OT: How do you make coffee?

[SilverSport]

In my underware while emptying the dishwasher in the morning, it may not be a manly thing but at our house the Kitchen is all mine since the better half can actually burn boiling water

Dunkin' original grind in the old Braun

you were talkin' 'bout coffee, right??? []

Bill

[tigerwoodKhorns]

Tigger- iced chocolate coffee with sweetener= girlymang

True but who am I trying to impress? My three dogs who watch me drink it?

I heard someone call it adding perfume to coffee. I like that. "Give me a coffee, hold the perfume."

[BLSamuel]

Michael,

I'd go with medium well on the burger ... as Bill (Silversport) said ya want to avoid that Mad Cow Disease... if you're going to eat beef that's half raw, make it steak as it's less likely to have anything in it needing to be killed by heat.

I dunno, I'd think a good burger with Joe Cocker on the 301s would keep your manliness intact.

I can't really complain... many years ago, before I started taking meds that said should not take while drinking alcoholic beverages, which was quite a while before I moved up to the meds that say do not take while drinking alcoholic beverages.... I'd prefer the girly looking pretty drinks, sloe gin fizzes, fruity daiquiries or margarita's [:$] or maybe a whiskey sour or Long Island or Boston Ice Tea over real drinks and never did learn to like beer. Don't know how that happened with 6 years in college. I think one of my favorites by name anyway as I'm not sure I ever had more than 1 or 2 was the Skip 'n Go Naked from Claras in Muncie, came it a glass to keep with presumably naked women molded around the side. I think we still have one somewhere. A little rum in the eggnog can really smooth it out. And that was back in the day when eggnog was made with raw eggs. Now they tell us that 's not safe. And amaretto in hot chocolate topped off with a scoop of Breyers vanille bean ice cream was a favorite on cold winter evenings. Now, I don't drink anything stronger than diet soda or ice tea.

Never did learn to like coffee either though I do like my iced tea dark and sweetened, what we refer to as sweetened blackened tea.... though most of the time anymore its decaff and sweetened with Splenda. Think sun tea except boil it had and long, blackened tea looks more like coffee than the tea colored water found in most restaurants.

So I don't like beer and yet I'm pretty sure I'm still an American. And I don't like coffee though I'm close to 50% Swedish or may be 50 % Swedish. And I don't eat the rotting fish (Lutfisk) but that seems more like common sense.

My wife just uses a simple drip coffer maker and normally store bought coffee pre-ground in a can though will sometimes get some beans and have it ground in the store. Love the smell but can't understand why I don't like the taste.

[IndyKlipschFan]

Yummy!!

Cuban coffee.... yes!!

I know it is in Spanish, but watch it anyhow... Pour the 6 expresso cups volume wise in a larger big Klipsch coffee cup (Drink it as one) and be on your way!!!

You can buy one of these inexpensive coffee makers for like 12 dollars... In Italy it is what everyone uses...

As far as brands... illy coffee is good too.... I love the darker Jamaican / Costa Rica / Cuban types... Bustelo is cheap and great as well!

Use filtered water too... It helps a lot!

[chrisinvermont]

Well I went about 10 years without drinking coffee. For my wifes birthday this past summer I got her a Jura Capresso super automatic espresso machine. I am now addicted to coffee again! The machine is awesome you just add water and beans and it does the rest, even cleaning itself. The wife loves lattes and I found a perfect cup for me which is an Americano. 8 ounces of hot water and then a shot of espresso. Top it with a pinch of brown sugar and it is tasty. For beans we finally settle on a local roaster - FreshCoffeeNow.com and we pick up 5 pound restaraunt sized bags direct from them for great prices.

Chris

[picky]

During Christmastime at the house, Ms. Rose and I (Verna is a tea-totaler) grind either Starbucks French Roast or House Blend in a cheap Mr. Coffee grinder and brew it strong in a Cuisinart Model DCC-1200 Brew Central, 12-cup drip coffeemaker. The rest of the year, we grind 8 O'Clock Coffee French Roast or Columbian. At work, I brew various coffees one cup at a time in my Phillips Senseo Coffee Pod brewer. I can brew coffee for about 23 cents a cup which is a lot cheaper than the 45 cents my employer wants for regular coffee from a machine or the $1.25 per cup the company cafeteria wants for Starbucks. -Glenn

[merkin]

In my underware while emptying the dishwasher in the morning, it may not be a manly thing but at our house the Kitchen is all mine since the better half can actually burn boiling water

Dunkin' original grind in the old Braun

Yes the kitchen is all mine also. Cheif cook and bottle washer. Coffee, starbucks sumatra beans, grind at home and use a krups 12 cup with duo filter. About 10 cups from 6:30 am to 11:00am. Gets the shakes going just right. Wind down and crash about 3:30 in the afternoon.

[gearfreak]

Coffee: Peace Coffee ("Sustainable, Shade-Grown, Small-co-op etc etc"). Their 'Guatemalan Dark Roast'. Nice and chocolaty and very caffeinated. I've swayed a few Starbucks drinkers to switch to it... You can get whole bean or they will grind fresh for you prior to shipping for a cheap flat fee I think. Discounts on 10+ I think. Works out just a little more expensive than Dunkin, but you save a trip in the car.

(After switching to the Peace from Dunkin, I realized I was using half the normal amount of cream+sugar... because the coffee tasted so much better.)

Method: ' French' Press. Anything medium-sized from Bodum made of glass not plastic. I think the older simpler (less decorative) models are a little better built. Fewer moving parts to get in the way and to clean. Just don't press down too hard and have it kick out/break on you. I leave the grounds in the bottom there until time for the next batch, rinse out in sink (no soap, blech!), then use a few ounces of the almost boiling hot water to re-rinse (plunge a litte) prior to putting the new grounds in. This gets out leftover oils pretty well. Disassemble and clean properly w/soap once a week (5 minutes).

*Your morning warning - Don't leave your gas stove on and leave the house after heating the water. Or use a micro-wave.

Environmental bent:

-Sustainable etc coffee choice. (...it's gotta be shipped from somewhere, so why not right to your door.)

-No paper filter waste etc etc

-I save the coffee grounds (steel mesh sink-strainer thingy collects them well, found cheap at dollar stores, sometimes for 3x the price at the market) dry them (dump in ice-cube tray, set in sun or on top of fridge), then sprinkle around evergreens in yard. I think they like the acidity. Should help with water-retention in the soil. ...also may be a deterrent to Roaches and some other bugs (unsubstantiated). You will also quickly realize how much volume and weight you are removing from the waste stream this way. My collection tray fills up about every 1-2 weeks.

*Edit: By 'ice-cube tray', I meant to mean the larger rectangular shoe-box sized thing. Not the trays that make the cubes. :-)

[InnerTuber]

We use Keurig

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11297069&whse=BC&topnav=&browse=〈=en-US&s=1

and just an old frothing expresso maker

The Keurig is VERY nice and easy. Bit loud but fast. I can stumble to the coffee maker with eyes near closed and have a hot cup in 30 or so seconds.

[tommyboy]

I don't really drink coffee. [^o)] Only on REAL bad days......

[J.4knee]

I like Mr Ctires wake up, shower and stumble into the kitchen and by some mystical force there is a pot of fresh brewed coffee there. I assume my wife has something to do with this but its more fun to imagine mystical forces are at work and providing me with my morning sustanance.

[Speedball]

Instant Maxwell House with the easy to grip lid....[C]

[gearfreak]

colterphoto1:

Tigger- iced chocolate coffee with sweetener= girlymang

ahh... but

iced coffee+sugar+cream+old inherited whiskey = a great way to start off a summer evening.

I'll have to try it with chocolate next season... not sure how it mixes with whiskey. Not particularly a fan of it otherwise.

Alas, Gin just doesn't work in iced coffee. ;-)

[JJkizak]

I use digital coffee beans with a large surface entry device for greater bandwidth for "High Def Coffee Flavor" induced into a three-way separator and then re-combined for low/medium/high robust flavor renderings. Then transfer the final composition to an analog cup with needle agitation for final embelishment.

JJK

[CECAA850]

I don't think Dee sanka lot of time in this thread.

[Daddy Dee]

No, I've been following it.

sanka, indeed! My grandmother used to drink it.

[Cal Blacksmith]

While some here have the Heresy models of coffee makers (Bunn HOME coffee makers) most have Bose (most everything else!) I have the 50th anaversery Khorn of coffee setups (over 8.8K worth of coffee gear in the kitchen, though I bought it all used so the total outlay is only about $1,800). It is hard to give an opinion of lessor methods of brewing coffee without seeing ALL the shortcomings they have.

First. the beans MUST be fresh. This is NOT just using them befor the experation date on the bag, rather, with roasted beans the shelf life without vacuum FREEZING is AT MOST 2 weeks from the date THEY WERE ROASTED ON, the best by date is 6 months or longer from the roast date and there is NO WAY you can buy fresh beans at the supermarket, let alone *$. Try these roasters for FRESH beans.

Intelligentsia

SweetMarias

or my fav Klatch who have a free shipping special for the rest of the year.

Now the above is for WHOLE beans, ground, they last only for 10 min or so for peak flavor, after that, you are just letting the flavor float away into the air. There is NO way to preserve ground coffee, it just goes bad way too fast and yes that includes ALL GROUND COFFEE regardless of where it was bought and how long ago it was ground, if it was not ground yourself just before brewing.

GRINDERS are as or MORE important than the coffee brewer!!!!!!!!!!! It is IMPOSSIBLE to get a good grind from a "blade grinder" YOU MUST HAVE CONSISTANT SIZE GROUNDS WITHOUT COFFEE DUST to make a good pot of coffee or espresso (it is eSpresso, not eXpresso!!!) You can get an OK coffee grinder for about $100 refurb and for everything BUT espresso, it will be fine for most any home. If it is espresso you are interested in, you need to step up to about $310 (on sale for Christmas) for the Rocky but if you are serious about your espresso, you should look at the Super Jolly commercial grinders, new they are about $780 but can be picked up used for about half that, I have two of them, one for decaf espresso, one for regular espresso.

Brewing methods. the least expensive and likely one of the best home methods for brewing coffee is the manual pour over cone with a gold filter and an electric tea kettle. The whole setup can be bought for under about $75 and the resulting brew is among the best you can get from a drip. The key to brewing coffee is that the water needs to be between 195 and 205 deg F. Most home auto drip pots just don't get hot enough. This goes for the HOME Bunn brewer also, it gets close but it does not QUITE get hot enough, the commercial Bunn brewers have adjustable thermostats and can be adjusted properly (I have one that brews directly into, up to 3 ltr air pots. Yes it is large but so are our speakers EHHH?

If you must have an automatic brewer, get a good grider and grind just before brewing in your brewer. A Technivorm is a good brewer, that DOES get hot enough and still brews the coffee in the proper time. Look for a brewer that has been certified by the SCAA for brewing coffee.

Presspot or French press does make a good cup but it will be murkey with some fines floating in the coffee. The oils get through but so does some of the finest ground coffee beans so some people do not like the mouth feel or the sludge in the bottom of the cup. You heat your water seperate from the press.

Vac pots are another way to go, they were VERY common before the 1950s but were replaced with the ease of cleanup of the drip pot. You heat your water over the stove, electric burner or open flame. These pots put on a very good show and brew an excelent cup of coffee. There are some grounds that get through but not near as much as with the press pot.

Berka or Moka pots are the standard pot in Italy, They will brew a strong cup of coffee, are easy to use and have minimal cleanup. They do not however brew espresso, they just do not have enough pressure to get proper extraction (about 9 to 10 bar or about 120 psi) These pots give the Italians their morning cup of Joe on the way to the espresso bar to get a quick shot before starting work.

Aeropress is a newer method of brewing coffee and it does a darn fine job but it is not an espresso maker, regardless of the advertising on the website.

In short, you need to put some effort into your coffee if you want to get good flavor out. If however you can be satisfied with the burnt, over roasted, over extracted "coffee" that *$ serves then you can be happy with auto drip makers that brew too cold, produce a bitter cup and really can't tell the difference between $3 / lb Folgers or $45 / lb gourmet coffee (yes I have paid that much per #)

A GREAT webiste to find info on coffee, brewing methods and how to's is Coffeegeek.com Yes I do use the same user name there also. See you on their boards!

[Rockets]

A few years ago I bought my wife one of these http://salestores.com/saeco305.html

though, I didn't pay that much for it... It's really a pretty sweet machine.

[Jay481985]

I have a cheapo Ikea French Press, its more hassle than not being that cleaning involves unscrewing the filter and taking it apart to get all the grind out also the grinds still sit at the bottom so if you make 3 cups of coffee the first cup will be fine or a bit weak if you cannot wait and the last cup will be bitter and dark if you leave it in there.

[Speedball]

The machine at Circle K gas station easily dispenses Pumpkin and Spice too. [C]