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What is Your Favorite Way to Make Coffee?
Posted by
Cliff
on Wed May 16, 2007 06:25 PM
from the good-to-the-last-drop dept.
from the good-to-the-last-drop dept.
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?"
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Fresh ground (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Fresh ground (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Fresh ground (Score:5, Informative)
I have discovered that buying good high grade single crop coffee beans is far cheaper in bulk, it also ensure freshness from the roaster. Problem, I cant drink 25 pounds of beans in time.
I came across a solution that works very well. I use cleaned and sanatized 3 liter pop bottles. I fill them with beans and then by using a modified cap I seal them up and charge them with Co2. Getting the air out is not important.Gassing them with co2 from a tube can do that but keeping them under pressure with a high concentration of Co2 is important. I then store them in the basement wher e they are in the dark and in a cool place (66 degrees F.)
They amazingly stay incredibly fresh. Way fresher after 6 months than a new bag of starbucks beans at a grocery store (starbucks beans suck to begin with but that's a roasting problem).
It really works! you can easily make a cap or a modified neck of the 3 liter bottle to have a co2 inlet valve. I get my high grade coffee at way lower prices than you can in the stores or "shops", It's far fresher as they ship directly from the roaster company. and I found a way to store for long duration.
the "vacuum" packed crap is a gimmick you do not want a vaccuum you want pressure and co2 to fight the loss of the co2 in the beans.
Parent
It's the roast that matters the most (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's the roast that matters the most (Score:5, Interesting)
Roast is important, not the method, but how dark. To taste the varietal flavors best, a full city roast is recommended. Any lighter and it will have more hay-like or grassy notes than varietal flavors, any darker and the bittersweet taste of the roast will dominate the varietal flavors.
As I said below, the absolute, in fact, the only thing is the amount of time between roasting, grinding, and brewing. I guarantee, 90% of coffee drinkers out there have never really tasted coffee. Once you have tried coffee straight from the roaster, you will know what I mean.
You can roast your own beans at home if you can find green beans. Most coffee roasters will be more than happy to sell you green beans, as coffee loses 10-25% of its weight during roasting, so they can make more money selling you unroasted beans at roasted bean prices.
You need a cast iron skillet and a hot stove. Just heat the skillet up as hot as you can get it and throw in enough beans for one pot. Stir until they are a couple of shades lighter than you normally want your coffee, then throw them into a metal bowl to cool. They will continue to darken as they cool. You will find the resulting cup of coffee tastes far more intense than any you have had previously.
Parent
Re:It's the roast that matters the most (Score:5, Informative)
Green beans are less than half the price of roasted beans. Green beans are available at several websites, just search on 'green coffee beans'.
Stovetop roasting is interesting, but it is difficult to produce an even roast. Using a hot air roaster, even an old hot air popcorn popper, will make a real difference in the final product.
Parent
Overrated? Kona? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Jamaica Blue Mountain (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org], 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....
Parent
Strong (Score:5, Funny)
Chemex (Score:5, Informative)
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!
Parent
After working at Starbucks for 3 years, (Score:5, Informative)
Re:After working at Starbucks for 3 years, (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Simplicity (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Jackoffee (Score:5, Funny)
Roast your own (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Wimps! (Score:5, Funny)
Real men suck on plugs of grounds. Liquid coffee's for sissies....
Divine Turkish Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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
Easy way (Score:5, Funny)
I'm your coffee answer man! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I'm your coffee answer man! (Score:5, Informative)
The important thing is to consume it right away, like within a week - in an airtight container, they say 14 days, but in my opinion its a little less.
And never freeze your coffee, like I've heard some people say. I've read that it is the release of carbon dioxide and other minerals that makes coffee go stale and lose its sweet taste. Freezing does delay this, however, freezing causes the air moisture, along with impurities in the air, to freeze on the coffee, and when thawed, leaves unpleasant flavors and aromas in the coffee. So don't freeze it unless the air in your freezer and between the coffee beans inside the container is completely free of impurities of any kind. The coffee will also more readily pick up any smells present when frozen.
Parent
Three favorites (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
My method (Score:5, Funny)
my personal setup (Score:5, Informative)
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.
New World Italian Style (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Use a press pot (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Parent