One way or another, all coffee is made with a strainer. I recall my parent’s percolator. It’s still sitting on top of my refrigerator. It’s a white Corningware pitcher with blue flowers painted on it, and insides made out of stainless steel sheets and tubing. The stuff of magic. Somehow the water boils and forces itself to pour over a strainer cup of coffee grounds, over and over and over. Paper filters were optional. And somehow people thought that this made a drink good enough to actually drink. Maxwell House, my folks used the blue can of stuff that Mrs. Olson talked about for 20 years in the TV commercials.
At some point, my mom briefly had a home-style espresso machine. She called it eXpresso. That tasted even worse to me, but we were still using Maxwelll House so maybe that was part of the problem…
Later I met folks who used weird ceramic cones with paper filters, and they’d take a long time dripping water into it. They also had coffee grinders, loud and obnoxiously pompous. About the same time, I saw Mr Coffee machines that seemed to automate the dripping process.
I ended up using plastic cones with paper filters for a long time. But I always dreamed of something better. My hopes seemed to come true when I discovered the French Press. But it’s so messy and didn’t seem to make the drink taste any better.
I really like half and half in my coffee. Lots and lots of it. No sugar, though, that makes it taste like bad cough syrup. And definitely no Cremora or other type of powdered creamifier. That’s just gross.
So the pour-over cones were my go-to java maker of choice. There are stainless steel ones with screens so you don’t need to use paper filters. Save a tree. But you end up using a lot of water to clean it. So maybe lose a fish… One good trick is to pour water over the grounds, just enough to soak them, and then let it wait for thirty seconds or so, so the grounds have a chance to bloom. Think of it as pre-dissolving the coffee before you hurry the water through it.
And then all the coffee snobs started talking about the Aeropress. It makes “espresso” shots. I tried it. It was messy and tasted like burnt vinegar. It was also made out of plastic, so was probably giving me just as many carcinogens as my cone. And it lied about making “espresso.” Not that I really care. I don’t particularly like espresso. It tastes like burnt Brussels sprouts.
I don’t like dark roast coffee. The medium roast is usually burnt enough. Starbucks is not a good word to me. But Dunkin is swell. It’s pretty consistently OK coffee. Even at home, it’s difficult to ruin it.
And then I tried the Aeropress again, but this time with a steel strainer and a little valve on the bottom, so you can soak your grounds a little and let them stew without having to turn the whole thing upside down and risk coffee grounds exploding everywhere. And because the valve at the bottom turns the dripping coffee into a jet, if you put your half and half into the cup first, it gets all frothy as the coffee sprays in. Yummy.
Everybody has their own recipe for making coffee with the Aeropress. Here’s mine. Use the stainless strainer with the valve. Put your half and half into the cup. Swirl the Aeropress as you pour the 185 F water over the grounds. Fill it halfway. After a minute, stir the grounds back in because they’ve all floated to the top. Top it off with water, leaving just about a half inch of empty space at the top. Do something to kill the time. Or sing “one-thousand and two-thousand” till you get to thirty-one-thousand. My wife tells me I’m not allowed to sing until after she’s had her coffee. Or rather, she says, “I haven’t had enough coffee for this yet.” So I have to sing it in my head. Then smoothly smoosh the plunger down and listen to the cool jet sound blast coffee into the bottom of your mug. Then top off the mug with more water. It’s frothy. Take a sip. Now take the Aeropress apart, and dump the grounds into the trash or compost bin. If you’ve used the paper filter too, the cleaning is all done. Without a filter, I have to wipe things down with a tissue paper or give it a quick rinse. It’s sort of a self-cleaning device. They’re making an XL size one for the USA crowd.
Then I found out about Moka Pots. The bottom part gets hot, and forces steamy moisture through the coffee grounds at pressure, making something quite like espresso. It works best on a gas stove so you can fine-tune the temperature. Some Moka Pots can be used on an induction stove, so that might be good too. I have a regular electric stove. Moka Pots are worthless on them. Everything tastes like burnt TV Guide.
There’s also this thing called a Vacuum or maybe a Siphon Coffee maker. They’re made of blown glass, cost a lot, break easily, and the seals fail quickly. But it’s supposed to be great! For $700 you can get an electric one from Amazon. I probably won’t.
Vietnam and SE Asia have some groovy-looking coffee brewers, which I would really like to try someday. The Vietnamese coffee I’ve had was really strong. And they used burned beans so it tasted like pan-fried shredded tires.
Bottom Line: Dunkin. Cone or splurge for the Aeropress. Either way, soak the coffee for like 30 seconds before pouring the rest of the water in, to give the grounds time to “bloom”.
