By whatever BEANS necessary
A completely objective ranking of coffee brewing methods (not biased at all) Paul Taunton
When it comes to the morning coffee, the ritual is just as important as the caffeine. Sure, getting your hands around that cup can be as simple as a drive-through or your favourite café – but there’s something about brewing your own coffee. Some even go so far as to grind their own beans, but I need another cup before I can even think about that. Here are five common ways to prepare a cup, ranked by order of obvious virtue.
5 Boiling Two types of people boil coffee: 1) A cowboy on a lonesome morning, starry sky just lightening with the first blush of dawn. Sure, he killed a man for nothing more than a slight, but is this a reason not to reflect on a new day breaking? 2) A desperate soul who forgot to buy coffee filters, and is too lazy to get dressed. But fear not, murderous cowboy or apathetic soul, to properly prepare coffee in the cup, let boiling water sit for a minute before pouring. Though you may customize for taste, in general let it steep for four or five minutes, lest you over-extract and see the bitterness of your life reflected in the cup.
4 French Press Once I stayed at a bed and breakfast that formerly housed my university apartment. The truest sign of its coming up in the world, if not mine, was the French press placed before me in the dining room. Yes, I had consumed coffee from a French press before, but rarely had I been the one to depress the plunger. It’s as stressful as hovering over the detonator before dynamiting a bank vault. When is the right moment? Furtively, I looked around at the other patrons as they leisurely pushed without a break in their conversation. With the wisdom of years, I’ve come to know the secret terror of the French presser. Forever fearful of making the coffee too weak, invariably and eternally they end up drinking it too strong. And oh, how they pretend it isn’t.
3 Double- burner drip coffee maker Long live the double burner, whether in the diner where your plaid dad says he doesn’t like the direction the country is going, or in the humble office. The pod-style coffee maker – with its environmental waste, its obscene spitting and whirring – is an abomination. I miss arriving early to work and brewing the first pot; the bubbling sound and smell of coffee taking over the hallways. I miss snagging the second-to-last cup and getting away with not having to make a fresh pot. I miss the rage I felt at people who took the last cup and didn’t make a fresh pot. I miss reading about emergency procedures and last year’s holiday schedule on the bulletin board. Meanwhile, the decaf pot sits there with its orange handle. “Pick me, pick me.” You offer me nothing, decaf.
2 Pour over Coffee is a lifestyle beverage, and venue matters. The pour over method is quite nice at home: uncomplicated, relaxing and even meditative. In public, though, it’s quite another story. Contracting a barista to pour water is not quite the specialty of pulling an espresso shot, and the awkwardness with which you both stare at the slowly receding water is painfully embarrassing. It’s better when the barista momentarily leaves to attend to other customers, but that leaves you, alone, your anxiety mounting with each second the grounds stand unreplenished. And in the time it takes, surely you could have gone home, ground your own coffee, brewed it, and started a small e-retail business.
1 1987 Black and Decker single- cup coffee maker The first time I had coffee, I was a teenager staying up late to finish a history paper. I drank it black, not because of my burgeoning nihilism, but because I had no taste for it either way. I went to bed shaking as if in the grips of a fever. Though this was a quartercentury ago, the coffee maker that brewed those very cups still lives, and brews on. Empires have risen and fallen. Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Right Said Fred and Wilson Phillips were formed and disbanded. Never has this machine gone on hiatus, changed its lineup or reunited like En Vogue, Suede or Neutral Milk Hotel. The secret? Unlike most drip coffee makers that pump water from a reservoir – it is always the pump that breaks – this one uses simple gravity. With a conservative estimate of just under two cups brewed per day, we can safely estimate that it has prepared 21,000 cups of coffee. The numbers are indisputably on its side. The greatest coffee-brewing method is the 1987 Black and Decker single-cup coffee maker.