Silver Case

Watched Alton Brown’s episode on coffee, True Brew. The only reason it didn’t do much for me was that I am quite fond of coffee and have spent lots of time studying it already, so there was nothing new to me. But he did break it down into a process for making dependably decent coffee that would benefit most people.

I suppose he chose a manual drip over a french press because a french press is a bit of a mess which leaves (charming heh) silt in the brew. Most master roasters will say that french press is the best method. However, his drip looked pretty good, and he emphasized a trick seldom discussed: get your freshly-brewed coffee into a thermos FAST. Then is stays warm and doesn’t spoil.

I agreed with his brew time (4 minutes) and his rough ratio of coffee:water, an emphasis on lots of coffee:water. It will be LESS bitter because each grain of coffee suffers less extraction. The good stuff in coffee comes out first, and the bitter nasty shit comes out later. Extract as little from each grain as you can get away with.

Of course he kept his beans in an airtight container. Speaking of airtight containers, my mom bought me a small coffee bean bin that seals up and, unbelievably, manages to run small vacuum pump from four AA batteries for around two to three weeks. It really does make a difference. I would estimate it adds 20%+ to the bean’s shelf life. This is not immaterial with the expensive beans I pull from Tokyo or Sydney. I like this gadget much more than I might have expected.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Alton Brown Good Eats, Coffee, Food.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.