency.
Right around that time pod coffee started becoming popular. I asked the wife to get me a machine so I could take a shot at it. I had already found non dairy liquid creamers that I really liked, so I was out of cappuccino withdrawal.
When we got the machine I experimented a lot. I stupidly assumed that the most expensive pods would taste better. Wrong.
The more I paid for a pack of pods, the worse it tasted. They either tasted burned out, or the extra flavoring was too strong while the coffee part was weak. Then I decided to try in the opposite direction: check the cheaper stuff.
Lucky me, I found Senseo Douwe Egberts Dark Roast pods (Amazon B0001ES9FI). Taking into account that I would not be wasting coffee like when I was using drip makers, the price per dosage was in the order of 25 cents a cup instead of $2 or worse. Small problem: finding them.
My wife works at Target, so whenever that specific kind of pod arrives, she tries to buy me as much as she can. If I am almost out of pods and there are none at the local Target we have to check all over county. When I found them at Amazon the price was literally identical, plus shipping was free. Now I buy my monthly supply in one shot.
Now, there's nothing spectacular about these pods. They taste strong but not burned. The machine makes sure that each cup is very consistent, which is all I want. On top of that, there's nothing to clean, just discard the used pod and rinse the holder with some cold water. There is also no waste like with drip machines, since you brew up to two cups at a time and that's it.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
At the office we use Costa Rican La Minita (50% full city / 50% french roast) in the espresso machine. I use 100% full city at home for the drip machine.
If you are looking for a new drip machine, get one that has a thermos carafe and doesn't have a hot plate. If you let coffee sit in the machine on a hot plate you might as well not bother with a second cup.
boil water in a pot, turn off heat, wait 5 seconds to obtain optimal temp(86 degrees celsius), add ground coffee, stir. then filter. I like my coffee the way they drinkit in Brazil(I lived there 3 years) nice and stong with nothing but a little sugar. This way gets the most out of the grounds. I recomend Pilao coffee if you can find it, its a great brazilian brand.
Excellent and informative post about roasting coffee, but I absolutely disagree with you about the taste of Blue Mountain coffee. Where did you have Blue Mountain coffee, and how was it prepared? Was it a blend of seconds from different plantations, as is typically the case with the crap that's usually exported under the Blue Mountain cachet? "Blue Mountain" only refers to coffee grown in designated regions of the Blue Mountains, between 3,000 and 5,500 feet, and YMMV. I'm sure that you wouldn't be surprised to discover that some absolute rubbish beans qualify for the Blue Mountain name.
For some reason, about 95% of the Blue Mountain coffee crop winds up in Japan, and my brother was taken aback on a trip to Tokyo to find chilled cans of the stuff available from vending machines. Japanese buyers pay top dollar for the entire crops from select plantations sight unseen, and the second rate stuff, usually from the plethora of rural folk with some plants growing behind their houses, finds its way to the rest of the world at ridiculous prices. I should add that the interior of Jamaica is very hilly, and many, many homeowners will casually keep a couple coffee plants in their yards in the same way that many North Americans or Europeans will keep a kitchen garden, and expecting them to produce top-class beans is like expecting Mrs. Smith down the block to produce export-quality squash. But hey, they live in the designated growing areas, so they're technically growers of Blue Mountain Coffee(TM). I actually have a few plants in my yard and the coffee is pretty damned good, but since I live at about 2,000 feet above sea level and nowhere the Blue Mountains, it qualifies as "Jamaica High Mountain". Compared to the top quality beans, what is typically available in North America or Europe is an embarrassment to the Blue Mountain name, and I sincerely hope that your experience with Blue Mountain wasn't tainted by an encounter with this second-rate battery acid. I've had Kona, and Colombian, and they don't compare to top-class Blue Mountain.
I drink Blue Mountain coffee every morning, one of the perks [sorry!] of living in Jamaica (my user name is how locals fondly refer to our blessed, cursed homeland, "Jamrock" or "The Rock"). I am fortunate enough to be able to get the green beans of Blue Mountain coffee and I roast them exactly as stated in your excellent post, and grind them myself. I like a robust coffee, so I prefer a fine-ground dark roast, and I despise drip makers, because the water doesn't get hot enough. My favorite preparation method is the Moka Express, a much-battered example of which resides permanently on my stove. Best coffee maker EVAR. Blue Mountain generally has a mild flavor (certainly not "weak" or "insipid"), but it's anything but mild how I prepare it.
That being said, the very best coffee I've ever had wasn't Blue Mountain. It came from the farm of a friend of mine who lives about 20 miles away and 1,000 feet higher up than I do. He used to keep a couple acres of coffee for his personal use, and once in a blue moon he'd generously bestow a few pounds of green beans on each of his friends. Much to my horror, he eventually got sick of locals stripping his plants at night, and decided it was better for his blood pressure to cut them down and remove the temptation, rather than camp out with his shotgun and get himself into serious trouble.
It's always been somewhat interesting to me that the soil and climate of the hilly interior of Jamaica are so conducive to top quality specialty crops. The coffee of course, but Jamaican ginger also enjoys a global reputation for it's strong, sharp flavor. And not to mention the Indica variety of ganja, which has an unusual minty scent and highly aromatic smoke. Or so I've been told....
The first cup of coffe does not have to taste good.
I only has to WORK.
tph
On Point had a fun little radio show about coffee recently.3 _b_main.asp
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/04/2007041
Invest in a good burr grinder and espresso machine. A good pair to start with are Rancilio's Rocky grinder and Silvia espresso machine. For espresso beans, I like a lighter roast. A full city roast. A favorite of mine is Coffee Emergency's Code Brown. Plenty of crema and highly versatile espresso. Light enough to swig standalone or dilute in an Americano yet sharp enough to cut through milk in a latte or au lait. For a regular cup of joe, try any of their African origins namely the Yemen Mohkas or Ethiopians. *goes to pull a shot*
Great blog btw---Dethroner. At any rate, they did a week where they talked about coffee and all the associated bits of coffee (grinds, roasting, brewing) and I was tempted to take up drinking it after having been so well educated on the subject.
"My fingers Emit sparks of fire in Expectation of my future labours." William Blake
Dust is a result of a poor quality grinder. I get no dust with my Simonelli grinder.
For home brewing my favorite is a french press or making an Americano. At work I use a drip with gold filter for ease of cleaning and a vacuum pot to keep it warm.
For beans I like Bean Central. Nitrogen packed beans at less than most places, free shipping on $50 orders.
The Malabar Gold is amazing for Espresso and the Ethiopian Yrgacheffe is devine for drip. Both for less than $10 a pound.
At work the guys gave me a mug that says "Jimmy" (a vendor mug they stuck a sticker on!) on it for my coffee brewing skills.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I grind up a 50/50 mix of dark roast and light roast... and mix in some ground cinnamon and cloves... and let it drip. Tastes really good.
Most mornings: Cafe Americano
Grind beans roast day-or-two earlier
Espresso Americano made in one minute
Noon: Vietnamese Cafe Sua Da (Iced coffee with Sweetened Condensed Milk)
We use a shot of espresso and one heaping tablespoon of sweetened condensed milk
stir and fill with ice.
Night: Never. Our cut off time for coffee is 1:30pm, if we want to sleep that night.
EQUIPMENT and Micro-Review:
Kitchen Aid (Gaggia OEM) Pump Espresso maker $700 (comes with 2 year replacement at warranty, and their cost for shipping). No Problems works well for the home.
Works nicely for over 9 months so far
Gaggia MDF Grinder - $250
Keeps working - low maintenance
I-Roast-2 Coffee Roaster - $168
Excellent Job! takes a few roast to get right - bad user interface
Green beans (not-roasted) from coffebeandirect.com:
6-Bean Espresso Blend - Just order another 50 pounds ($4.15/Pound)
This is an excellent blend for an espresso americano.
We have a timer on the Espresso Maker. It is warmed up by the time we get up, and shuts off after lunch.
1) Hills Bros Columbian ($5 for 2 pounds)
2) Two To Go drip by Cuisanart ($10 shipped from FatWallet)
Coffee is top notch!!!!!!
- properly roasted
there is not a better coffee, freshly ground and French pressed of course. My latest find is at Trader Joes, theirs is roasted dark enough unlike a lot of what I've found.[sorry I always forget to check the post preview :P]
t m
;)
Very competent overview on the italian moka style. =)
If you're interested in it here's a spot on tutorial with pro tips and some "classy" touches:
http://www.caffeina.org/caffe/inglese/casamadre.h
some hilights:
- avoid pressing the powder with the spoon at all. just fill the filter a make a dome in the middle
http://www.caffeina.org/caffe/inglese/08.htm
http://www.caffeina.org/caffe/inglese/09.htm
- the stove goes at the minimum setting
http://www.caffeina.org/caffe/inglese/11.htm
- stir the coffee in the pot before pouring
http://www.caffeina.org/caffe/inglese/13.htm
- prewarm the cups
http://www.caffeina.org/caffe/inglese/05.htm
- if you like sugar in the coffee, just make the delicious "cremina"! It's very simple, it takes just a minute but the outcome is surprising, you'll get a smooth cream on top of your coffe cup like the best cafeteria espresso
http://www.caffeina.org/caffe/inglese/17.htm
Buona degustazione =)
My 2 cents -
I've been roasting my own coffee for about a year now. Sweet Maria's sells a variety of excellent single sourced green coffee beans in the vicinity of $6/lb by the time you add in shipping. This works out to about the same as consumer grade roasted whole bean coffee (I like Peets) when you figure you lose about 15% of the mass in the roasting process.
I still haven't purchased a roasting machine. I use a Look brand skillet - heavy alumininum clad base for even high temps and a clear lid. I used to use a thermometer to measure the internal temp - now I pretty much know what setting my stove should be on to preheat the pan and just throw the beans in and shake vigorously for 5 minutes or so, then toss in a colander for a minute to cool and de-chaff. I definitely can appreciate the level of coffee I'm getting even with a crude roasting process - drinking fresh stuff is no comparison to month old pre-ground starbucks from somebody's freezer...
The other thing I insist on is brewing just enough. I have a Swiss Gold (~$10) single cup drip filter and now an Aeropress ($25 on amazon.com). Both methods make excellent coffee in small batches - I make up to 4 cups with the Aeropress and put it in my Nissan thermos. This is almost infinitely superior to most office coffee that is made in a cheap drip pot and left to cook for hours! This (to my taste buds and stomach) always leaves an acidic feel to the coffee, even if originally it was pretty good.
The kind of cool thing about coffee (for geeks) is that it's very susceptible to tinkering. Use a pour through drip filter or a chemex and you can precisely monitor the water temp. Roast yourself and learn to tell by smell and color what degree of roast you're getting (and follow instructions on Sweet Maria's site to use an old popcorn popper as your roaster). All this is fun, doesn't cost ridiculous amounts of money, and results in discernibly better coffee (I always get lots of compliments on mine at least...)
http://metapundit.net
I started on whole bean Starbuck's, but now I've found I like the Arbor Day whole bean coffee better. I had previously been grinding about a week's worth of beans into an old coffee can (how's that for almost-pun) and keeping it in the freezer. I recently got a pot with a brew-time grinder. I don't think the difference in grind-to-brew time has made any discernible difference to me (since I kept the week's grounds frozen), but it is more convenient to just drop the beans into the filter cup and go.
I will point out, however, that the biggest taste difference I've noticed recently is due to my switch from a Bunn (keeps water warm in its own tank, ready for brewing) to his grinding drip pot. I can actually taste some small amount of scorching of the water in this new pot, and once discovered, it's now hard to ignore when I drink coffee from others' pots that are also drip.
So, my recommendation for best coffee taste is whole bean Arbor Day coffee, ground just before you brew, in a pot that keeps its own hot water ready. That way you get the freshest coffee taste without being offset by heated-too-quick water.
Let me introduce you to my very own DMCA-protected encryption key: BC 1B 64 4A 8D DE 49 E8 C3 7D CC EE 1A AD EE
Gaggia Factory 8 Cup -- manual espresso machine-- I use Whole Foods Organic French Roast usually-- sometimes when I buy the beans they are still warm from the roaster-- which I grind as needed with a burr grinder.
Coffee tastes so much better after all that struggle.
When you add things to your coffee, you're adding a layer of complexity. It is much simpler to just pour the fluid in your mug, and walk away. Why have to bother with two seperate additives, and *then* have to stir it with something. Besides, that chalk-dust stuff at the office makes it all lumpy, yecch.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
For everyday coffee, I use a Bunn coffee maker. It works very well for a drip machine; perfect brewing temperature and it makes a full pot in 3 minutes flat. Avoid those misbegotten coffee makers that use the heat of the warming plate to perk water through the grounds - they run too hot and really can't make good coffee. There's also some specialty coffee making devices that make a better pot of coffee, but I'd rather not deal with a French press first thing in the morning. Another key to good coffee is the water; if your tap water is pure and sweet then use it. Otherwise, bottled or filtered water are good to use.
I also have a pump espresso machine which gets used for special occasions or fancy drinks.
For those who are reading along and don't understand why the fancy machinery and procedures are necessary - you've probably never had good coffee. If you think the coffee that your local big chain coffee shop sells is good, you are in for a treat when you get the real thing. That coffee company figured out years ago that if you buy mediocre beans and roast them until they smoke you can get a uniform product. If all you've known is ground coffee in cans then this chain coffee is an improvement - but after you've tasted good coffee you'll realize that the stuff at that coffee shop tastes burnt. And once you're "spoiled" you'll discover that that canned ground coffee tastes just like a burning tire smells.
One other tip: good coffee comes from Arabica beans. Robusta beans taste lousy. Grocery store canned coffee comes from Robusta beans.
I found that nothing beats roasting the coffee yourself. Not only do you learn what combination of beans / roasting level you like best, but it is actually cheaper. Check out Sweet Marias (http://www.sweetmarias.com/) if you want to get started. It is really easy.
slashdot must really have nothing better to post... this doesn't even belong on this site, nevermind the front page.
for the record, coffee sucks.
This is a discussion about high quality coffee and a lot of the incredibly well informed people cannot seem to know the difference between the District of Columbia and the country of Colombia. Those coffee beans? They aren't made in the Senate! They are made in South America.
So its Colombian Coffee folks. I don't call your country Amerika.
My normal routine is French press for coffee in the morning, and a shot from my Bialetti Brikka when I need a boost in the afternoon.
I get organic beans from Just Coffee, which is a cooperative in Mexico. It costs the same as coffee I'd buy locally ($8/lb plus shipping), except all of the profits go directly to the farmers, because they're vertically integrated: they grow, roast, and sell the beans themselves. This is even better for the farmers than fair trade which, last time I checked, still only pays the farmers on the order of $1.50 or so a pound.
Grind up some fresh Ugandan coffee beans into espresso-grade grounds. Add ~2 tablespoons of espresso-grade grounds into espresso maker. 4-cups worth of water into water chamber. Brew straight into medium size coffee mug. Coffee and mug will be extremely hot. I keep the espresso machine (it's a small, four-cup tank) and coffee mill on my file cabinet in the office. Works for me. Cheers!
Hit up a coffee shop that has the Clover brewer, preferably one with the Web interface:e fits.aspx
http://cloverequipment.com/whyclover/features_ben
More nuanced than a French press, with all the automation of an espresso machine, and the chance to use new, fresh beans with every cup.
I don't drink coffee, I drink Mello Yello/Mt Dew/Vault
You insensitive clod
French press, vacuum pump, euro (simmered). It's really a matter of personal taste. I know what I like, but there's no need to turn your nose up at other people's coffees with the usual "oh, that's the wrong way to drink it". Same with Tea - preparation techniques have evolved over 2000 years, so when somebody tells me I'm not drinking mine the "traditional" way I generally point out that the very early methods of tea preparation included things like onions and salt (yum - no thanks) :(
I buy beans from a local roaster. They're either single estate and have the roasting date stamped on them or a blend. Find a local roaster and try them out. The best way to test their coffee making ability (on a vacuum machine) is to ask for a ristretto and a piccollo latte of the same coffee, so you can try it with and without milk. For a cheap but strong brew up maybe try a Vev Viggano stove top espresso - although they do tend to burn the coffee easily. If you're going to use beans then get a burr grinder if possible. The Gaggia ones are a resonable buy, but a mini Mazzer is the best.
If you're going to buy a vacuum pump machine then I recommend you think about the economics - they generally never break even unless you buy a cheap one.
Machines I like are:
IsoMac (Milan)
LaMarzocco (Firenze)
Olympia Cremina (Swiss?)
Almost entirely metal - not many electronics, they're all hand made in Europe, great track records
But they're all about $1500-6000. At 2 coffees a day they will take 5 years to reach a cost:good benefit ratio of 1:1, so maybe it's a smarter option if you're outfitting an office that buys >10 coffees a day. The cheaper machines may seem like a better deal because they pay off faster - but keep in mind that a lot of them *won't last that long*. A Saeco or Gaggia has a lot of plastic parts and electronics - and probably a thermoblock boiler (what's up with that? it's in the feature list like it a good thing?) How long is the warranty? 1 year? 6 months? (2 x 3.00 x 365 = >2000) so it takes... less than 6 months I guess.
Last tip then, before you buy, get the model name and number and ring an independent service centre - tell them your ***** machine needs a service and ask how much it will cost (probably won't get a lot of change from $300) Just so you know what you're in for when it does break.
Kopi Luwak is coffee made by palm civets (furry little Indosian mammals) by eating the coffee berries and pooping out the undigested beans. The beans are collected by the locals and then sold after being washed. This coffee can sell for up to $600/lb, according to wikipedia. Personally I can do without this stuff, no matter how good it is supposed to taste. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak
Thank you! good links, I'll have to try the phony crema technique.
I, too, failed with the line breaks...
Damn those pesky terrorists
Personally, I like an extremely mild roast brewed very strong. Often in pressure equipment, 1 volume ground coffee to 4 water.
I've been told up and down how percolation is the worst way to make coffee and I don't get it. It's always my favourite.
--- Do you believe in the day?
I found out myself that roasted beans get worse and loose their unique flavor after 2 weeks of storage, no matter what kind of container I had.
:P
So I started buying green beans and roasting around weeks worth of beans at one go (that's around 2-4dl of greens for me). The green beans store wonderfully, I had no difference in taste after storing them for many many months.
Roasting is of course important, if you have high-quality beans I usually recommend very light roast to keep the flavor, excessive roasting is used to get rid of the beans own flavor. Very light means stop roasting almost immediately after they pop their skin.
Then comes the grinding, I used a real mill (bladed ones give you omnigrind, which basically sucks for espresso, might work for drip). The output varies according to the time of year and the humidity, I usually had 4-5 different settings in my mind which pretty much followed the seasonal changes. You could almost measure the average air humidity from the grind output
Worked pretty well for me, I usually mixed Jamaican Blue (lightly roasted) with Columbian prime (a bit darker) 50/50 to get the best results.
I used to live in a same block as most of the city's 'exclusive' coffee shops were. My friends constantly judged my espresso and variants way better than these professional shops (I of course took good care of my equipment, cleaning them every time after making espresso and so on...).
The water where I live is quite hard and chlorinated. It's nearly impossible to make a good pot with it, and any brewing device is clogged with scale in a matter of weeks. Even if you don't have this sort of problem I highly recommend using filtered water (read: Brita or equivalent) in your new coffee maker. With it, even the cheap commercial whole bean coffees are decent enough when the funds are low. A fresh ground pot from the local roaster is pretty nice. :)
Once that nasty scale taste gets in the machine it's hard to eradicate it. You may be able to salvage an old coffee maker with lots of TLC and vinegar water. I've had success with running diluted bathroom scale remover (suggested on the label, actually) then lots of cycles of fresh clean water but that's nasty, nevermore.
Bottom line: no minerals, no chlorine, pH neutral water is your best bet.
The internet archive includes a couple of useful videos:
... they are foul, and bad for you.
This one on roasting coffee: http://www.archive.org/details/RoastingCoffee
And this one (a classic!), called "This is Coffee!", on making coffee: http://www.archive.org/details/ThisisCo1961 - from the Coffee Brewing Institute if I remember correctly. Definitely worth watching, even if just for the soundtrack, the cool retro coffee gear, and to boggle at the cigarette smoking involved (vid dates from 1961). This vid doesn't recommend any particular method, but it stresses using actual coffee (as opposed to "instant coffee" I suppose), and using fresh water, with clean equipment. All good advice, to which I would add:
Don't store a big stash of coffee for a long time - buy enough to last you a week or two at a time.
Use freshly roasted beans (roasted at home, or from a local roaster).
Use freshly ground beans (grind them yourself, as you need them, or at least get them ground when you buy them, don't ever buy coffee that's been pre-ground).
Keep the coffee in a cool place, in an air-tight container.
Storing coffee in the fridge is not ideal because when you open the container, warm moisture will get in, and when the container goes back in the fridge, the moisture will condense. This will cause your coffee to soak up moisture.
Experiment with different beans and roasts, and write down your experience, so that you get to know what you prefer. Everyone is different.
Avoid ultra-dark roasts
Personally I like brewed ("Turkish") coffee, but it's a bit of a health hazard if you drink it that way a lot.
My favourite is espresso, with scalded milk ("flat white"). At home I have a stove-top espresso machine. Pump-driven ones are better, in general, but to get a reasonable quality one is quite expensive. The cheap ones make rubbish coffee.
Seriously they're the biggest chain in the USA and they can't produce anything that tastes better then Folgers. Nasty burnt shit for $5 a cup.
No thanks.
I remember when Starbucks signed a contract for a bunch of crappy robusta from India. (redundant I know)
They wanted to keep it quite. But the Indians were crowing about their sale all over the media. Thought they had arrived as a coffee source, didn't realize it was just a ripoff chain selling crap to people who thing price==quality.
Personally I like a Brazil press (like a french press, but microwaveable, just put the water in the press, 3 minute ding, add fresh grounds) made with just off boiling water, steeped for five minutes (I like it a little bitter).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A bit higher end, I have the Saeco Superautomatica Vienna Deluxe, which grinds the beans, makes the coffee, and then dumps the grinds, all with a single push of a button.(well two, if you count turning on the machine as one button press.) It is designed more for expresso or cappucino, but will make a full cup of coffee too. I use very fresh roasted decaf french beans. I'll buy different roasts if the other beans are still warm when I pick them up. Freshness is an amazingly important thing, probably more important than most other factors. While there is a difference in a few degrees of temperature, most ordinary folks don't care that much. I use filtered water, more to keep the coffeemaker from getting chemical buildup, but it does make for a slightly better taste here. I'd imagine that varies with the quality of your water.
Fresh ground is a must, beans do not age well, grounds age worse (increased surface area exposed to the air)
/in/ Jamaica, and can't find Old Tavern, buy the High Mountain (1/2 the price, 3/4+ the quality of JBM). (Disclaimer: I lived in Jamaica for 2 years and am a coffee snob)
I prefer the press method. Metal meshes don't strain out the natural oils in coffee the way that paper filters do, so you end up with a smoother tasting cup - this only matters tho if your beans are good to begin with.
The beans themselves, and the roasting darkness, are largely a matter of taste. I like Jamaican Blue Mountain (though most of what you find in the stores is a total rip-off; order the Old Tavern Estate from the internets, you'll be glad you did - if you're
I also like Kenyan AA, Tanzanian peaberry (almost any peaberry coffee will have a better taste than otherwise), and Kona. Those crazy kids at defcon have a blind taste-test (CoffeeWars.org, another disclaimer, I'm a founding member), and Kona and JBM generally take the top slots. Nicaraguan coffees are a new possible contender for a decent cup of Joe, and Mexican Altura - it ain't the best, but damn it's cheap!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I can tell you right now that the Black Cat Blend from Intelligentsia Coffee is one of the best normally available beans in the country. It made its name as an espresso bean, and is balanced enough to kick ass in regular drip & french press. Intelligentsia is a great company all around. I have been buying from them for the cigar shop I work at for over four years. If you want to get your brains worth, check out coffeegeek.com and home-barista.com. If you are looking to improve your coffee experience - fresh, properly roasted beans is a must, of course. But as for hardware, I say get yourself a good burr grinder = NO BLADES! A consistent grind will improve any method of coffee making every time out.
>What is your preferred coffee-making method, and how does it compare to other methods you've tried?
R OD&ProdID=1524
I really don't get what's so great about ground coffee. It tastes like dirt to me.
I prefer instant coffee. My favourite is Korean - it's English name of Maxim :
http://www.kgrocer.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWP
Max.
I'm ready for my mocha! Not to much whip cream today, huh?
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
this is the simplest and best coffee maker I have found, all you need is some decent beans, not world class just good ones, and with the aeropress the water is in such short contact with the beans you get almost no bitterness. If you want some bitterness, just let it steep a little more,
:)
it also impresses the ladies
"I drank what?" - Socrates
1) 1 tablespoon of coffee grounds (use ones that have been brewed or percolated) per quart of water. Mix the grounds and water together.
2) You will probably want to use a bag with a larger nozzle (so the grounds can pass through easily).
3) You will also want to shake the mixture before administering.
4) Find a good position. Make sure you are comfortable and can relax. Be sure you can clean up if a problem is to occur.
5) Lubricate your anus. You might want a partner to massage some lubricant inside your anus and rectum. This will help when the nozzle is inserted. You will want your anus to admit the nozzle so that you can relax.
6) As the nozzle is inserted, relax as it passes your sphincter. You might want to take a couple of deep breaths as it passes.
7) Relax, as your partner turns on the flow. Mentally picture yourself receiving it. A good partner will slow the flow if you experience any gripping. You may end up making a mess if you panic. Instead, try to relax, everything will be fine. If cramps come (and they probably will during your first enema) have your partner stop the flow, breath deep, and try massaging your stomach area.
8) If you feel the need to evacuate, ask your partner to stop the flow. Relax, the desire will pass as your colon relaxes.
9) You might feel your stomach expanding. Let it. Try to hold the enema for a few minutes.
10) When it is time to evacuate, take yourself (with the tube still in place) to the lavatory. Wait until you are in a position to evacuate before you remove the tube.
11) After you evacuate, take a deep breath and feel your lightness.
Oh, you wanted coffee to DRINK!!!!
Yeah, I won't drink that
- Buy green (unroasted) coffee beans (see SweetMarias.com). They stay fresh for at least a year until roasted. Yirgacheffe is my favorite.
- Roast them yourself with a popcorn popper. Since you're using quality coffee, you can roast much lighter than Charbucks.
- Grind the beans coarse with a burr grinder right before brewing.
- Brew one mug at a time using a french press. There's no filter to strip out the "body" of the coffee. It's rich and sweet, but not bitter.
I've been doing this since 2002. The only disadvantage is that every coffee you drink in cafés and restaurants tastes like junk after you get spoiled with this.Josh Woodward
1) Fresh Beans (although, coffee fool is more about selling their own product and use many interesting, unique ways of advertising it... like posting to news sites questions);
... or, if you like that dark taste.. the other method is:
2) Any normal, unflavored roast (aka no additatives);
3) put whole beans in pan
3) pour hot water over beans, wait 20 seconds;
4) pour water off;
5) pour hot water, just under-boiling onto beans;
6) 3 to 10 minutes depending on the roast (and your preference);
7) pour water into glass;
8) drink.
It has a very unique character and results in a nearly clear coffee brew.
You can also get fresh, unroasted beans, roast them just enough to start cooking the oils in the pan, then do this.
1) grind beans into powder
2) put beans in pan
3) fill pan with water
4) bring to a boil
5) boil for 0 seconds to 1 minute
6) turn off heat, let pan sit for 5 to 10 minutes (to let bean powder settle)
7) pour off slowly, so you do not get any grounds in your cup
8) enjoy.
it's an aerobie areo press. Beats the pants off of a standard french press.
1) faster (15 seconds) cause you can use a finer grind than a standard french press
2) tastier lower temp brew (because it's faster, water does not need to be as hot initially)
3) 2 second self cleaning. it's a syringe that ejects the filter and squeegies out the coffee grounds
4) no cords. it's plastic and you can heat it right in the microwave.
5) makes stronger coffee than a standard french press since you can use less water and a finer grind.
the self cleaning aspect makes it office friendly. The lower temp brew saves time since you don't have to heat water if you have one of those hot water taps on your bottled water dispensors or sink at the office.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I'm Italian, I Mokona. High pressure, 7grams of ground coffee to make a creamy espresso, add milk and a steam wand for a good capuccino.
| Status: MacGeek Pro | Religion: iGnosticism | Zodiac: Apple
maybe i'm missing something but why is this on slashdot??
- Pour beans into an old dirty sock
- Smash sock with a boot or other heavy object
- Dump grounds and sock into a percolator
- Place percolator over fire
The best part is the older the sock the stronger the flavor, and the sock also serves as a filter saving money in the process.Try using other camper's socks for new and interesting flavors.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
... just like every good Canadian. Ah, Timmy's -- makes Starbucks taste like dishwater by comparison!
licet differant, aequabitur
I'm a bit of a coffee fanatic and spent a great deal of time learning about coffee, roasting, brewing, and how to get the best possible cup. I'll try to sum up what I've learned.
About 30% of a coffee bean is water soluble. 70% are solids which wont dissolve no matter how long you leave them in water. Of the soluble portion, 2/3rds (20% of the bean) yield flavors that most people would find desirable. 1/3 (10% of the bean) yields flavors which are bitter and not as desirable. Caffeine is bitter. "some" is good... too much isn't so good.
Forunately if the temperature, pressure, grind, and timing of the extraction are all correct then the desirable components will dissolve faster and the less desirable flavors will dissolve last. This means that if you cut-off the extraction process at the right time, you can get most of the good stuff and leave the bad stuff behind. The trick is in getting the extraction correct.
Turns out that drip coffee makers and percolators can't control the extraction process. Espresso machines can be both good and bad (most low-end machines are bad), but a good espresso machine will make fantastic coffee.
What makes the machine good is it's ability to carefully control the temperature and pressure during the extraction. In 1961, the Faema company invented an espresso machine brew group which circulates some hot water from the boiler through the metal of the brew group. If hot water goes through a large mass of cold metal, the metal will wick the heat out of the water before it hits the beans... since the water would then be too cold, the extraction wouldn't be very good. By circulating the water through the brew group to warm the metal to the waters desired temperature, the water and metal mass of the brew group is equalized so that when extraction occurs the water wont be cooled down, temperature of the water when it hits the beans will remain consistent and you'll be able to control the extraction much better. This brew group is called the Faema E61 brew group. 26 years later it's STILL the ruling brew group. Many top machines use this brew group even if they machine is built by another maker. Other high-end machines tend to try to copy the Faema system by temperature-controlling their brew groups as well. Low end machines don't control the brew group temperature and the results.... speak for themselves. =(
The grind should be fairly fine... fine enough that if you put a small amount on your counter (or the palm of your hand) and then press a finger into it you should be able to still see some traces of your fingerprint in the grinds. You don't want dust (don't want to see a perfect fingerprint) but you dont' want it so course that there's no hint of a fingerprint. Propeller grinders aren't capable of grinding fine enough. Some low-quality burr grinders either cannot grind fine enough or they generate too much heat from friction and end up damaging the beans (like over-roasting would do). A good burr grinder should be able to grind fine enough without generating heat that damages the ground coffee.
Before pulling a shot, if the machine has been sitting idle too long then I'd "pull a blank". Basically just run water through the machine's brew group for a minute to make sure you've re-normalized the temperature. If steam comes out then it's too hot. Water temperature should only be about 205 F (not boiling).
If the coffee is dispensed into the porta-filter basket and then FIRMLY tamped (lean on it with a little body weight) and twist to polish it. Attach the porta-filter to the brew group, put a couple of clear shot glasses under the spouts and grab a watch with a second hand.
Pull the shot and time how long it takes to extract the shot. It should take about 25-27 seconds. Much shorter and you've under-extracted... possibly you didn't tamp tight enough or your grind wasn't fine enough. Much longer and you've over-extracted -- you've gone beyond the 20% of the bean that's desirable and grabbed plenty of that 10%
I've been involved in the coffee community longer than I've been in computing, and that number is growing faster than I care to admit.
My advice: Don't buy an espresso machine. If you've saved up $250, then get a decent grinder, and start saving $500 for an espresso machine.
$250 on an espresso machine is tough to get right. $250 on an espresso machine with a $20 burr grinder is a waste of effort.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
My cardiologist said I really shouldn't drink coffee.
So I drink a regular random-brand coffee with lots of milk in it-
http://www.pawlan.com/ccr.html
French-press. Anything else is sacrilege (except for espresso).
"What are your favorite beans?"
Arabica, you charlatan. No person that knew what they were talking about would dare ask such a basic question.
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I grind 20 grams (this is a lot) of coffee beans with a hand grinder. After grinding, I put it in a gold mesh filter, which sits in a single-cup drip maker.
I heat 100 grams of milk (microwave, 35 seconds) in a huge (20 oz?) mug, and put the apparatus on top of the mug.
I pour boiling water slowly, a little at a time, into the filter until the mug is almost full. At first I add just enough water to wet all the coffee, then try to keep the water at that level with small additions of water.
Because I pour the water slowly, the milk stays at the bottom. The gold mesh lets a lot of fine coffee grounds through, and these settle. The first sip is almost like black coffee. After I drink most of the coffee, and start to taste the milk, I swirl the grounds around in the warm milk at the bottom and drink the last gulp, grounds and all. Mmmmm.
The beans get old in about a week, but they still taste pretty good for up to a month or two, when stored at room temperature. (Never freeze or refrigerate beans, in my opinion.)
I buy Peet's French. Yeah, it is really dark, yeah, it's a blend, but I can easily taste the difference between Peet's French and an equally dark roasted coffee purchased elsewhere, so I believe that Peet's really is better. Some people say it's too dark and you can't taste the real bean flavor because of it. Whatever. I like it.
MM
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Good timing, I just posted a review to the Super Automatic we ended up getting here:p resso-impressa-s9-avantgarde-review/
http://www.breakitdownblog.com/2007/05/16/jura-ca
The bean question is a good one. With our old drip maker I couldn't tell a difference at all, with the super-auto I can tell a *huge* difference between a "smooth/fresh" bean and a "bitter/old" bean. Starbucks beans taste like crap in the super... they are *very* bitter. I also try and get a mild to light roast to preserve the caffeine in the bean which is something not a lot of people realize (darker == more roast == less caffeine)
The only thing that really matters with coffee is how recently the beans were roasted. Two other things that are also very important are the type of roast; ie, were the beans lightly roasted so you can actually taste the coffee bean (instead of being burned to a crisp until they're as bitter as Zeus hops in beer, or Full City and Espresso coffee roasts are), and lastly where are the beans from and what was that particular harvest like? Freshly and properly ground coffee beans are assumed of course. Green coffee beans will last several months on the shelf, but once you roast them in your home coffee roaster (of course ;-) the flavor starts deteriorating after only a few days (some difference is noticeable after only hours!), and after a month you may as well be buying supermarket coffee.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
I recently purchased an Illy ESE espresso machine. I'm in love. The thing is ridiculously expensive, but it almost beats my dishwasher as my favorite kitchen appliance. One can use the ESE pods (easy serving espresso) which are individually packaged in a CO2 atmosphere, or espresso ground beans...either way. I really like the pods as there is so little mess to deal with, I'm not cleaning up coffee grounds ever, and even the loose ground coffee comes out of the machine as a semi-hardened puck, making removal very easy.
The most beautiful thing about this machine is that it warms up in 30 seconds. 90 seconds after I touch the machine in the morning I'm drinking a fresh hot cup of espresso or if I feel like something lighter, the machine can make hot water for an americano. You *can* make regular coffee, one cup at a time with it as well. I also love it for that very reason...I love coffee, but I don't drink it quickly. Having a fresh cup, every time, has been a joy.
It's so good its worth it.
Coffee... after eight years of research on different aspects of coffee (mainly as a social scientist, but also on quality standards), how to prepare and store coffee gets asked over and over...
Here are a few websites that have very reliable information: www.coffeegeek.com and www.sweetmarias.com are two that come to mind, also look at www.scaa.org (Specialty Coffee Association of America) as they are the authority on coffee quality.
aside from that you have to ask yourself what you are starting with.
You need good water, not too hard (maybe a simple water filter is all you need) The references in the US are San Francisco and Seattle water.
Instant, then just close the lid of the can (though the flavor won't really change much if you don't)
Preground coffee from the big four (Folger's, Maxwell House, Nestle, etc.) or flavored coffees (do you know what kind of solvents they use to retain the flavor through roasting?), then just close the lid and keep in a dark cool place (cabinet that is not above a stove is a fine place).
Preground coffee from a coffee shop, then buy small amounts (a pound or less) and just close tightly and store in a dark cool place, not in the freezer or refrigerator since humidity will affect the flavor. An airtight container that is not too large should do fine
Of course, the best possible way to drink fresh coffee is to roast it yourself and consume it within three weeks.... this might be a bit much for most, but the second best thing is to buy freshly roasted coffee from a reputable coffee shop (need not be expensive), that prints the date on the package. The few I know that are distributed nationwide are Green Mountain Coffee and Tully's. There are smaller ones that are amazing like Intelligentsia (Chicago and soon in L.A.), Groundworks (L.A.), Barefoot Roasters (Sunnyvale, CA), Stumptown (Portland, OR) Counter Culture (Durham, NC), and many others I have not included due to space, but if they roast locally, they are bound to be great. All the ones I mention print the date of roasting (not the date that they are good until).
Why don't I recommend Starbucks or other well known coffees? Well, they are good if you like the way they roast (and a good many people do. They are after all the largest specialty coffee company in the world. I don't buy their coffee because, 1) too dark for my taste, 2) no roast date on package -- no other reason, and the same goes for others who do not print the roast date on the package).
Packaging only does so much, whether it is vacuum, co2, nitrogen, etc. Coffee is a very complex thing that has something like 600 or so identifiable components after roasting. Not all of them remain stable for the same amount of time, and most of the flavor in coffee, like anything else, is in the smell. Roasting is a process of controlled destruction and most of the smell of coffee is trapped in microscopic gas pockets inside the bean, out-gassing will occur, oils and similar substances will sublimate, etc. this process cannot be undone with any known technology today (no magic crystals, no fancy gases, nada). Coffee should be ground right before consumption with a good grinder (burrs and not blades) and coffee should not sit around too long... a month or five weeks tops (I prefer three weeks... you can tell if a coffee is fresh if when you brew it, a foamy crust forms, the thicker-- the fresher. The crust is a combination of emulsified gases and oils. As the components evaporate, sublimate, or deteriorate, the foam becomes thinner or non-existent).
Brewing... there are a number of methods, but most do not bring the best out from the coffee. Some of the best ways to prepare coffee are not that expensive at all.
French pot (Bodum is nice, but you can easily find some for $14 or so that work just as well) is quite good. Boil water and add it to the ground coffee, steep for four minutes and it is done (water should be around 200F or so, which is what water will be off the stove a minute or so after boiling, if it is t
We recently got a cuisinart brand coffee maker from Costco. You fill it with whole beans, water and turn it on. The coffee comes out great. It grinds well, percolates well, and the coffee tastes great. We also got a really good deal on a bulk order of fantastic organic coffee from Amazon.com.
Seriously, before now I didn't drink coffee unless I happened by a cool non-corporate coffee shop and had 5 minutes to kill. Now I have a cup a day at least!
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I use a La Pavoni Pro lever machine and Stumptown coffee beans. Stumptown is a local PDX roaster. You can buy their beans online. They buy and source their beans direct with growers and roast them themselves. All bags have a roast date. Usually best after a day or 2 after the roast, so the oils settle back in. Don't forget a good grinder. You need a bur grinder. It makes as much difference as the machine. I use a Rancilio Rocky. It works great. Not too expensive, especially the refurbs.
1. Dress.
2. Take elevator to ground floor.
3. Walk 20 feet to Starbucks.
4. Blurt a 20-word description of what you want.
5. Drink coffee.
The best quality coffee attainable is espresso ground from fresh beans. The flavour obtained from such a process is so sweet and subtle that no sugar is required.
I get my beans from an old man that roast his own for a cafe that he owns about a block from me once a week(the best beans I have ever had darkest french roast I have had- near black beans very fresh and moist with oils) I grind them myself (extremely fine grind- approx a turkish grind) and use a drip cone for a single 20 oz cup with water that is not less than boiling (heated back to boiling between pours). takes about 15-20 minutes in the morning, makes for very strong flavorful coffee.
Water is the single largest ingredient in a cup of coffee: no great bean can overcome over bad water. Here in San Francisco, we get good tasting tap water, but my cup of coffee does taste better after a pass through a Britta water filter (or from bottled water). If the water smells like chlorine or sulfur, and/or it tastes metallic, then those overtones will come through with the coffee.
That said, good coffee is simple.
* Fresh (local) beans.
* Buy whole beans; grind right before use.
* Good water...maybe bottled.
* Choose any method: drip, mokka pot, French press, espresso
More details on the above guidelines:
* Find a good, local roaster, from whom you can get beans freshly roasted (within 5 or so days, fresher the better). The http://coffeegeek.com/ forums may help. When in doubt, order yours online; I suggest http://intelligentsiacoffee.com/ out of Chicago for their excellent roasts and central location (they can get beans to you reasonably fresh throughout the US). In the Bay Area, I suggest Blue Bottle Coffee or Ritual Coffee.
* Buy whole beans. They keep longer. Use your beans within 10 days of roasting. Store airtight and away from direct sun. Some may argue that beans are best the day after roasting, and while I agree, there is a convenience/cost factor I cannot ignore. I buy 1/2 lb. of whole beans each week for my personal use (I drink a lot of coffee). The beans keep a lot of volatile, tasty compounds when their whole; these compounds evaporate when the bean is ground. In general I suggest a good burr grinder, but the whirly blade ones will work, too, particularly for paper cone drip. It's all about even grind, which is more likely with a burr grinder. For instance, I get more "grit" at the bottom of a French pressed cup of coffee when grinding with a whirly blade. Burr grinder cost a lot more. Check out http://sweetmarias.com/) or http://amazon.com/ or http://1stincoffee.com/ for some gear.
* Use good water: bottled or filtered. Hardness (both too hard and too soft) may turn you off...try bottled in either extreme.
* I like and consume coffee brewed using all methods. Choose one that suits your budget, your mood, and your tastebuds. If you're like me, you'll end up using most of them. My current favorite is the stovetop espresso (mokka pot). It gives a richer cup, which I like in the morning, and it looks damn cool. However, it doesn't travel well, so I drip or French press when I'm on vacation or away from home. I don't have the $$ or time to do espresso correctly. I go to a coffee shop for that style. A word on drip...skip the cheap coffee machines, as most don't get hot enough. You're far better off using a single cup cone filter (plastic or ceramic), a Chemex drip, or the similar model from Bodum. These are also cheaper than most coffee machines. See here http://sweetmarias.com/prod.brewers.shtml or here http://www.fantes.com/coffeemakers_manualdrip.htm
* One last note - varietals and roast do matter a lot. I suggest running through the style of coffee your roaster sells in order to find the one you like most. I'm fond of Ethiopian Yirgecheffe, but you may like something completely different. Experiment! It's fun and tasty!
Drip brewed coffee and french press do not produce the full coffee taste as the water is too cold and only extract some aromas.
August 28 2000 was a significant day in my coffee life as I changed to the Italian Moka Express http://www.bialettishop.com/MokaExpressMain.htm. This radical change followed a change in my perception of what constitutes a true coffee experience after a visit to Italy. Since then I only drink moka or expresso. I bring my own coffee maker on any travels not destined for Italy. There should be left no doubt that a trip to Italy for the coffee experience is a must for the true coffee enthusiast.
I think the best maker is the 2 or 3 cup size, the bigger the makers have higher water:coffee ratio. But the right maker is not enough, you gotta get the right blend of torrefacto and natural roast (torrefacto is made by roasting the beans with sugar). Shop arround to find the blend and roast that you like. Once you have found your coffee pusher, stick with him as he will know your specific taste and preferences and make sure to have your blend.
Every single visitor to our house sings the praise of our coffee. I use a La Pavoni Italian espresso machine, with a lever, not a pump. It takes some practice, but eventually, if you really care, you will make a perfect cup of espresso coffee 9 out of 10 times. Of course you'll use freshly roasted coffee beans that you'll grind yourself just minutes prior to making the coffee. If the tap water is low quality, use bottled water. Operating a La Pavoni is a ten step process, and if you miss or mess up a single step, you can throw away the sad result.
I used to drink coffee made from a press, but my current employer has espresso machines in the staff kitchens, and so I started drinking espresso at home too. I haven't looked back.
I make the coffee with a Gaggia Classic Espresso machine, and grind the beans in a grinder, immediately before using them. How you use the grinder is quite important. A given type of bean needs a certain fineness of grind, which you basically need to discover by trying combinations. To get coffee of the right strength, you need to squish the coffee in the filter the right amount. Too much and the coffee is made too slowly and is too bitter. Too little and you get no crema. It takes a bit of practice to figure out whether your latest cup was ground too coarse and squished too much, or ground too fine and under-squished. I grind the beans relatively finely and tamp the grounds down in the filter holder to flatten them, without using any force.
Next to grinding to the right grade there is also choosing good beans. I've tried a number of varieties, but on the whole I prefer Illy beans. The other type I prefer is sold by a chap in the Dublin city centre market (the one in Temple Bar, next to the photography museum) on Saturdays. He roasts it himself. Unfortunately, he brings one of four varieties each week, and I can't remember which is the subset I like best. I grind the beans as needed and keep the can of as-yet unground beans in the fridge. I guess a can lasts me most of a week. I also have a can of pre-ground decaf but it tastes awful, as the pre-ground coffee goes stale so fast. Yuck. In the fridge I also have a packet of Lavazza espresso coffee, but it's only in there in case the coffee grinder ever breaks and leaves me with no other way to make coffee.
In the past I have bought vacuum-packed beans and frozen them. I wasn't that keen on the result, and think it was more because of the beans themselves than the freezing, but I'm only 75% sure of that.
Keeping the machine clean is important too. Coffee-making leaves behind a residue on the external parts of the machine (e.g. the filter plate that goes directly above the filter holder and filter). Build-up of bitter oils here can negatively affect the taste of the coffee, so cleaning it is good. The water tank needs to be cleaned roughly weekly, too. A quick job is OK for that. The instructions for the machine tell you to de-scale every 3 months, but I'm sure that every 6 is fine here (I live in Dublin, where there are not significant levels of dissolved calcium salts in the tapwater).
When I bought the machine, I gave the sales assistant a close questioning about whether the machine would yield hot water for making Americanos. She tried to tell me yes, you can adjust the steam nozzle to do this (as on my previous, faulty, Krups machine). In fact that's not practical, but I seem anyway to prefer drinking the espresso straight now.
Only in the land where food and plastic are indistinguishable could this be a surprise.
Absolutely correct.
So many people focus on the machine, but the grinder is definitely the most important piece of hardware.
And freshness of the beans is the most critical overall element of the equation.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I settled with La Pavoni lever machine Europiccola Professional PLH half year ago. Previously toyed with italian Pratica (correct?) made percolator (not aluminium, of course), but there is huge difference in what can be achieved. Never before was I enjoying that thick crema, nor pleasures of milk froth in coffee. Absolutely recommend La Pavoni for one, who wants to control process himself and have quality coffee making (and gorgeous cocoa).
For those, who have heart problems, caused by coffee, I'd recommend trying different beans or toying with milk. Having some sweets or cake or similar also could soften impact. To me first bag of italian Chico D'oro for that machine was clearly making me irritated after cups (making feel unrest, nervous). Dutch Bravissimo roast beans were of excellent taste and impact, instead. Now I got bag of Paulig Espresso, which was slightly cheaper, that look gorgeous visually (dark, big and oily surface beans), and result in enormous amount of crema from one-cup filter. Coffee is good, sound. My current behavior with 1 kg bag after purchase is to split it in half, and place one part into sealed container, filled as much as possible. I heard it is no good to keep coffee in refridgerator, so we no longer do it. The rest is left in the bag, and consumed until finished. That way I get fresher beans in whole - contact with air is biggest enemy of theirs. Having fresh beans, of course, is also important (date is stated on bag, some local big-store resellers have nerve of offering coffee with date either nearly ending, or hardly readable, which amounts to the same, beware, this coffee can even smell bad).
Single serious health impact, I currently experience from coffee, is it's tendency to wash out vitamines, which results in tired eyes while at computer for big part of day. Well, this is something I sacrifice at chosen pace.
For grinding coffee I chose very simple Braun grinder, where you can control how fine grinding is (at or near finest setting, beans and chosen filter bottom size dependant), that did not cost nearly second coffee machine, and is fine for me. There are seriously expensive grinders, but I did not buy into that need.
There are excellent resources for coffee geeks (like coffeegeek.com) elsewhere online, too.
Have thick crema!
Servant of karma
This does make me chuckle. Actually for several weeks now, i've been using a standard coffee machine, yet since i keep forgetting to buy proper filters, i've switched to regular toilet paper. I use two two-ply three-piece bits of toilet paper, and i must say, the coffee aint that bad. Alternatively there's a senseo-machine, which i cant suggest using, as it basically produces hot, colored water.
I have a Gaggia Bean 2 Cup machine. In the morning I just have to wander into my study and press one button, and it grinds, tamps, and brews the perfect cup of espresso. Then I just have to empty the grinds bin every few weeks. Unfortunately leaving the beans in the beans-dispenser for too long can be a problem, so I top them up every few days.
For beans, I import Nannini beans in 2lb bags, from Siena, Italy. Keep them sealed up for freshness, but I haven't gone to the trouble of using pressurised CO2 containers. I may look into that though.
If you ever find yourself in Tuscany, be sure to visit the Nannini cafe in Siena. Ask for a machiato if you don't like your coffee black.
I can't drink coffee anymore -- I figured out my migraines were due to caffiene withdrawl....
But here's my advice -- treat your beans well... NEVER freeze them, don't even refrigerate them. Keep them in an air-tight container. Buy only as much as you'll use in a week, obviously as whole beans. Treat them like you would bananas, and they stay much fresher.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss
A lazy way to make Turkish coffee to do Mud-Coffee. One happy teaspoon of finely ground in a GLASS cup (glass is important as I find ceramics to impair the taste). Pour just boiled water from a slight distance on the coffee, so that the water get a few milliseconds to cool on the way down, and then put a teaspoon of sugar on top so that it takes all the sediment down, and stir. Half a minute later you got mud at the bottom and glorious lazy turkish coffee. The more foam on the top the better. Coffee IS the water of life. don't let anyone tell you differently.
The OCD level of this forum topic and the degree of detailed information is so so self-obssessed - and informative - that it reminds me of those ubiquitous letters to Playboy about stereo - sorry Hi Fi systems in the days before pubic hair, Jerry Falwell and Hustler.
Oh, halcyon days. Next: how to make the perfect salsa.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Buying the coffee beans green, and roasting them yourself is the ultimate in flavor, really.
The upside is the the green beans stay good for about a year, where the roasted flavor disappears after a month or two.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Buy the cheapest coffee you can find. I get the house brand at Aldis. If you care about what your guests think, save and re-use an old can from a top shelf branded coffee or else use a coffee canister. No matter.
Make the coffee by the directions on the can. Don't skimp on the coffee.
When the coffee is done brewing, decant it into a thermos container of some sort. If you insist on keeping the coffee in the coffee maker, try to drink it all in about 45 minutes. Exposing coffee to continuous heat is what causes really vile-tasting coffee.
I loves the caffeine!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
First, roast your own beans. Sweetmaries.com or similar places can sell you green beans and roasters.
Then, if you want espresso, a pump machine can't be matched. Good ones are expensive, though, and a good burr grinder (also expensive) is as important as the espresso machine.
However, if you want brewed coffee, the ultimate is a vacuum brewer. I like the Hario Nouveau, but Cona's are good too. If you get the Hario, however, replace the paper filter system with a Cono glass rod filter. It's a glass rod with a mottled surface that lets the brewed coffee seep through but traps the grinds. Then, nothing but glass will touch your brewed coffee.
Shit the beans out literally, let them dry in the sun, grind em and make coffee... This gives a hell of a nutty flavor...
I can't believe there is a discussion about the "best" coffee and there are only two posts about Peet's. Yes, it's a West Coast (California) franchise, but their coffee is so different and good that I've had people in the hallway at work tell approach me to tell me how good my coffee smells and asked me for the secret. A lot of people talk about this coffee and that being better, but then when you try them it's not much different than any other coffee. Peet's is radically different, and there's no way to explain it 'till you've had it.
Most Safeway (Midwest) or Vons (West) grocery stores carry Peet's. It's not nearly as good from the store as it is fresh from a Peet's location or online, but it's still a lot better. Try it.
Well, fresh ground coffee beans is like a red wine bottle opened : It last 2 days. It's deterioration is logarithmic. Within the very first 48 hours, it loses about 25% of freshness. In the next 48 hours, it will loose maybe another 10% (don't apply to the vacuum sealed package). This is especially true if it is a very sharp coffee blend. Also true if you are perfect with your methodology of making a coffee. All the process from grinding until drinking must be very perfect to obtain the best from the grain and from the infusion technique.
:
So fresh ground beans are important if you master your technique. Otherwise either freshness or technique are not so important, it will ordinary coffee only.
Will alter the coffee freshness
-light
-air
-moisture
-hot or cold
-your finger natural body oil
-time
To have a full caffeine coffee, use a Bodum and infuse it for 10 minutes.
I prefer the espresso, it's less caffeine, and the texture is not like water.
That taste is maybe because of my French background.
--
If you want to be awake, you need espresso. And if you want to be awake for more than 15 minutes, you need real espresso.
Here's the deal - the sugar has to float.
Trust me - its all about pharmacokinetics. If the coffee is watery, then the caffeine will be absorbed too rapidly, leading to a "spike" in caffeine levels in your bloodstream.
If the espresso is properly made, then it will be dense enough that white sugar sprinled on top will float. In turn, that means that when ingested, the caffeine will be released gradually, producing a sustained plateau in caffeine plasma levels - result, you're awake for longer.
So, the coffee must be finely ground and pressed ("tamped"). For taste, use a pure arabica, dark roast. Illy or Mokarabia are good.
This might be simple for American standards but here ( middle east ) we don't have time to wait around...
Here is how it works if you want to get your caffeine, go, and get stuff done.
*You should always have a ready supply of boiling water, in your urn, samovar, kum kum... so you don't have to wait
If your really in a hurry, use instant coffee, and if your in a really big hurry make half a cup, double strong then add cold water, then you don't have to wait for it to cool down and you can drink it like a shot of vodka.
And don't forget, the larger the coffee and sugar to water ration per cup, the more stuff you can get done.
If your working as hard as you should be you don't have time for taste... Now if you'll excuse me I have to have another cup so I can compensate for the time wasted writing this comment.
I've been watching this discussion go on for some time, and as expected, there is a whole lot of Snobbery going on. You talk about your beans, your storage, home-roasting and all of that bollocks. Most of it are versions of Arabica, and most are grown in the mountains. Firstly, I grew up in the Netherlands, where Douwe Egberts is the coffee-company that sells the most. A german low-price supermarket chain had an anonymous gold-label coffee that was a lot better than the brand-name coffees out there. It just goes to show that labels and brands and bean-snobbery aren't everything.
Back in the day (and I'm still partial to it) I really enjoyed a good strong filter coffee with a dash of milk, no sugar. The machine here makes a large difference in the outcome. If you have a good one that brews under the right pressure and temperature, filter coffee can be lovely. Douwe Egbert devices are indeed superior here. When making filter coffee I like using a somewhat dark roast so you get a hint of bitterness. I always use a lot of coffee to get a strong pot, and before closing the machine, I always add few grains of salt to enhance the flavour. You'd be amazed what a little salt does in that regard. Sometimes I add cardamom for taste.
Over the years I have made coffee with all kinds of brands and roasts. Zoegas, Ily, Lavazza, Jacobs, Douwe Egberts, HAG, Löfbergs Lila, Gevalia, Lindvalls, you name 'm. I've used espresso machines, percolator, the espresso-boiler on the stove, pans and filter-machines. But still my favourite is a finely ground, darkly roasted arabica for Filter with a bit of salt in the filter. Usually the brand is secondary. The only exceptions to this are HAG and Löfbergs Lila. I fucking hate those.
But the one thing that I'm missing in all of these discussions is Arabic coffee-making. I don't mean Turkish coffee. That's for wussies. I mean properly boiled Arabic coffee.
- Put water in small pan
- Let water boil
- Add large amounts of arabic coffee (cheap ones work fine too) blended with Cardamom
- Boil until foam comes up. Stir (off the fire) until foam disappears
- Add sugar, 1-2 Spoons per cup
- Put back on stove and boil until no more foam forms on the coffee
Pour into a glass and drink it.
This has to be the one and only rival way of making coffee to filter that I fully enjoy every time. If you're ever in the Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, drink coffee with 'm. They know what they are doing. Few Israeli Jews, amongst whom my father in law, know what they are doing because they are from North Africa or Arabic Countries.
I like to drink beer, maybe Cola sometimes. Coffee? That's for geeks.
Easy. Starbucks Sumatra blend. Ground for a french press, and if possible, brewed in same.
I know they don't (universally) have the best roasting methods, but they seem to get Sumatra just right (for me, anyway). I always find it to be a sweet, brew with a great bold taste. On occasion I have it black, never, ever with sugar. When possible, raw (unpasturized) cream. Even my wife can drink it black, though she disagrees with my no sugar policy.
As for brewing method, well, my favorite is the french press. In a pinch, like when I have a few extra minutes before catching the train, I use the My-K-Cup in my Keurig. Two filters, brewed on the large cup setting puts me right for the day. If I don't have time before leaving for work, I have to settle for the crap K-Cups we have at work (that machine doesn't take the My-K-Cup).
It's a little more obsessive, but my favorite method is to buy the beans green and roast them at home -- that way I know their age. You can buy fancy roasters for hundreds of dollars, but I do it on my front porch with a pyrex bowl and a paint-remover gun (basically an industrial-strength hair dryer)... you just need to keep the beans moving and at around 400 degrees Farenheit for about fifteen to twenty minutes. voila. Fresh coffee. Then I use a stove-top italian coffee maker. It's simple, it works well, and makes excellent coffee. Oh yeah! and I recommend a burr grinder instead of one of those pulse grinders -- you get a nice, even grind, as opposed to the gravel and powder that always comes from a pulse grinder.
who let a poet in here?
This is in contrast to Starbucks junk which I sometimes get when I'm not in the office. It seems to always taste and smell burnt. I wish there was a "Not burnt starbucks" store. Duncan Donuts seems to have consistently good coffee.
The best damn coffee I ever had was at the Pentagon Ritz, years ago. I think it was made by a chef. I have no idea what it cost, I was there as a guest. In fact my mouth is watering just thinking about it. As I recall everyone that drank it was also wide awake. I have also had typical hotel type coffee from the Ritz.
When I tasted coffee first time in my life I despised the taste at the first second. But then the caffeine kicked in and the taste did not seem that bad anymore. This briefly descibes how addiction works.
I drink coffee for caffeine. So I bought the cheepest espresso maker. I buy small amount of French roasted beans at Giant and grind them at the store at "Turkish" (the most fine) or "Espresso" (next to the most fine) setting.
There are 2 parameters you can regulate: amount of water and amount of grinded coffee. Playing with those two will allow you to satisfy either your taste (higher concentration of caffeine) or brain (higher amount of caffeine).
If you put more water at the same amount of coffee you will get more caffeine, but less concentration of it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I live in Dallas. There's a wonderful indie coffee shop called Drip on Lover's Lane. The owner roasts all his beans himself and puts the roasting date on the bag, throwing every batch out after ten days. In my experience, freshness makes a HUGE difference. Grinding and brewing coffee that's been roasted the same day tastes far superior to any other coffee I've had. It almost has a naturally sweet taste.
What is this, did Martha Stewart buy slashdot.org? "Editors", I know you're desperate for content, but COME ON, this is insulting. I wish there were a way to mutiny, and take the site back into hands that care about not letting it run to SHIT.
sorry, but it's a requirement of my mental sanity to say this every time a coffee topic is brought up... "I like my coffee like like I like my men... tossed in a bag and carried over a burro"
I buy green coffee from Sweet Maria's ( Tom at http://sweetmarias.com/ is a true coffee "Mad Scientist") roast them myself (a wide variety of gadgets are available, I use a bbq roaster from Ron http://rkdrums.com/ ) wait a day or two for the flavor to fully develop (depends on the bean, follow Tom's directions)then make espresso (or Americano) in a mostly automatic Solis Master 5000 (see http://sweetmarias.com/prod.solis-espresso.shtml ).
If you don't want to roast your own, you can buy roasted coffee from Tom at SweetMarias.com - he ships it the day it's roasted, so when you get it a couple of days later it's ready to drink.
In a pinch (either time or money), buy roasted coffee from Costco - many stores roast it in house so the stuff you buy was green beans a few days ago. They roast much of it a little darker than I like, but it's fresh.
Don't drink burnt coffee that's been sitting around for weeks, the darker roasts obliterate the character of the bean (with some of the crap green coffee the majors use this can be a blessing).
Above all, a decent pressure espresso machine makes the best for me. But it has to be kept clean. When steam gets pressed into the beans, the temperature is very hot, and melts a variety of oils. When these oils hit the espresso spout which is cooler, they stick to the spout. This tar causes bitterness and tastes very recognisable.
I have tasted this bitterness in stove top espressos, french press (which I have always called a plunger) and dripulators, and from qyite a few cafes.
My mate who was a barista used to get this powder (which he called rather cleverly coffe machine cleaner) which I would then put in the coffee basket and then make a cup of coffee machine cleaner. Then another cup of joe which got chucked. After this rigmarole the coffee was much sweeter and had much more crema.
He reckoned that any decent cafe should wash their machines like that at least daily, but for home use around once a week.
For me in brisbane, though, di bella is pretty good,or merlos which is roasted locally.
Also, I have always preffered a flat white coffee (an australianism?) Which is very similar to what most people may call a cafe latte or a cafe au lait. A shot of espresso with steamed milk. Wherever I go in the world, this is what I try to get. For me the worst country to drink coffee is England. This is a country that only really heard of espresso machine when starbucks rolled in. They make great tea there though.
I reckon the best coffees I tasted were.
Switzerland has this cup called a schale which I believe means shell.
Surprisingly for me in chile a lot of coffee in restaraunts still is instant, but they have these Mens coffee bars with girls in skimpy outfits selling really quite good espresso. Most people I know don't like american coffee. Too bitter, to weak.
Eight O'Clock Coffee used to be a house brand when A&P was still the big thing. It's since been spun off into its own brand. You can find that many grocers carry it -- you can't miss the big red bag. Whole bean is my favorite, although they sell pre-ground. I grind at home as I make each pot with a standard drip brew, storing the bag in the freezer. It's a strong, smooth, "coffee-flavored" coffee. Good for the early morning commute and a cup after work.
The best method of brewing is a Vacuum Pot. The technical reasoning is that it keeps the water at the optimum temperature during the brewing process, but my experience bears this out as well. For simplicity I use a Bodum Electric Vacuum Pot - don't get scared away by all the gas-lamp-heated ones you'll see online.
I have also experienced the difference that truly fresh beans can make. To get fresh coffee, I roast my own (an roaster goes for $100-$500 depending on quality). Once roasted, bean freshness degrades over a period of days or weeks; once ground, freshness degrades over a matter of hours. So I roast a small amount and try to use it within two weeks. I buy my green beans from Sweet Maria's and they've got lots of text on the site to get you educated.
I tried kopi luwak coffee last week (and actually the week before as well), so I've had the oppertunity to consume 2 generous mugs of this stuff. The coffee was obtained by my brother, I believe for approx. 150 dollars for a half pound (I could be wrong on that, I would have to check). It was brewed at home in a regular drip coffee maker. I'm not a coffee connoisseur but I have tried various coffees and when sampling a new coffee I always taste it black before determinging if I need cream & sugar. To cut down on the to the bitterness I normally add some light cream and sugar to most coffees. The Luwak is interesting because the bitter flavors are almost non-existent to the point where I enjoyed the coffee black with just a little sugar, similar to the way I would consume most espresso's. The roast and flavor was lighter than what I'm used to but all in all it's an excellent coffee. I'm aware of another coffee that lacks the bitter components to this degree without sacrificing flavor. It's different but I don't know if it's worth the cost, but I would recommend trying it if you're a coffee lover and you're given the oppertunity. When you consider that these coffee cherries have been consumed, pooped, cleaned then roasted it doesn't seem that dirty to me as I'd assume the roasting process would hopefully kill anything bad that might have been in there. Hopefully :)
http://www.guster.net : Mmmmm fresh Guster.
but I don't use water, i use THE BLOOD OF A THOUSAND VIRGINS.
lalala lalala lalalala... meless filter
Camping with my coffee adicted brother-in-law a few years back made me appreciate good coffee.
His method was simple:
1) Fill old coffee can with lake water
2) Set in camp fire until the water was at a rolling boil
3) Throw in a handfull of ground coffee
4) Wait a few minutes and serve.
Strain the grounds with your teeth.
At 5am, in the middle of the bush, after a lousy nights sleep - it actually isn't that bad....
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
While on the topic of coffee, what about fair trade varieties?
I met someone who has their own coffee shop complete with in house roasting / grinding facilities and his complaint was that fair trade lacked both the taste and basic quality (had too many stones and twigs in it to risk running thru his grinder).
Any suggestions for at home?
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
I have a decent espresso machine, and I buy fresh beans weekly at a local shop that guarantees their beens to be roasted that morning. I have my own grinder, and have worked out the exact size of a handfull of beans it takes to make a decent 3 shots. Since my machine keeps the water heated, it takes me approx 2 minutes to make a good mug of espresso, or an extra 30 seconds if I feel like a cappichino. ALways keep the beans in an airtight container, in the dark, and never grind more beans than needed! I could save money by buying a larger bag of beans, or bulk, but I find that one week is about as long as I can keep them fresh. After that, the they loose their flavor FAST.
There are a number of good ways to make coffee. I use a melitta filter, which is just a plastic cone on top of a coffeepot. It cost me about eight dollars. You heat water in a teakettle and pour it through the filter. I also, on occasion, make "Toddy" coffee, which is a cold-process brew. You let coffee grounds sit with water for about 24h, and filter out the result, which goes into the 'fridge. Then you mix about a 2:1 ratio of boiling water with the cold Toddy. It's very good, and can make delicious stuff out of subpar beans.
The most important thing to do is keep the heatplate off. Coffee burns very quickly on a hotplate. If you need to keep your coffee warm for a while, use a thermos.
As far as beans go, other people have mentioned that there is a lot of overrated crap out there. Two places I strongly recommend are Peets www.peets.com and Blue Bottle Coffee Co http://www.bluebottlecoffee.net/ Peets is bigger and better-known. Blue Bottle, on the other hand is simply, hands down, undeniably, the best dang coffee I've ever had, period. It's that much better than everyone else. As a bonus, Blue Bottle has good instructions for brewing your coffee.
How I did it before I had kids:
1. Open the freezer and take out the 5:1 mixture of Kona mild roast and Kenya AAA dark roast beans, which I stored in an air-tight plastic tub.
2. Measure exactly 1/4 cup of beans into my grinder, add 1 teaspoon of ground chicory, which I stored air-tight but at room temperature.
3. Grind medium fine and pour half into the bleach-free Melita filters in my Braun drip machine.
4. Grind the remainder extra fine and add to the filter.
5. Fill the machine with the filtered water I'd let stand overnight to outgas the chlorine, and start the machine.
6. While coffee is brewing, use a soft-tipped brush to clean out the grinder and put the coffee and chicory away.
7. Pour the coffee into a my very clean mug, reserved just for coffee, just as the pot finishes brewing. Enjoy the appearance, aroma and intense flavor of the first sip, and let the flavor bloom through each subsequent sip.
8. Discard any coffee that's been sitting on the warmer for more than 30 minutes, and make it fresh.
9. Wash pot, filter, lid and mugs by hand with very hot water and a mild Alconox solution, to remove residues. Dry with a soft towel and replace, ready for the next pot.
How I do it now, with four kids:
1. If there isn't any cold coffee left from yesterday, open can of Folger's.
2. Put four or five scoops into the paper filter I got in bulk at Costco, in my Braun drip machine.
3. Fill pot with water straight from the tap. Add to machine. Press button.
4. Feed kids while coffee is brewing.
5. Pour coffee into whatever mug's closest, as soon as I get the chance. Drink. Repeat until either pot is empty, or I have to go to work.
6. Leave empty mug, empty pot on counter. Go to work.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
My favorite method? Walk up to vending machine, insert dollar. Hit 'D'. Retrieve bottle of Diet Dew.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Yes, the quality of the coffee does matter, but its not hard nor is it physically burdensome to prepare, good ground coffee.. The trick, though, is in another direction entirely! ...ie: how the coffee is made.. and unless one has tasted expresso coffee properly made, with frothed milk, then one has not experienced what good coffee can be .. The difference is not trivial! it is HUGE .. it will taste totally unlike anything that can possibly come out of a 'drip' or a 'percolator' or a 'french press' ... THere is something about the pressure and temperatures of the coffee itself and the frothed milk that cause them both to undergo some chemical transformation... to become different molecules .. there's no other explanation. Hints: use any dark roasted coffee.. need not even be quite dark! Tamp it down in its holder ..but not too much .. not too little!.. perhaps a dash of salt!
Then use an expresso machine (such as any of the Breville models http://www.breville.com/ that closely controls the water temperature.. You might put your favorite sweetener (sugar, or artificial..eg..'Equal' tabs.. 3 of them!) into the receiving cup.
Then, using again, a 'temperature controlled' device, froth the milk.. the frothing steam must be 'dry' , not 'wet with water droplets' .. Raise and lower the frothing cup into which has been poured perhaps 1/2 inch of milk, not cream! .. or even better: use that 'Fat Free' 'Half and Half' found in supermarkets. Have it cold! let the frothing steam work til it expands the volume of milk to expand to many times its size.. the point is to get the milk not only to be frothed , but to approach 140 deg.F. !! you dont need a thermometer .. Feeling the bottom of the steel frothing cup is enough 'technology' ... at 140 you cant touch except for an instant without it hurting..
pour the LIQUID of the frothing cup into the now-brewed expresso .. then at the top you might want to spoon some of the 'bubbly foam' that's always formed....
then: taste what youve created! it will surprise you!
(my recipe: 3 'Equal tabs into the expresso receiving glass or cup.. a machine that can make 'double shots' , and the 'Fat Free' Half 'n Half .. makes for nearly zero calories, which is great, cuz you can then have it even more frequently!
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
Make coffee? Sounds like effort to me. I walk across the street to Dunkin and have hot steaming brew right away. Definitely prefer Dunkin to Starbucks, IMHO they overroast their beans to where the coffee has a burnt flavor. Honestly, McD's brew is pretty good too.
I'm amazed that none of the high-modded comments so far have addressed the issue of water quality.
You can use the finest beans, at the peak of freshness, roasted and ground to perfection, but if your water's of poor quality the end product is going to be of poor quality as well.
If your local tap water is clean, and not overly chlorinated, fluoridated, or sulfurous, by all means use it to brew. But if you don't like drinking it straight from the tap, don't make coffee with it, either. Your local supermarket is sure to have a variety of spring waters (or even distilled water, if that's your preference) that will improve the taste of your brew.
it's a bit expensive, but the coffee is absolutely perfect: http://www.nespresso.com/
I recent had a relative purchase a Coffee Roaster for me after he realized how much I enjoy a good cup of coffee. I feel that when it comes to flavor that this is the way to go. It works similar to a hot air popcorn popper in which it takes the raw bean and exposes it to intense heat. From there I put it in my mill grinder, I feel they work much better than a blade grinder. For the coffee maker itself I just use a standard Braun auto-drip, in which I clean it weekly. I think the type of bean becomes a matter of personal preference but I prefer a Kenya or an Ethiopian bean to start with.
Two things:
First of all, I had never heard of Braun's Tassimo machine until I started a new job and there was one in the break room. (Quick explanation: It reads a barcode on specially marketed pods of coffee, espresso, tea, cocoa, etc. and automatically uses the appropriate amount and temperature of water.) My first thought was, "Hey, what a cool gadget! Glad I'm not paying for the T-Discs..." My second thought was, "Ooh, the T-Discs are Gevalia! Good stuff!" But my third thought was, "What the hell is this crap? Tastes like caffeinated dishwater!" Honestly, we've had a good number of different T-Discs come through, and all the coffee, espresso, and cocoa has tasted like ass. The only exception was an Italian import called Mastro Lorenzo. I don't know, maybe the filter needs changing or something.
So I make my coffee the finicky DIY way, with a French press. Regarding freshness, my experience is what you originally expected: that the freshness of the beans is far less important than the freshness of the grind. I always get my generic bulk French roast beans at the same supermarket, about a half-pound at a time, and use the in-store grinder. It's obvious that they sell through their bulk beans slowly, and I've gotten beans both from the dregs and from a fresh refill. (Of course, I don't know anything about how "fresh" a fresh refill actually is, so I'm assuming a few things.) No huge difference leapt out at me, but there is an enormous difference between the first wonderful cup of my bag and the last cup that I can't always even bring myself to brew. That last cup sometimes makes me check prices on a conical-burr grinder for the office.
Now the French press itself is a tricky thing. A drip maker is very convenient, and I've got no complaints about drip-brewed coffee. But if you truly want to understand what makes your coffee tick, and just how much potential it has, there's nothing like a French press. It's a variables-balancing game. The temperature of the water is easy: just below boiling. And obviously the amount of water depends on how much coffee you want. You can play with the grind, but it seems like the coarsest possible is always best. But then there's this delicate interaction between the amount of grounds and the steeping duration. If you can get it just right, you'll wonder where all that flavor was hiding in this coffee you thought you knew so well. And if you oversteep by forty-five seconds you'll wonder what jackass poured vinegar into your mug. My best results have come from just a little more grounds than I think I need, and an even four minutes. And the most important lesson I learned was to resist the temptation to stir while it's steeping. It's got to take its time, man.
Grounds For Change Ethiopian Yergacheffe Nectar of the Gods :)
Actually no... I have dealt with the Chemex system pretty much all my life. I grew up in a biochem lab environment, and the filters that we got from them actually were made at the same place that made the really good filters for the lab. they were at the time just reboxed... Chemex was developed by Chemists for their own use... it, like many other lab related items were simply "Discovered" because someone visited a lab and went WOW!!!! THAT is COOL!!! when the creators were just being themselves... take Post It's, and Kevlar as an example... those, unlike Chemex were mistakes gone horribly right... whereas Chemex was born of necessity... think of a Lab without Caffeine?
I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! E. A. Poe
make
make install
The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life. -FZ
here's my preferred method, optimized for laziness:
1. get a scoop that is perfectly sized to the amount of coffee you want in one cup
2. Sit your mug in the sink and run hot water out of the tap into your mug until you get hot water and a hot mug
3. While that is going on, scoop one scoop of ground coffee into a 1 cup sized french press
4. Pour the hot water into the press from the mug
5. Put the lid on the press but leave the plunger at the top
6. Jiggle the press to break up the clump of grounds at the top
7. Wait an irrelevant amount of time, anywhere from 10 seconds to a few minutes
8. Press the plunger down, pour the coffee into the hot mug
9. Rinse the press
10. Drink
11. STFU and quit being coffee snobs. Most of your theories regarding how to make coffee would not stand up to scientific testing. Congratulations, you're experts on your own opinions.
Question everything
The biggest thing is the fresh grind. Pre-ground coffee is just awful.
Using green beans means you can buy in bulk and not worry about freshness; green beans last for a long time.
One day I'll buy a proper espresso machine, but I just don't have a spare $AU 2k+ to drop on that at the moment.
Coming from a city which was virtually colonised by Italians in the 1950s, I have grown used to coffee made using an espresso machine, and don't drink coffee made by any other means.
The problem is that having an espresso machine and knowing how to use it are two different things. In Melbourne, pretty much any cafe (at least in the inner city) will have staff who can make a decent cup of coffee. In London (where I live now), every cafe/bar has an espresso machine, but the quality of the coffee is often much worse. (Especially in chain cafes with conspicuously Italian names like Costa.)
Apparently, making a good espresso comes down to three things: having 15 bars of steam pressure, having sharp blades when grinding the beans (blunt blades burn the beans, making for bitter coffee) and making the coffee short (i.e., running relatively little steam/water through the ground beans; a common mistake is to run lots of water through them).
I generally drink a toddy brewed with Ethiopian beans roasted (with a hot air roaster) and ground at home. This is a very sweet and complex cup and very easy on the stomach. Honestly, I would prefer a ristretto in milk with the same beans and a better grinder. That extracts more of the flavor. But a good espresso machine is not yet in my cards. Someday.
Good post, more people should be aware of cold brew. It's a great cup, relatively cheap and easy, so quite cost-competitive with the muddy piss generally drunk around here (US) giving everyone heartburn.
Coffee filters are about
Then I fill a cup with hot water from the coffee machine (failing that I fill a cup and microwave it to boiling).
Then I make my coffee like tea- dipping the bag and taking it in and out of the water until it is ready.
I can also let the coffee bag steep for a while until it is cool enough to drink.
My poison of preference is medium roast folgers. I'm told "brown gold" is a very good premium like coffee for only about $15 a can. I pay $6 for mine for 2 pounds ($3 a pound). I can't imagine what they pay for the dark roast they provide for free because it is not as good as $6 coffee.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
After you carefully grind(not chop) your beans, you have to have a coffee maker with an insulated caraf so that the only heating is done to the water in the brewing process. Heating plates under brewed coffee burn the delicate brew and cause to be released all of the acids that make coffe bitter and undrinkable. The best maker I have found is the Black and Decker space saver with insulated caraf. Another thing to remember is, Don't scrimp on the beans. Life is too short to drink lousy coffee
But then again, don't take my advice, just look at my /. ID.
1011 1010 1101 1100 0000 1111 1111 1110 1110
1. Lay on couch.
2. Ask girlfriend for coffee.
3. Wait
4. Coffee magically appears.
Apparently this is the rage in Australia right now. Cat Poo Coffee:
S YD8159120070516?src=051607_0854_ARTICLE_PROMO_also _on_reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUS
Bunch of Savages, I tell ya.
I am a rather heavy user when it comes to coffee. I would say that of the four variables one can control when extracting coffee (age of roasted bean, extraction method, water temperature, grind coarseness), age of the roasted bean is the most critical. The flavorful chemical compounds which give coffee its more subtle flavors decay quickly, leaving the user with only the "pine-tar" and "charcoal" flavors in as little as 3 weeks after roasting. If anyone's interested in my thoughts at length, I actually have a blog entry on the subject on my MySpace page: www.myspace.com/nickjeswald
I am a serious Arabic coffee drinker. Hurray to find another on Slashdot!!
In my opinion there is no need to add sugar. The Cardamom is kind of a sweet taste. But perhaps a slight, slight touch of sugar may bring out the Cardamom a little more?
I elaborate on my own method below:
- Put 1 measuring cup of water in a middle-eastern coffee making pot. This can be like a tall narrow saucepan, but it is more frequently shaped like a cone with the wide part at the base and a long metal handle at the top openning. (In emergency or simply to try out Arabic coffee I would go ahead and use the smallest saucepan I have.)
- Put in 1 level tablespoon of Arabic coffee that has the cardamom. Brands can be Najjar or Tazah or others. I prefer Tazah if you can get it. More or less to taste once you've tried it, but more loses the nuances of flavor quickly.
- If Arabic brands cannot be found, make your own coffee by purchasing the best French roast your local roaster can recommend, have it ground to the finest Turkish setting possible. The coffee should truly, truly be a powder. When you measure out the tablespoon, add a crushed cardamom seed.
- Bring to boil on stove. When the coffee begins to foam up, use the long handle to swing the pot away from the heat. When to foam goes down, swing it back. Repeat this until the coffee boils without foaming.
- The cooking is done. Wait for about 1 to 2 minute with the pot covered for the grounds to settle. Decant into some kind of tiny cup: if not an Arabic coffee cup, then an espresso cup or classical demi-tasse will do. You should get about 3 to 4 of these little servings.
As you sip, the serving of coffee is done once you start to get to the grounds. At that point fortune telling may be engaged in - I prefer to serve myself another.
The best thing you can do for your coffee drinking is to go to Sweet Maria's - a home coffee roasting/hobbyist site, that specializes in providing people the most/best ways to drink their coffee. I currently have the following brew devices in my house.
I roast my coffee with a $10 popcorn popper and get better tasting coffee than I can from any place in Austin.
I keep my whole beans in the freezer. About once a week I refill the ~2 cup hopper in my burr grinder. I grind the beans very fine just before use and put the fresh grounds in one of those gold plated filter baskets. I use a 20-year-old 10/12-cup Mr. Coffee. I use distilled water (I also have a 1 gallon distiller) so there's no lime or other dissolved minerals to clog the innards of the Mr. Coffee or to taint the flavor of the brewed coffee. In 15 minutes I have a pot of rich, full-flavored coffee ready for my thermos. Cleanup is a snap because the used grounds are so fine they go right down the disposal.
My personal preference is Hawaiian Kona coffee. I'm afraid such coffee is sold under false pretenses though because it typically contains only 10% Kona beans. The other 90% could be sawdust for all I know.
I'd like to clarify that "fresh" beans are beans that were ROASTED RECENTLY. Almost all beans come to the USA from distant locations, and are shipped in green bean form. Starbucks (for example), roasts all their beans in Seattle and then ships them nationwide. Dunn Bros. (google them if you're curious) roasts beans in each of their coffee shops almost every day. Before I stopped drinking coffee/caffiene I was buying all my coffee from them because the flavor was insanely great. I'm convinced that the intensity of the flavor of coffee has a *lot* to do with how recently (and how carefully) it was roasted. If the beans are greasy or sweaty looking, don't waste your time.
I ground my own whole beans and I also eventually started using a Melita system to brew. Melita makes filters, but they also make these filter-holder thingys that can sit on top of a pot or cup. You boil water, then pour HOT water on the fresh ground coffee. DAMN that was GOOD!
I prefer a dirty sock and pot of boiling jack daniels, or even dirty under shorts and boiling vokda!
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
- boil coarse grind in a pot, shoot a little cold water at the end to settle the grounds (cowboy coffee)
- boil coarse grind in a pot with chicory, egg, and eggshells. (you don't drink the egg nor the eggshells)
- filter drip, either filter over cup, coffee maker, or whatever.
- French press
- percolator
- Arabic coffee with touch of cardamom boiled in a middle eastern coffee pot
- Turkish coffee boiled in middle eastern coffee pot
- Greek coffee with a load of sugar boiled in middle eastern coffee pot
- Vietnamese dripped through a Vietnamese dripper over a cup with condensed milk at the bottom (my god it is the best desert coffee)
Those are the ones I have the equipment for and know how to do. The following might be the best in the world, but as yet I depend upon a local restaurant family for the practice:
- Etheopian: green coffee beans, roasted by hand in a special skillet, brought out while still smoking so that the aroma can be enjoyed in order to stimulate anticipation, ground and boiled in a clay flask that is spherical on the bottom and has a very narrow neck, the neck of the flask stuffed with woody fibrous substance as a filter, then finally decanted into tiny cups. the flask is rested in a round loop of basketry.
You might be a geek, but you have taste, so you need the ultimate coffee utility accessory, a $25 plastic AeroPress espresso maker, made by the fine folks who make frisbees and whoopee cushions. http://aerobie.com/Products/aeropress.htm
s h-you-were-this-cool, handmade coffee.
I have two of these, one at home (that we also take camping) and one at the office that I let the hot chicks use from time to time.
Now, just buy a bag of fresh beans at your local *bucks, have them grind it to espresso settings, stick it in a tupperware and start impressing the ladies in your office with your sweet smelling, great tasting, only-I-have-it-and-you-jackholes-in-accounting-wi
I recently bought a basic home coffee roaster (Freshroast Plus 8) and grinder (Gaggia MM Burr Grinder) and a selection of unroasted green coffee beans.
The difference is incredible... even the bean varieties I ended up liking *least* are noticeably better than the best gourmet coffees I'd had before. The beans I like *best*... well it's an entirely different beverage.
I dont use anything special to do the brewing, in fact, Im still using the same devices Ive had for years... a very basic drip coffee maker (I think I bought it from Sears), a very basic Black & Decker espresso maker, and a one-cup bodum.
From what Ive observed so far, the bean variety, darkness of roast, and fineness of grind seem to make far more of a difference in the end-product than the device used for brewing. I may someday try out some fancier brewers to compare, but for now I dont really see the need.
My favourite bean variety so far is Costa Rican "La Amistad". My s.o., who tends to likes stronger flavours than I do, has gone totally ballistic over Sulawesi Kolossi. Other beans weve enjoyed: Guatamalan Huehuetenango, Mexico Hacienda Miravalles, and a blend called Espresso Choco.
Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves. - Lord Byron
You can improve the quality of your coffee considerably by simply using fresh beans. It's easy to roast your own and I do so by using the drum/grill/rotisserie method.
The second way of improving your coffee is to ensure that the temperature of the water is at or near 200 degrees F. After that, simply go with which ever method you find the most convenient or "cool".
A low cost method to a great cup is the "Melita method" where you put the coffee in a filter in a holder over a cup and simply pour near boiling water over the top. Bring the water to a boil, then shut off the heat, wait until water stops boiling and then pour over the grounds in the filter. Doing it this way (like drip machines) prevents over extraction.
A real cool way of making coffee is using a vacuum brewer like a Yama or Bodum Santos. It's wicked fun and makes a great cup of coffee but requires a lot of clean up. Just like the Melita method, it makes coffee at the perfect temperature.
If you have a drip machine and you don't get great coffee from it, check the temperature. Find an instant read thermometer and check the water as it trickles into the basket. If your water temperature is low, then try cleaning the scale from the heating element using acetic acid or a coffee maker cleaner. If you can't get the temperature up to 190-200 degrees F, then you might want to buy a new coffee maker.
Nigga' puh-leeeeze. I just tell my biatch to go get me a Caffe Mocha from Starbuck's.
To answer the question point blank (my significant other would be shocked at a non-sit-on-the-fence initial answer): To get someone else to make it for me. Maybe it's because it so seldom happens - but coffee almost always tastes 'good' when someone else goes through the trouble to make it. And adding sugar can typically overcome any drastic abnormalities present.
However - I'll agree with many previous posters on 2 points.
1. Grind freshly roasted coffee. I buy my 'daily runner' in bulk from Costco. Yes! Costco - the store near me roasts their own -daily-. And buying 2 1/2 pounds of Costa Rican (french roasted) for $8!? I can't roast my own cheaper without buying in crazy amounts (I'm not about to sacrifice all the space taken up by my packrat collection of computer paraphenalia for some 25-50lb bags of green beans).
And then grind it for your specific application
- french press; my favorite, though takes more time
- espresso; I use a pump driven refurbished 'barista' model - 2nd highest rating for the $500 market - it's been used multiple times a day for 3 years now, and was ~$200 to buy, no problems yet
- drip; if using paper filter, wet it prior to dumping your grind in, try to upgrade to thermal carafe so your coffee doesn't cook and turn bitter
- vacuum pot; this wanna-be coffee snob doesn't have that yet
2. Roast your own. This presumes you already have a grinder (and not a burr/whip grinder - limited control with those). Perhaps the most time-consuming, but you have the most quality control. I feel the learning curve is somewhat steep (every bean roasts differently, your roaster is different than mine, as is your local ambient temperature and humidity).
So for those with discerning taste, free time, disposable income and patience - roasting and grinding is still the best way to go imho. Of course it'll still taste better if you can get someone else to brew it for you.
1. Buy high-quality, vetted green coffee beans either from a reputable local specialty roaster *who roasts their own beans either daily or every other day,* or from www.sweetmarias.com.
2. Roast your own beans. You can get away with a popcorn popper. I do. A small convection drum-roaster costs a few hundred but is worth it if you can control the temperature during the roast. A 6-12 hour resting period *exposed to the air* works well, but experimentation will give you best results since *EVERY* green coffee bean lot no matter what it's labelled is different. Even the same coffee growers from year to year can be drastically different. The length of time it stays in port affects it. What it's sitting next to at port will affect it. Let someone else worry about that stuff. STAY AWAY FROM SUPERMARKET COFFEE. Gross!
3. Grind your beans *only just the instant* prior to brewing. I use a burr hand-grinder. It's a Peuguot "Nostalgie". Lifetime guarantees rule. Zasserhaus also makes good hand-grinders. DO NOT USE whirly blade grinders. Those pulverise and powder.
4. Brew in as simple, and therefore cleanable, device as possible. French Press is popular in part because it's easy to keep the mechanism clean and it produces wild and tasty flavours. A vacuum brewer works, and I've heard great things about the AeroPress if you're impatient, want a filter, or have bad cholesterol.
5. Drink. Most of the coffee you brew this way actually tastes better with no cream nor sugar.
If you roast, grind, and brew as above, you will never be able to drink another Starbucks again. Every other cup of coffee you taste will be flat and boring at best, or vile on average, or revolting enough to make you gag at worst.
People who say they don't drink coffee--will drink your coffee. You will obsessively pursue the best green beans, and will begin opening up that gourmet side of yourself you never knew existed. The richness, the amazing quality, will absolutely blow you away.
Above all, EXPERIMENT. Apply a little scientific method, and keep logbooks. It's a great hobby too!
I use it a lot too. Easy to do on weekends and makes enough for a week. I like the lack of "bite" even though some complain about that, it is smoother tasting. Also fairly cheap and strongly flavored. It also gives a good base for fancy drinks with frothed milk (an immersion blender will do reasonably well) and iced drinks (I like to keep a simple suryp for sweeting). Iced being easy is a big bonus in Florida.
REI sells a light lexan french press for making coffee on the trail.
Here's one: http://www.rei.com/product/629245
but I bought one with a insulation sleeve.
They also sell a ball the makes ice cream while you hike. I might have to get one of those.
I like making coffee using home-ground whole beans and a standard drip maker.
:)
And look at my name, that i've had for years, I know.
Ever since going to Italy last summer I have found myself unable to drink regular filter coffee -and the 'gourmet' free by the cup stuff at work tastes insipid.
We stayed a week outside Sienna, so in the course of shopping at the local Hypermart we discovered Illy coffee and I have never looked back.....
Too bad it's about 12$ for 8oz, but nothing tastes quite as good.
Alternatives are: pre-ground Medaglio D'oro from Safeway
AND French Roast whole beans from FRYs!!! for 6$ a pound -can't beat the price!
-I'm just sayin'
I have one of those too, but I eventually stopped using it... for those who haven't seen them, they combine the coffeemaker and grinder into one unit. You put in the beans, filter, and water in the appropriate spots and turn on. The grinder grinds the beans, and once they get small enough to pass through a certain size mesh, they fly out of the grinder, though a little tube, and into the filter basket. Once grinding is done, it perks as usual.
It makes really good coffee, but the problem is that steam from the perking process gets up into the grinder and tube part, and it becomes a real bitch to get the slightly soggy coffee ground dust cleaned out of there. I switched to a Chemex pot and I've been a lot happier.
- Freshness of the roasted bean:
- Grinding technique of the bean:
- Water temperature and pressure:
Finally you need a good bean provider. If anyone is interested I do a small bit of roasting myself, most of the time I make a bit of a surplus and sell the bags to my friends (it just isn't worth it to roast a tiny amount of beans..far too time consuming) to recoup equipment costs.There is little that you can do to determine how long ago the bean was picked. It is possible however, to approximate how long ago the bean was roasted. After the roasting process a bag of roasted coffee beans will continue releasing small amounts of CO2. Simply take a look at your bag of coffee, it should be puffy. If the bag is not puffy the beans are no longer releasing CO2, furthermore enough time has elapsed so that the pressure inside the bag has been relieved. This bag of coffee is no longer fresh.
This is more important for espressos but it may affect the quality of drip etc. There are two primary techniques for the grinding of the coffee, the two cylinder burr grinder and the conical bur grinder. Conical bur grinders are superior. The reason is as follows: cylinder burr grinders take in a bean and forcefully crush it, this causes a high amount of heat due to friction and can scorch the grounded coffee. Furthermore you do not have control of coffee grain size and coffee grain size can be wildly inconsistent.
Conical burr grinders work by allowing beans to fall within a small crevice, the conical burrs then chip away a small portion of the bean. Grains small enough fall through a small gap. This chipping away process flings a chipped bean up and away from the burrs, allowing the bean sufficient time to cool. Furthermore the gap size can be modified, this allows control of grain size. Grain size consistency is also superior. This is important mostly for espresso as your coffee mat density should be uniform. A uniform density allows the even distribution of water pressure across the surface, allowing the maximum extraction of flavor from the grain substrate.
Again this is more important for espresso but it applies to drip as well. Water temperature will directly affect the fullness of the flavor, too cold and you'll be drinking water. Too hot and you'll burn the beans and extract contaminants (which taste like ass). Most drip coffee makers do not make the water hot enough to extract the full flavor.
Water pressure is much more important for espresso, discussion of water pressure for espresso is beyond the scope of this post.
If anyone is interested in these surplus bags you can shoot me an E-mail at CoffeeEmeritus@gmail.com
You take a pound of coffee, a gallon of water then boil it 'till a horseshoe floats.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I can and will fully endorse roasting your own beans. The trick is to:
a. find some green Costa Rican Tarrazu;
b. roast it yourself, to a medium [2nd "crack" + 10 seconds][any longer and your just burning the oil (READ: Starbucks)]
- ensuring that you let the roast cool (most important to facilitate co-mingling of all chemical compounds) for 20 seconds between cracks;
c. cool it down as fast as possible [large fan];
d. let it rest overnight;
e. grind just prior to brewing; and
f. use metal screen filter (paper traps the oil/flavor).
Absolutely, consume your fresh roasted beans within 2-3 days. Anything approaching a week is already starting to turn rancid !
I can guarantee you'll never go back to a tin can of ground crap.
cheers, from Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada
'Ole
What I don't get in this talk about freshness being essential is when people drank coffee in its first waves of popularity it traveled to places like England slowly in sailing ships. How did this super freshness get preserved then?
I imagine the old names like Taylors of Harrogate must have been roasters and done the work locally.
I'm sorry..
But the spelling 'Columbia' has absolutely bugger all to do with the district or the state. It's spelled 'Columbia' in quite a lot of languages (as in the country that in english is called 'Colombia'), so it really isn't a point of mixing up 2 names, rather than not knowing/using the actual english name for the same country.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I have just bought an aeropress to get me started on the move to good coffee. I can't really afford a good quality burr grinder right now, but would I be better off:
- buying a cheaper one (with blades or whatever) which would give me a fresh, albeit lower-quality grind?
- not bothering and getting it ground in the shop by their better machine, but having it not being as fresh by the time I use it?
All (sensible) comments welcome.The Gaggia Espresso is a respectable machine that can be had for $219 at Sweet Marias. The internals are the same as the $500 Gaggia units but the housing isn't a nice polished chrome. Would I be better off with a a Silvia? Maybe, but maybe not. See, I'd want to start dumping money into a Silvia by adding a PID and other junk that will just drain my wallet for marginal gains. I've been down this road with audiophile gear before and I just don't want do do it with coffee. With audiophile gear it got to the point where I was just hearing the noise and distortion in my system and not listening to the music. I don't want my coffee experience to be the same. (I can draw a LOT of parallels between audiophiles and espresso nazis.)
I haven't dropped the $250 on the Gaggia not because I haven't saved enough but rather because I don't see that making espresso at home is worth $250 let alone $500. However, I recently moved and now have a coffee shop about 3 blocks away and can see how my espresso habit is starting to cost me.
As for my grinder... I feel it is very capable of producing an excellent espresso grind. I got an exceptional deal on this old school Zassenhaus that looks as if it was used twice before I got it and stored somewhere with non-existent humidity. The burrs are in incredible shape for a 25+ year old machine. It produces an unbelievably fine and consistent powder. I will, however, concede that I will need to modify it a bit to keep the burr adjustment from moving around on in mid-grind at that fine of a setting but this is rather trivial and certainly worth the $100+ I save over even a new, decent quality entry-level grinder. If I'm not about to drop $500 on an espresso machine, I sure as hell am not going to drop $300 on a Rocky.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I enjoy mochas. When dropping the shots into a cup of hot chocolate, a good bit of that quality is muddled-up with the other flavors. I have no doubt that the Gaggia with my Zassenhaus would produce a higher quality mocha than what I can buy in town (especially when you consider that I roast my own).
Bugger that. Your argument is flawed because we weren't even talking in a multilingual sense. Last I checked this thread was in English and therefore people would be typing "Colombian coffee". Colombia the Country is spelled Colombia in English... and Spanish too! (And as a Colombian I an surprised to hear that anyone would spell our country as "Columbia". Any proof? it would be interesting to see...) I was also not inferring they were mixing up Colombia the country for Columbia the city in SC. I was inferring that they couldn't spell.
On that note...
If we were talking about Japanese coffee and all of sudden you spelled Japan as "Japon" because you were talking about it with a Spanish spelling I would still tell you that you are wrong. Why? This conversation is in English, thats why.
In the context of the English language the country is spelled Colombia. That was my point and you nitpicked it like an idiot. It does with having to know the difference between the District of Columbia, Columbia, South Carolina, and Colombia, South America.