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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.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
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.
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....
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
- 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
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
Turkish Coffee. Definitely my favorite, but rarely make it these days. I get mine from this site:
u ct_id=14&item_id=34&cat_id=3
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.
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).
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I like to push the GO button on the coffee machine at work.
Indeed, I love french press coffee, but the whole cafestol situation is pretty sad. They've done the experiments, given french press coffee to one group, and drip coffee to another, and after 6 months the french press drinkers had about 10% more LDL cholesterol. Here's the study, and a non-technical blurb. There's also a lengthy review I haven't gotten around to reading yet.
I don't know what to do. Going back to drip coffee would make me awfully sad, but better to be sad than prematurely dead.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
Just get a jar of Sanka http://www.shopping.com/xDN-food_and_drinks-sanka_ coffee and make it medium weak. Then, grind up two No-Doz http://www.novartis.com/consumerhealth/OTC/NoDoz.s html and a Commit Nicotine lozenge http://www.commitlozenge.com/ and put them in the coffee. Chase it with some Tequila, and that's all you need every morning to get you ready to take on the world. The ENTIRE world.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I drink tea.
"A deadlock has been reached. One task must die. We must now choose between murder and suicide."
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!
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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....
I lived in Hawaii for two years. I drank pure Kona often, hoping that I was just missing something, that the next cup would be great. It never was. Kona is a coffee with no outstanding flavor notes, medium body, and medium acidity. But fresh cofee, even boring Kona, is going to be good.
The only reason Kona is special is that it is the only coffee grown in the US.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
[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 =)
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
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.
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.
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