What is Your Favorite Way to Make Coffee? 592
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?"
It's the roast that matters the most (Score:5, Interesting)
Toddy (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
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.
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.
I feel left out... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's the roast that matters the most (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I like strong-bodied, lower acid coffees fairly dark roasted. Fortunately, we have a roaster/cafe in the neighborhood who will roast to order. My preferred method of preparation is a black americano w/ an extra shot or, when it's warm out, an iced americano. Every time I introduce a brewed strong dark coffee aficionado to americano, they have switched. The only problem is that a competent espresso machine is pretty expensive.
Re:Fresh ground (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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....
Re:Chemex (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:New World Italian Style (Score:3, Interesting)
I second that. Moka pot does not make espresso though. It is something else, really an espresso like only much better and often stronger then espresso. Myself, I grind my coffee beens not as fine as for espresso making and tap it a bit with a spoon. The main trick is really to use very low flame and take it off as soon as it is done. It may take a while to make but result is well worth it, especially at the morning. I have electric stove which is hard to control. Instead I use this backpacking stove [rei.com]. Try the moka pot. Experiment with different beens, coarseness of the grinding, packing, etc. It is much better than any stuff from Peets or Starbucks.
Re:Fresh ground (Score:2, Interesting)
And stay away from the non-stick kind since the lining will burn off at the kind of temperature it will reach to roast your beans properly (and if you have any caged birds, they will get ill and die even after a few moments' exposure to decomposing Teflon).
Re:Fresh ground (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:After working at Starbucks for 3 years, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fresh ground (Score:3, Interesting)
How much for a 25 lb bag of beans? Costco has 2.5 lb bags for $8 or $9, MUCH cheaper that the supermarkets, and they are roasting it right there. Is the deal better than that?
Best ask.slashdot ever.
Re:After working at Starbucks for 3 years, (Score:3, Interesting)
As a user of a La Pavoni Europiccola, I would have to respectfully quibble. Pulling by hand puts you in the driver's seat. Yes, it isn't as easy or convenient as a pump-powered machine, but for my purposes (only 2-3 doubles at a time) it can't be beat.
The keys to good espresso:
That's not to say that a decent pump-powered machine is bad, I just prefer that final bit of control over the pull.
Arabic coffee, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Fresh ground (Score:2, Interesting)