Teach me About Coffee.

[Eric!]

Wow James, I'm taking a lot of your advice :D

[smallsnd/bigsnd]

+1 for a french press. the only way to drink coffee in my opinion... get the bigger one and make a full pot, drink half one day then just put it in the fridge as is overnight - enjoy some iced coffee in the morning!

Holy crap, either your bigger one is huge or I have a problem ... mine holds a litre and I usually go through 3 or 4 full pots of the stuff a day.

damn son...

[colin]

Very informative, I really need to start brewing my own coffee. In the meantime though, I need to go through the Tim Hortons drive-thru right now.

[adrianlee]

Very informative, I really need to start brewing my own coffee. In the meantime though, I need to go through the Tim Hortons drive-thru right now.

I'm making a pot right now. Man, this is a lot of great info.

[nbabmf]

Any of you dudes drink coffee brewed from the beans that some little rodent swallowed while and shit out?

[modernage]

Ooow! oow! I want to join coffee talk! You wouldn't think so but Nashville has a great up and coming coffee culture. A large number of my friends are baristas (albeit some of them work at Starbucks, so it doesn't count for as much (believe me, I know. I used to work there myself)), so the topic tends to come up often. I think topic of roasting has been covered well (elbandito ). I just wanted to add and expand on the topic of brew methods.

1. Drip
This could be broken down further to two subgroups AUTO and MANUAL. While it's true that this method as a whole does miss out on the oils that impact the flavor in a great way, it doesn't mean that your coffee needs to be bland and disgusting.

Auto
This is you is your average Joe's cup of joe. Like already stated, coffee brewed this way is absolute rubbish. Throw away your coffee makers if this is your main source of coffee. Your taste buds will thank you. There are coffee makers out there that doesn't suck, you just need to do a lot of research to find the one. Chances are if you got your coffee maker from Walmart for $15 it sucks.

Manual
There are some other forms of the drip brew method that a lot of people don't know about. There are actually a few ways of brewing using this method that doesn't make you want to hide the coffee taste with cream and sugar. You'll still miss out on some of the flavors from the oils not making it in your cup, but then again some people prefer a cleaner brew.

If you want a quick cup of coffee before running out to work at the butt crack of dawn a good alternative is trying...

Manual Drip Cone



It works the same as an auto-drip machine, but instead of dripping into a pot it drips into your cup. You just have more control over the brewing process, which will allow you to tweak your method as you become more familiar in the evolution of coffee perfection. Stay away from the plastic ones. When it comes to coffee I always try to stay away from plastics. Try to find one made of porcelain or glass, and no paper filters. Most of them tend to add flavors that shouldn't be there. Most snobs will either use a permanent filter like this:


...or a cloth filter similar to this:


That last picture is a good segue to the next type of manual drip brewing...

Chemex



Chemex works the same as the above drip cone, but takes a bit more practice to get just right. The process also takes a bit longer, but you can make more at time. Plus it's more elegant, and impressive when friends come over. If you're a slow sipper, and you often find yourself drinking coffee that is cold, you'll notice as the coffee gets colder it also gets more bitter. The great thing about Chemex is since it's such a clean brew (no oils, no coffee sediments) it taste just as good cold as it does hot.



2. Aeropress

Think about the name and you'll have a good idea of how it works. I've only had aeropress coffee once, and it was from a $6,000 Clover machine from a coffee shop in St. Louis. It's extremely difficult to find a coffee shop with one of these machines. This isn't something you're going to find at Starbucks, which is ironic because Starbucks bought out Clover. Actually I believe Starbucks is starting to put them in some of their stores.

If you ever walk in to a coffee shop and you see a machine that looks like this...

give it a try. Then you can brag to all your coffee nerd friends that you've had a better cup of coffee than them.

You can get similar results at home from a company called Aerobie.



3. Turkish Coffee

This process starts with grinding your beans extremely fine. Even more fine than you would for espresso... until it's like powdered sugar. Then you mix your grounds into a small copper pot (aka: ibrik) with cold water and a healthy dose of sugar, and heat up over the stove top. Middle Easterners will sometimes add spices to the mix before heating too.

My ibrik looks a lot like the 2nd one from the left.


There's an old proverb that refers to Turkish coffee: "Coffee should be as black as hell, as strong as death, and as sweet as love". Another fun fact: the grounds left behind can be used in a kind of fortune telling called tasseography.



4. Cowboy Coffee

This way is only for real men! Preferably prepared after a nice deep sleep after a night in the wilderness. Dump some grounds into a pot and heat over an open fire. This results in a wonderful sludgey cup of coffee. Don't be a pussy. Drink it all, grounds and everything!



I think there are another method or two, but I don't want to think anymore. I neeeeed to go make some coffee! Now where did I put my ibrik?

[adrianlee]

I think there are another method or two, but I don't want to think anymore. I neeeeed to go make some coffee! Now where did I put my ibrik?

Did you sell it to fund your El Cappo purchase?

[elbandito]

Thanks for that, Modernage. I've never tried an Ibrik but I think I'd like to. It reminds me of the Matte cup that I got in Argentina (I'll save my tea knowledge for another thread). Can you give us more details on how the Chemex thing works?

Also, what does everybody put in their coffee? Myself, I'm lactose intolerant (& soy milk sucks!), so I usually just take my coffee black with a sugar or two. When I'm at home though, I tend to get fancy. I like to shave some nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves and throw them in, when I'm using a french press... I imagine it'd work well in an Ibrik as well.

I've tried just about everything to try to create a fancy coffee experience for myself, to replace the lack of milkness. Lemon rind, various teas, almost every spice you can think of... What crazy things have you guys tried?

[bigchiefbc]

Also, what does everybody put in their coffee? Myself, I'm lactose intolerant (& soy milk sucks!), so I usually just take my coffee black with a sugar or two. When I'm at home though, I tend to get fancy. I like to shave some nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves and throw them in, when I'm using a french press... I imagine it'd work well in an Ibrik as well.

I've tried just about everything to try to create a fancy coffee experience for myself, to replace the lack of milkness. Lemon rind, various teas, almost every spice you can think of... What crazy things have you guys tried?

As I said, I pretty much only drink espresso and cappucino, I almost never make coffee at home. I usually make espresso two shots a time, and use half a packet of sugar total with the 2 shots, just to take the edge off a bit.

One thing I've been doing recently which has been delicious, is grind up a half-teaspoon or so of cocoa nibs with the espresso.

[Eric!]

Did you sell it to fund your El Cappo purchase?

Ha, it's catching on!

I drink mine black, pretty much always. Milk or creamer just seem to drown the flavors, and sugar just isn't natural in such a bitter beverage

[adrianlee]

Thanks for that, Modernage. I've never tried an Ibrik but I think I'd like to. It reminds me of the Matte cup that I got in Argentina (I'll save my tea knowledge for another thread). Can you give us more details on how the Chemex thing works?

Also, what does everybody put in their coffee? Myself, I'm lactose intolerant (& soy milk sucks!), so I usually just take my coffee black with a sugar or two. When I'm at home though, I tend to get fancy. I like to shave some nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves and throw them in, when I'm using a french press... I imagine it'd work well in an Ibrik as well.

I've tried just about everything to try to create a fancy coffee experience for myself, to replace the lack of milkness. Lemon rind, various teas, almost every spice you can think of... What crazy things have you guys tried?

I'll usually go black, but, if i REALLY want coffee right away, i'll throw some very vanilla soy milk in it to cool it down.

I very seldom add a sugar.

[warwick.hoy]

The Chemex method looks quite interesting,...I've never seen that before.

and Starbucks is the McDonalds of the espresso world. There are about 30 Starbucks in my town which has a county wide population of about 125,000 people. It's utter crap and I will only drink it in a pinch which has occurred maybe twice in my lifetime.

[modernage]

I think there are another method or two, but I don't want to think anymore. I neeeeed to go make some coffee! Now where did I put my ibrik?

Did you sell it to fund your El Cappo purchase?

I found it! [phew] It's hard to remember what happened after you recover from blindness by a passionate case of GAS. It was in the cupboard above the stove... right next to my wife's coffee maker that I hid, after she realized that she'd rather wake up an extra 5 mins earlier (or wake me up) in order to make the french press. Perhaps she was avenging her coffee maker.

Can you give us more details on how the Chemex thing works?

I'll do you one better. Here's a video by the gods of the coffee world, Intelligentsia!

Look how sexy and fun they make it!!!

Also in my rush to go make a cup of blackened blood this morning I forgot one of the most interesting brew methods. This one is for all the mad scientists (including you Ryan!)...
I Present to you......
The Vacuum Pot!!!

Science at its greatest!

[modernage]

As for me and my preferences... well they've evolved quite a bit from when I first discovered the java juice. In the beginning, many moons ago, I would only drink a bit of coffee with my french vanilla coffee-mate. It was rather barbaric. Then I would have the occasional caramel macchiato from Starbucks.

:fasts forward through time:

I now enjoy the flavor of coffee so much that I rarely add anything to it. Coffee and bourbon to me are very similar. When the quality is high I enjoy drinking it straight, but as the quality dwindles I have to add things to it in order to mask the suckyness.

This is a fairly accurate graphical representation of how I consume my coffee:



I make the french press at home almost on a daily occurrence. Once a week I'll walk down to the coffee shop a block from my house and get an americano. If I'm running errands, and it's brutally hot outside, I will get it on ice. If I get iced coffee I will add a splash of cream to take away a bit of the edge from it being brewed more strong than normal.

When I want to get creative/fancy, I usually do it at home in the evening... usually after dinner when friends are over... hence it being referred to as "dessert coffee". When everyone's in the mood for it I'll do something along the lines of this...

- brew some coffee with the french press (love that flavor).
- take my milk frother from Williams Sonoma

- fill it with either 1/2 & 1/2 or heavy whipping cream. Then add syrup flavoring (vanilla, peppermint or caramel).
- depending on my mood I'll then warm it up (for extra thick whip cream), or leave it cold (for a nice contrast in temp to the coffee)
- then whip that junk up.
- after I get some good whip cream, I'll scoop it onto the cup of coffee.
- finally I'll sprinkle some sugar in the raw on top of it all. Depending on how I prepped the whip I'll have one of two outcomes. 1.) if the whip was warmed the sugar will begin to melt and caramelize. 2.) if the whip was left cold, the sugar will add a nice crunchy effect. Either way you get added flavor mojo!
- I'll also do cinnamon or nutmeg... especially during the winter holidays.

Now my "Other" slice of the pie will usually consist of making turkish coffee or stove top espresso, Chemex at a friends' house, or your typical crappy coffee from a restaurant.

[modernage]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2RPo2cVjd4[/youtube]