Coffee has always been one of my favorite things. Along with communication. Which is why my company is called Coffeehouse Communications Ltd.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Cappuccino
I've bought a small, cheap cappunccino maker. I must say I'm very pleased. Of course you have to clean the various bits after every time you've used it, but it really gets much more out of the grounds. It seems to me it pulls about twice the strength and flavor out of them. The best coffee I have ever made. And perhaps even better than most of what I find in coffee houses.
Coffee has always been one of my favorite things. Along with communication. Which is why my company is called Coffeehouse Communications Ltd.
Coffee has always been one of my favorite things. Along with communication. Which is why my company is called Coffeehouse Communications Ltd.
Coffee. That's life art.
ReplyDeleteVery nice machine. Has the milk-steamer, very important. When you get good at steaming the cream or milk so that it froths properly, THEN you know you're brilliant at life's little indulgences.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy very much an old-fashioned stove-top espresso maker. It's just a double-perker with a tight seal, but when you use high-quality dark roast beans that you have ground yourself immediately before brewing, it makes such an oily wonderful mix that ... hmmm ... I dunno, it's just good.
Same as this item:
http://www.starbucksstore.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=657782
but you don't have to get it with a Starbucks logo on it.
Looks neat, but I'm not sure how it works.
ReplyDeleteI've never ground my own grounds.
Once in DK you could get special coffee from beans seeped in chocolate. It was awesome.
The stove-top thing is quite simple. Three parts, roughly.
ReplyDeleteUpper (looks like a pitcher), lower (looks like a canister), and basket (fits inside the lower). Upper and lower screw together securely, but have a vented and sealed "filter" connecting them. Inside the upper is a spout that reaches almost to the top, leading all the way from the bottom.
The lower portion is a boiling vat. Fill it with water. Then, into it you place a basket which holds the grounds. Thus, the grounds are resting in a basket on top of water. Put the whole contraption on any source of heat -- electric stove eye, gas burner, campfire. As the water boils it bubbles up through the grounds, on up past the filter and up the spout (capillary action!), and into the pitcher.
When it stops bubbling, you take it off the heat (regular stove-top) and pour the coffee out. Later when it's all cooled down, you unscrew top from bottom, take it apart, throw out the grounds, and clean it.
Basically it's a typical automatic-drip pitcher style percolator, except the basket is in the bottom half instead of the top half, so the boiling water forces its way up through the grounds rather than drips down through them. Thus, the brew is accomplished by the FORCE of boiling / steaming the water (gain in pressure from heat, etc.) rather than by mere gravity dripping water across grounds.
Further, this device does not have its own heat source. Its energy is inert. You put it ON some other heat source.
Me, I like the cafetier/press (as seen in "The Ipcress File" or was it "Funeral In Berlin". Pour hot water onto the grounds, wait a few minute, press grounds with mesh, and then pour. Since you already have a kettle in the house for tea, why get anything fancy for the coffee.
ReplyDeleteMy dad had a percolator years ago, much like the one FI described. It seemed like a lot of work at the time.
I've never really cared for darker, diesel like coffees, and I hate the frothy scum.
In fact, I only drink coffee because I don't like tea without milk, or with half and half (some sort of gold top equivalent synthsized from milk and cream), or UHT (ultra-pasturized) milk.
[I never know whether to use American terms and translate for the Anglo-Centric viewpoint, or write in English, and add the Americanized definitions after.]
Me, the stronger the better. Eolake, have we discussed coffee with chicory here before? Have you ever tried it?
ReplyDelete"I've never really cared for darker, diesel like coffees, and I hate the frothy scum."
ReplyDeleteI'm a sucker for the scum. A scumsucker, if you will.
Scum and chicory for me, too, thank you.
ReplyDeleteChicory, wasn't that in "Camp coffee essence". I don't know if it was coffee, coffee substitute, or coffee enhancer, but it was a dark brown liquid you could buy in Britain in the 70's and 80's.
ReplyDeleteLooks like it still is. Oh, for our colonial brothers (and sisters) who read that Wikipedia entry, in Britain coffee cake is cake which is coffee flavoured, unlike the American coffee cake, which is a cake (oft streusel crumb topped) to be served with, but not flavored of coffee.
Love coffee cake (of the American variety). Haven't really ever liked coffee-flavored confections of any sort.
ReplyDeleteChicory is a ground root which has been traditionally mixed with coffe grounds in many locations, primarily now in select areas of the USA's south. Along the USA coast of the Gulf of Mexico, roughly, and a few hundred miles inland. It started in times of rationing during the American Civil War and then World Wars I and II as a means to make the coffee go farther, but it soon turned out to be a "local delicacy." If you get good root, the coffee-with-chicory is a drink which is both stronger, and, to me, better tasting, than regular coffee, even of the highest quality.
It wouldn't work with a flavored coffee, or with some of the more acetic types of dark dark roast. I love it with a medium-to-dark roast, done to a "mellow" degree of thickness, then mixed half-and-half with whole milk. We would call that "cafe au lait" in New Orleans, but be warned! To order that in this city presumes you get chicory-mixed coffee grounds. Except at Starbucks, they haven't caught up yet.
Chicory and Spam both. Seems Spam has become something of a favourite, despite it being mass imported during the war as a reasonable way of getting meat to people.
ReplyDeleteWell, Spam caught on with the "quirky" gen-X crowd as something they like because of the kitsch associations. If you go to Hormel's Spam website, you'll see a lot of gamesmanship relying on the mock-nostalgia for the "clean perfect" image of the 1950s, for example. I don't think people actually LIKE Spam as much as think that the CONCEPT of liking it is "cool" and "trendy" and "counter-culture."
ReplyDeleteChicory, on the other hand, tastes good, and has been preferred by Southerners for over 100 years. Chefs and gourmands write about its rooty, robust flavor, the enhancement it makes to coffee (and the root does contain its own caffeine), and not in a mock-kitschy vein. Spam accolades are tongue-in-cheek. Chicory flies under a much less ironic banner.
Even though I'm not a coffee person, that photo looks darn tempting!
ReplyDeleteNuff said. :-)
My mother, she's rather fond of chicory.
Arabian (or "Turkish") coffee is made quite simply, by boiling water with ground coffee. No filters, no fancy stuff. "A beverage for men." Some drink it as is, with no sugar or anything. "Darker, diesel like coffees"? THIS dark coffee, gentlemen, could very adequately refill your fountain pen, or wake up your pre-war jalopy.
I tried it. Once.
I managed not to offend the man's hospitality. :-\
Eolake said...
"I'm a sucker for the scum. A scumsucker, if you will."
H.O.W.L.! Howling Of Wild Laughter! :-D