Coffee Exactitude

Some very good, very smart small batch/specialty coffee roasters/retailers or other reliable sources of coffee information will lay out highly detailed instructions for the "proper" way to prepare the "perfect cup", as if they were describing some kind of science project conducted in a laboratory. Some examples:

Stumptown Brewing Guide
Peet's Brewing Methods
And my personal favorite:
The Coffee Research Institute

My brother the professional coffee roaster, who has a good 20+ years in the industry, had this to say when asked why his holiday apple pies were so good: [With a shrug] "I just followed the directions."* He sometimes reminds me of Spock from 'Star Trek', always fighting feelings of irritation with people who refuse to approach every situation logically.

The thing is, coffee is passionate stuff - otherwise you wouldn't be reading this right now - and as such, somewhat defiant of things like logic, step-by-step processes, and rules. It's not alone in the world of food in this regard. If you throw a barbecue and invite any men, for example, you will inevitably hear an argument about the proper method of cooking meat with fire. Now, our ancestors just rammed a stick in it and put the damn thing on the fire - there wasn't any talk of "Seven minutes to a side at high heat, and then let it rest in its own juices for at least three". Of course it may be argued that our barbecue tastes better than theirs did, although I can't imagine many of us going hungry for as long as they did, much less killing and skinning it ourselves.

The reason I draw this analogy is that for me, while I am certainly educated in the "proper" way to prepare coffee, at 8 or 9 in the morning it's a much more visceral thing. I'm scratching my scalp, yawning, trying to twist kinks out of my spine, and trying to hold up beltless pants while pawing through a cupboard full of medications, boiling water for my wife's tea and trying to fix eggs for a picky three-going-on-four year old -- I lack the facility to multi-task to the level of holding all of this activity while simultaneously grinding with an eye on the size and symmetry of each grain, degrees Fahrenheit of the hot water, etc.

As soon as I am able to grab time and space to do my coffee thing, after everybody else has been fed, dressed, etc., I pour some beans from my canister into my cheapo Krups touch grinder up to about here (a little more than what's needed to cover the blades); fill up the kettle with water from the faucet while counting to about ten or twelve; put it on the electric stove turned on high and wait for it to whistle; when it whistles, grind the coffee for about twelve seconds while shaking the grinder to ensure more-or-less even grind consistency; thump the grinder upside-down so that most of the coffee falls out of the grinder and into the lid; dump the coffee into the press pot, moisten the grounds so that they swell and increase surface area for better brewing; pour the rest of the water in, filling it so that the crema rises to just above the metal band, and stir; set timer for 3 minutes; when timer goes off, press down on plunger, and then decant immediately into a thermos. My wife thinks that even this routine is pretty anal, and makes fun of me for whining about how long the grounds are supposed to steep even though she's made me plenty of awesome coffee without much consideration of the niceties.

To make a long story very short, these things don't require much measurement or consideration; they are habits I have acquired, and the product is continually monitored by color and smell during this procedure. I can and literally sometimes have performed this routine half-asleep. Do you follow a recipe when you make eggs? Toast? Pour yourself a bowl of breakfast cereal? Actually in a sense I believe that we do - it's just a sort of wordless mnemonic that doesn't contain much in the way of precise measurement.

Two of my favorite small batch roaster/retailers in Seattle are Caffe Vita and Lighthouse - both of whom brew coffee via press pot and decant it into thermoses to sell in place of "drip". As I watch them work, they pretty much prepare the coffee the way I do, or even less carefully if that's possible, and it always comes out fantastic. Might it be better if they did it slowly, cautiously, step-by-step as ordained in the standard industry texts? It might. But if I wanted it that much better I would stay home and do it myself. Or better yet, visit my brother and make him fix us coffee.

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*See "Pies, Apple" in The Fanny Farmer Cook Book

Coffee Under Adverse Conditions

Some interesting coffee experiences can be had where circumstances are not particularly optimal for preparation. My favorite one of these was brewing coffee “cowboy style” on a camping trip - fistfuls of coarse grind tossed into a pot of water boiling over the campfire, strained through a paper towel. We were at a very high altitude, and water boils at a lower temperature there, so it also did not get quite hot enough to steep fully. Nevertheless, I remember sipping the brew out of a glazed metal camping mug and feeling such pleasure at the flavor and aroma in that setting of fresh mountain air and camp fire smoke. I wouldn’t dream of preparing coffee in such a manner at home, and most definitely not for invited guests; but it suited me fine.

This morning I was confronted by a cracked press pot carafe, and since it would have been a drastically inconvenient expedition to try and track a new one down before lunch, I decided (at my wife’s advice) to break out the stovetop espresso maker. I’ve been having trouble for a while now getting decent-tasting espresso out of ours; it is one of the old school models that’s molded out of aluminum, rather than stainless steel, and aluminum appliances can be impregnated with unpleasant odors and flavors that can be passed on to the food prepared in them. Also, it may be superstition on my part, but I just find that espresso made in stainless steel models tastes better somehow.

I’m not skilled at brewing stovetop espresso like my Italian wife is; I inevitably have temperature and timing issues, and the process seems to take forever. What I have been getting out of our stovetop unit is one of those “coffee-like beverages” I discussed earlier - black hole shots of the sort that are sternly denounced in the specialty coffee retail profession (instead of a regular surface-covering cap of crema ranging from nut brown to copper red, one finds a ring of weak colorless crema or even just bubbles around a black liquid surface; this product screams “Bitter!!!” to the trained eye). In addition to the black holes, the espresso is murky rather than luminous. The flavor profile is like a list of “how-not-to’s” - bitter, oily, acrid, harsh, leaving an aftertaste, etc.

My remedy in salvaging something drinkable from this decoction was the one used by people the world over: milk and sugar. The resulting beverage was drinkable. There were interesting qualities to be noted in the flavor profile; although bitter, oily, acrid, harsh, and leaving an aftertaste, there also was an interesting body quality that lingered on the tongue, and the ghosts of some of the mid-range flavor qualities lingering in the finish (citrus, wine, etc.) One might say that drinking this cup was like settling for a below-average Chianti so that one has something to wash down a plate of spaghetti with.

You are probably wondering why I even bothered to drink this beverage rather than pour it down the sink. The reason is that my fascination with coffee includes endless curiosity regarding the bad coffee experience. How does bad coffee happen, why do so many people tolerate it, and how can it be prevented? In my case, the bad coffee experience was entirely my own fault, and very easily explained by a multiplicity of causes:

1. The espresso was not fresh, but pre-ground and stored in a paper to-go cup with tape over the hole in the lid. I’m not even sure how long it’s been sitting there.

2. I was just too damned lazy to get my behind out of the house to Bed, Bath & Beyond or Target to buy a replacement carafe for my press pot.

3. I used unfiltered tap water.

4. We have a stainless steel unit somewhere in the house, possibly the garage, and finding it would have solved a lot of problems with the product that came out - but it also would have taken effort on my part, which I was unwilling to expend.

I could go on, but I think this is sufficient to paint a picture. Many of us want a coffee-like beverage in the morning, but are too lazy to go the distance required to having one better than merely potable. You could go to the local small-batch roaster for a cup of something decent, but the massive chain shop is on the way to work and has a drive-through. You could make your own at home, but you ran out of beans last weekend and haven’t gotten around to refilling your canister.

While it’s only human to be lazy sometimes, there’s no reason to settle for a reduced quality of life because of it. Effort, as it turns out, is a major component of any sort of enjoyment or pleasure. I think that we as a culture have become addicted to convenience, valued over and above quality that requires us to reach a little further. The tendency to indulge impulses of laziness - the “Why bother?” impulse - is less a moral failing than it is a symptom of depression, and anybody who’s paying attention to the way things are in the world has one or two good reasons to be depressed. But more importantly, the lazy way is not necessarily the easier way. We just have to make efforts directed towards pleasure a part of our daily routine. Not to make to fine a philosophical point about it, but remembering to keep one’s supply of fresh beans stocked is a hallmark of taking care of the business of taking care of oneself. When writing your grocery list do not hesitate to consider the status of your coffee canister. If you’re a regular coffee drinker, a half pound per week should do it (more than that and you risk overstocking). Remember that coffee is food. You’re drinking it for more than just the buzz, you’re drinking it to satisfy a sensual desire. If you think of it in those terms, you’ll be less likely to deprive yourself.