I use the French press setting on my Bodum grinder. If it’s too fine, it will pass through even a very fine sieve. I have a nylon strainer that I picked up somewhere that is two layers of very fine mesh. I pour the coffee through that once to get the bulk of the grinds, then pour it back through again (after cleaning out the sieve) into a pitcher to pick up the sludge that settles out.
At present, we have someone sending us a coffee from New Mexico called ‘Pinon Passion’. It’s spectacular. All of those subtle flavors that tend to disappear from hot brewing are there when brewed cold. Unfortunately, it’s only available at Costco stores in NM, as far as I know.
Right you are. Our Rancilio Silvia cost about $500, IIRC. We also purchased a burr grinder at the same time. We pull shots of ristretto that are as good as the best hippie geeky artisan espresso bars. Of course, it took a couple of weeks of learning the ropes and tweaking the grind size and the tamping pressure, but once we perfected our technique, we never looked back.
The downside is that when you travel, you have to find the local geeky espresso bars, because “just plain” espresso doesn’t cut it anymore. What snobs we’ve become.
Lakai, I see that you’re in Brooklyn. That helps, because the most important thing is getting good beans. Do not buy your coffee beans from the supermarket, even if they’re expensive. Buy them from a specialty coffee shop, or a general gourmet place, like Zabar’s. It won’t be any more expensive than the “good” stuff at the supermarket ($10-$11 per pound), but it’ll usually be much better.
Buying in small quantities at first, experiment with different varieties and blends until you find what you like. I stumbled upon my preferred blend (French Roast Columbian + Kenyan) by accident this way.
Don’t buy pre-ground coffee. Buy a grinder. If you’re going to use a drip machine, a cheap blade grinder should be fine. If you decide to go with a french press, you should invest in a conical burr grinder ($50-$60 for a good one), because you’ll need a coarse, even grind. Yeah, you’ll spend an extra $40 or so on the burr grinder, but a good drip machine is more expensive than a press pot, so the total difference in price is less than it seems.
Ideally, only buy a two or three week supply of coffee at a time. Store the beans in an airtight container in the refrigerator, but let them warm up to room temperature before grinding. Grind the beans immediately prior to brewing.
Whole milk, I think, is for suckers. Either drink it black, or use half & half (my preference) or heavy cream.
Back in the dark times, when I used a French press and before the enlightenment of cold-brewed coffee, I used a Bodum blade grinder just like this one and it worked just fine for French press coffee.
Wow. And for years I’d thought I’d been juicing it up when I used a 4tbsp bean to 3c water ratio. blink
Or did I do the math wrong?
For the record, I have a small electric grinder and a cheap drip coffeemaker that only has one button – ON.
I’ll have to try to remember to use the Brita filtered water instead of tap (but honestly, Seattle has pretty good tap water according to a recent PR campaign – they’ve been pushing us to quit drinking bottled because of the environmental footprint required to make the bottles and such) to see if that makes a difference in the flavor.
It’s all a matter of taste, really, and more than a spoonful of snobbery in some cases. I drink my coffee with cream and sweetener (a liquid candy bar, really), so stronger coffee is fine. In fact, some would say that two tbsp for an eight ounce cup is very light, since “cups” on a coffee maker are not 8 ounces. Burr grinder, blade grinder, hack it up with a hatchet: if it tastes fine to you, then it’s fine. There was a raging argument with throbbing veins and everything a while back because of how the coffee was being abused by forcing it down with a French press. :rolleyes: I’ve had coffee strained through a rag, been damned glad to get it, and thought it tasted finer than champagne.
Chefguy - I am a budding coffee snob (not full fledged yet, by any stretch, but starting), and have been craving a way to get me some good, cold coffee without having to brew it hot and wait for it to cool back down again. Experimentation with this process is in order.
You’re welcome. We’re hooked on it and I doubt will ever go back to the boiled water thing. This will work well for our RV trips, also. By the way, I’m pretty sure there is a cold-brewer sold by some coffee appliance company, but my method works just fine. I think the commercial brand makes a more concentrated mud that you then thin out with water to suit you.
Chefguy, that seems like a pretty high ratio of beans to water (1:8): doesn’t that get spendy quickly?
I’ve made shitty coffee for nigh on a decade now, and just thought it was something beyond my ken, or else that I was a cheapo with the beans. The coffee was thin and bland.
Then a couple weeks ago my (non-coffee-drinking) wife presented me with a gift: a new Cuisinart coffeemaker that had gotten good reviews online. I replaced my $19.99 K-Mart special coffeemaker with this new one, and the results have been dramatic: all it took was getting a coffeemaker that (among other features) actually heats the water up hot enough, and suddenly I’m making tasty coffee! Not anything revolutionary, but make sure you don’t skimp on the coffeemaker.
For me, it’s about 1+ TBSP per 8 oz cup. Most coffee brewers will recommend at least that much for a 6 oz brewed cup. Espresso is even stronger. If I’m going to drink coffee, I want it to be good coffee, full-bodied and flavorful, and hang the cost. For me, it’s no different than buying high quality beef, if I can afford it.
I like a fresh cup of coffee first in the morning, just one cup, without a lot of grinding, measuring, boiling, steaming, french pressing, of filtering. I use a Senseo coffee pod machine.Fifteen seconds to throw a pod in it and push the go button, then another ten seconds to remove the spent pod, done.
I have yet to produce one bad cup.
If you are looking for a cheap and easy solution that still makes great coffee, think about trying a manual drip filter cone like this one. You set it into the spout of a thermos bottle or carafe and brew your coffee with water from a kettle.
When my last coffee maker died, I bought one of these after seeing Alton Brown use one on Good Eats. I thought it would be a temporary thing until I got a new machine, but I love it and I haven’t gone back. The heating-the-water in a tea kettle part is the same as with a French Press, but you don’t have to be as picky about the grind (so you can use a simple blade grinder rather than investing in a pricey burr grinder) and the cleanup is easier. It uses standard #6 paper filters or you can use one of the gold mesh ones if you prefer. Since you are boiling the water (and letting it rest for half a minute or so first!) you can get the water much hotter than most regular drip machine can, and this makes a huge difference in the flavor you can extract from the grounds.
Of course, everything else still holds true – buy whole beans, as freshly roasted as you can find them, store them in an airtight, lightblocking container like this one, and grind them right before you brew.
Makes a damn fine cup of coffee if I do say so myself.
I’d want to emphasize the importance of the water. This would depend on where you live; but I’ve spent a lot of time in areas where the water isn’t what it could be, and for the last fifteen years we’ve used cheap bottled water (not the fancy stuff, just gallon jugs or osmosis-filtered water from dispensers.) If your local water is very good, you might not need this; but if you haven’t been satisfied with your coffee, try filtered water and see if that’s the issue.
