You hate instant coffee. You may not be aware of it yet, but you do. It’s the caffeinated equivalent of powdered milk. It’s hot water with coffee flavour.
You drink it at home because it’s easy, quick and cheap, doesn’t require an expensive and hard-to-operate coffee machine, and you can’t stand the hipsters that seem to fill up every coffee den in town. But really, you hate instant. You just haven’t realised it yet.
So how do you make a cheap, easy and great-tasting cup of coffee at home?
You’re first going to need an espresso pot; these can be bought for about $15 from any home furnishings shop. Espresso pots are an Italian invention, and are used by millions of Italians every day for their morning cup of joe (although I imagine they don’t call it that over there). The pot works in a similar fashion to a coffee machine — it forces hot water through ground coffee at high pressure, bringing out more of the flavour. Coffee machines work at about nine bars, while your espresso pot will typically generate about 1.3 bars of pressure — producing a sweeter, more caramely coffee.
Speaking of ground coffee, you’ll need some of that too. A true connoisseur would tell you to purchase your own grinder and beans, as the coffee is at it’s most flavoursome after it’s just been ground — but even a cheap grinder can cost $60, so it’s best to buy preground when starting out. Plenty of specialty shops will grind coffee for you (ask for espresso grind).
Put your grinds into the pot, and then heat on your stove. Experiment with different heats — each will produce a subtly different flavour. While the coffee’s heating, nuke half a cup of milk in your microwave for 30 seconds. Once the coffee boils (steam will shoot out of the spout) combine it and the milk and ingest. And marvel at how you ever managed to drink instant.
As you drink more, you’ll improve your technique; make sure you also head over to the Coffee Snobs forum, which is full of useful tips and people to help you improve your brew.
“joe”? WTF? You’d be American then… in which case, you’d be wanting the dripolator.
I’m not sure Espresso Pots are the way to go. The problem they have, like any form of coffee (filter, plunger or just in pot) except a proper espresso machine, is that it involves being made with boiling water which is death to good coffee.
The best coffee is made as quickly as possible (to reduce the bitterness since many of the non-bitter compounds are [I understand] more soluble ) and with water below the boil and since we can’t all afford at 2000 dollar espresso machine this is how I do it:
I put double the normal amount of coffee in plunger (coarsely ground) and then fill with water that has been allowed to cool from the boil and let it stand for no more than 2 or 3 minutes and then proceed pretty much as the above article recommends, I.E. Wack it in nuked milk.
This won’t replicate the body of espresso (supposedly the high pressure forces oils etc. out of the bean). But it tastes more like than any boiled coffee.
Catchy article Liam!
As one gets older, one becomes more discerning, rather preferring quality than quantity….
…………on the other hand if you awake in a snarlingly bad mood like wot I do, you stumble to the kitchen, fill a large mug with a coupla heaped teaspoons of Mocc…; a squige of water to liquidise it, and top it up with milk-all milk. Café au Lait.
Once consumed;-you explore your surroundings-start to walk upright, and recognise who you are, and what you are doing there.
I am always grateful when the caffeine has beaten the crap out of my new friend Arthur (itis), and I live to fight another day.
Well, you’ve both got it right, fellas. I start the day with a coffee from the espresso machine (an el cheapo, but it works) then have another in the afternoon and another before going to bed – it relaxes me – made using an Italian stove-top thing.
These latter coffees aren’t as “heavy” as the espresso, and have their own character, not as intense but equally enjoyable.
How anyone can drink instant, powdered coffee or that awful stuff that sits in glass jugs stewing on a hotplate for hours beats me. Besides their brutal megolamania the Seppoes have got a lot to answer for!
Anyone poisoning their coffee with milk of any description clearly doesn’t really like coffee and so I recommend they find another drink, because what is the point? This also explains why it can be difficult to find good espresso in cafes in Australia: because the majority of Australians (I would guess >80% maybe >90%) prefer the disgusting latte or appropriately named flat white, there is a strong tendency to use an over-roasted bean (such as Continental roast) not to mention to not bother with best beans (because latte drinkers will hardly notice). This is obviously just so that some “taste” still survives the milk–unfortunately mostly the burnt & bitter overtones.
Thus only the most expensive and best beans can approach satisfying both real espresso drinkers and the lamentable latte sippers; such as Vittoria’s Cinq Stelle, but which is not available retail and which Vittoria will only sell to commercial outlets under tough conditions. (Some cafe owners have told me they got fed up with Vittoria’s conditions. Cannot blame them but this means there is a vacuum out there waiting to be filled.)
Up here (I don’t know if it is south of the Qld border) Merlots is a popular bean roaster but after it being recommended by others I have now given up. The basic problem is that Merlot do only one type of roast (which I call over-roasted) so no matter which beans you buy it always tastes too bitter and burnt etc.
Incidentally Paracleet 1.21pm is correct that only a proper espresso machine with >15 psi can produce good espresso (actually by definition you cannot produce espresso on any other device) because it extracts the flavour elements (I remain to be convinced that slightly longer times cause especially significant extraction of the bitter elements and I believe the quality of beans and roasting are more important).
So Surferbob 12.14pm, people can drink all that other stuff because really they just like anything with their warmed milk. All the flavoured koffees in the US (boysenberry etc) proves the point; these are starting to appear on shelves here.
BTW, my PhD is in espresso drinking. Nah, just joking (its in biochemistry) but in my ten years in France I have done more time wasting in cafes that I deserve a DSc! (maybe in insufferable arrogance!)