brewing coffee

[Sawney Beane]

I like to make coffee one cup at a time. I heat a pyrex cup of water nearly to a boil, throw in a tablespoon of coffee, stir, let it steep, and pour it through a fine plastic filter into my drinking cup.

My aunt prefers an electric percolator. She brought me her

48-ounce model to evaluate. Lately she has been using a smaller one. When she tried the big one, she found it wasn't brewing good coffee.

I used 24 ounces of water and three tablespoons of coffee. Perking took 4-1/2 minutes. Then I put the grounds in half a cup of water, boiled it, poured it through a filter, and drank it. That convinced me that the perking had already removed most of the flavor.

The coffee in the pot was reasonably dark, but it wasn't as flavorful as I'm used to. It's been so long since I've drunk perked coffee that for all I know *all* perked coffee tastes like this, but my aunt says it's inferior to the coffee from her other percolator.

What could be wrong? Can a defective percolator destroy much of the flavor as it perks?

[John McGaw]

Do you really mean "percolator"? One of the old devices that boils water in the bottom, shoots it up into the top where it drips through the grounds and mixes with the water, boils again, etc, etc? If so then the answer is likely that boiling coffee, under any circumstances, is not conducive to good flavour. That is why these devices have pretty much gone extinct. If you absolutely had to use a percolator (desert-island conditions maybe) then you need to adjust the amount of grounds to get the proper strength rather than boiling it longer which will just cause it to become even more bitter and burned.

If you want good coffee and are willing to do a minimum of work for it then you would be better off with a cone-type maker with a gold-metal filter (rather than the disposable paper) or a French-press which is my personal favorite. And for a step up you could start buying top-quality beans and grinding them fresh before each use, make sure that your water is perfect, using a fixed brewing time of 4 minutes and adjust the amount of grounds to get the proper strength, and controlling the temperature at which the water makes contact with the grounds (204-208F is optimum).

And yes, before you ask, I _am_ something of a coffee snob...

[Jerry Avins]

That's as may be, but I think I out-snob you. First, I hope those tablespoons were at least heaping. I use an ounce by weight for five coffee cups. (A cup is eight ounces, but the "cup" marks on coffee brewers are about six. If my coffee were ground coarsely enough to use with fine mesh filters, I would need more yet. Paper filters let me get more flavor grim the same beans by grinding them finer.

Jerry

[Commodore Joe Redcloud]

If you aren't roasting your own beans as needed, you really aren't much of a snob at all.

Coffee brewers? Oh BOY! They don't get the water hot enough to make coffee. You are drinking hot brown water. If you are settled on drip, get yourself a chemex. You'll have to boil the water separately, but the difference in the results is enormous. It's really pretty hard to top a french press for the best all around cup of coffee. It requires a bit more attention to get it right, though.

Commodore Joe Redcloud

[chickenwing]

I grind my own beans and use and esspresso maker for one cup at the time.

my cuisinart grinder will peel the beans and not just cut them up...it peels them down this is supposed to be the best way to grind the beans

[Dimitri]

Jerry,

Don't forget the average mug is 10 to 12 Oz.

Dimitri

[Sawney Beane]

That could be the answer, but I don't know why my aunt says her other percolator makes better coffee.

As it has always been possible to brew coffee like tea, I wonder why percolators were ever popular. Could it be that people liked the taste they produced?

An electric percolator is thermostatically controlled. I don't see how I could vary the perking time.

The coffee didn't taste burned or bitter, just weak. I have neighbors who make drip coffee with about 1 teaspoon of grounds per cup. That's weak for my taste. Once in a while they'll pour hot coffee in my cup when I haven't asked. If I'm in a hurry I'll add tap water to cool it. The coffee I perked today reminded me of that weak mixture. Maybe boiling destroyed flavor.

Is it worthwhile to try to slow the cooling of the water after contact? How do you measure the temperature? My infrared thermometer reads boiling water at 186 F because there's so much condensed steam above the surface.

What's wrong with paper filters?

When I visit relatives, they let me grind their top-quality beans before each use in their French press. I have a French press but prefer to brew it one cup at a time in a measuring cup. So far I haven't noticed a significant difference between their fresh-ground beans and my store-brand ground coffee.

[Dimitri]

Using the same coffee grind for, steeped, drip and percolate is a mistake as is using the same amount of coffee to water ratio.

Dimitri

[Joseph LIttleshoes]

[PanHandler]

Three grams per 6 oz. cup. Get an electronic scale for superior accuracy. Never use a blender type grinder like the Cuisinart - it makes too much coffee dust. Use a 'burr' type grinder, hand operated like the old fashioned wooden ones. Experiment to determine the correct coarseness. Sift the grinds to remove too-fine particles to avoid bitterness.THEN use a French press. As an alternative to a French press, get a vacuum type maker. Drip machines don't make the water hot enough and percolators continue rebrewing and boiling the coffee as long as you let it go.

[Walter R.]

How is this for frugality:

I use a $ 9 coffemaker made in China, a scoop from a can of ground coffee from Walmart, I only change the grounds once a week (add a scoop a day).

The best part is, when I have a group over for coffee, they all compliment me on my coffee and ask where they can buy this wonderful brew :-)

And that's a fact

[Sawney Beane]

How about a triple-beam balance? My level tablespoons weigh 6 grams, but I make 8-oz cups, so mine is 75% as strong as Jerry's and 50% stronger than yours.

My relatives use a grinder with a "propeller" blade. I haven't noticed any bitterness, but the blade could be generating dust that clogs the screen in the French press or ends up in the cup. Overall, I think the grounds may be too course. Anyway, a hand-cranked model would be cordless, and that would be convenient.

How do you know a drip machine doesn't get the water hot enough? Are they all the same? I suppose brewing 10 cups would get the grounds hotter than 5.

[PanHandler]

If the water isn't hot enough to begin with it doesn't matter - the grounds won't get as hot as they need to be.

I used a digital quick-read thermometer held in the output before the water hit the grounds in six different drip machines. The hottest tested was my Cuisinart at 194º, and the lowest was a year-old Mr. Coffee machine at 188º. The heated water in the upper chamber of my vacuum maker as soon as it was full was 207º.

[Warren Weber]

You cannot beat camp fire coffee. W W

[Roger Taylor]

I use a 19.95 Mr Coffee from Target to do coffee. It has one button (on, and off!), no clock, but does a great job. It uses paper filters, and I like the coffee better, even tho it is cooler, than my old Chemex. I use 5 heaping measures for 4 1/2 mugs (but lines on pitcher read 7 cups). To enhance the experience, I keep whole beans in the freezer, and pop them directly into the electric coffee grinder. They seem to grind more evenly when ground frozen. To make up for the tepid brew typical of an electric maker, I preheat the mug by filling it from my instant hot water tap, swishing it around for a few seconds, then filling the mug. An even better brew results if you use filtered water to start with. From the above posts, everyone has his own approach!

[Dr. Edmund M. Hayes]

I have to agree 100% with the electronic scale method. If you use a scoop, the amount of coffee in the scoop will depend on the amount of compression of the grinds when you "scoop" it from the container. If you dig in to a full container of ground coffee the scoop will compress the fragments of the beans making each scoop MUCH heavier then if you scoop into the bottom of the container. If you weight a tightly compressed scoop and compare it to a scoop of lightly compressed coffee you will see the difference. The difference might not be that noticeable in one scoop but multiple that by lets say 12 and you have a very big difference in weight.

The weight method is the >I use a 19.95 Mr Coffee from Target to do coffee. It has one button (on, and

[Sawney Beane]

Did you calibrate it? In preparation for such measurements, I put a thermocouple into a pan of boiling water and got 217 F.

If I were going to measure the temperature of a drip coffee maker, I'd put my probe into the grounds and close it up. With the machine open, I imagine a small stream of very hot water will lose heat very fast from evaporation and radiation.

With a French press, I imagine the water could cool below 200F as it's poured into the brewing cup. Then the cup probably absorbs significant heat from the water. I wonder how important it is. I wonder if a longer brewing time can compensate for a lower temperature.

[Sawney Beane]

What weights have you found for scoops from new and old containers? I weighed one tablespoon from a half-empty can and got 6 grams.

I've been weigh>

[PanHandler]

In a pot of rapidly boiling water at 212' above sea level the reading was dead on at 212º. I placed the probe in the stream (tricky to do) for about a minute. There weren't any grounds in the basket to measure, but as the water temp can't be controlled anyhow, it seemed useless to check them had they been there. In a French press the water going in is at 212º, and after the press the brew was at 188º. The coffee was great, and that's the bottom line!

[PanHandler]

Measuring by weight rather than volume is best, and easily repeatable. I'm sure the same applies for flour.