I always wondered whats there about brewing a good cup of coffee....Few days back my team mates presented me with a Black Decker electric coffee maker as a parting gift on my farewell ( yaa i left the first company i joined after 1.5 years but this entry is dedicated to the art of brewing coffee and not about my career path..)...Most of us think that we know everything about an appliance and how to use it ,so I also tried to be a smart ass and without reading the instruction manual I straight away went ahead to brew my first cup of coffee with this new piece of equipment I acquired....The result was horrifying... the worst cup of coffee I ever threw in the basin....So I started again from ground zero and read the manual carefully, I even visited the Black Decker website for some useful tips ( FACT : Everyone in software industry thinks that world wide web has the solution to all the problems in the world so for anything and everything they google or consult some wikipedia page). So I did my own online research on brewing coffee and I must say that brewing coffee is a cult in its own way....There are seven popular ways to brew coffee :
Espresso:
An espresso is a high-pressure extraction of coffee from a special machine... we all have seen the big ass espresso machine in Barista....the manual intervention is limited to filling roasted and ground coffee beans in the coffee hatch and the machine does the rest....pretty uninteresting...
Middle Eastern, "Turkish" or "Greek":
This method involves boiling coffee powder ( grinded into a very fine dust ) in water.... Traditionally the coffee if often boiled with large amounts of sugar, but not necessarily..... People sometimes add cardamom to their coffee and the coffee isnt filtered from the liquor so its kind of a muddy brew.
Concentrate Brewing:
In this method large amounts of coffee are brewed with little water to brew a concentrate.... When one wants a cup of coffee some of the concentrate is mixed with hot water. The concentrate can be brewed hot or cold . The resulting coffee is mild with a little aroma ....this method is very popular in Latin America..
Percolating:
This method involves continuous brewing of coffee grounds using boiling water which then turns to boiling coffee liquor brewing overextracted grounds...There are various types of electric percolaters available in the market...
Vacuum Brewing
Now this one is very techie....the procedure reminds me of chemistry labs...This method uses an elegant looking device that consists of two glass globes that fit together with an air-tight seal. Either in one of the globes, or between the globes, is a filter to separate the grounds from the
liquor. Ground coffee is placed in the upper globe, often on top of the filter, and e nough water to brew the grounds is placed in the lower globe. The globes are then fitted together and the lower globe with the water is heated. The water in the lower globe begins to heat to a boil and as this causes the pressure in the lower globe to increase it forces the water up a tube connecting the globes and into the upper globe containing the grounds. Once all the water has made this airpressure induced trip, the apparatus is taken off the heat source... This allows the lower globe to cool down back to room temperature, decreasing the pressure in the lower globe and thus sucking the brewed coffee back down (through the filter) into the lower globe(it is a little difficult to visualize )..... The coffee is then poured out of the lower container and enjoyed (right after all this temperature and pressure thingie ).... A great cup of coffee can be achieved with the vacuum brewer, but it has its downfalls. Firstly, the coffee is being extrac ted by water around 212F, while it should be extracted between 195F-205F. Secondly, their is very limited control over the extraction time....
Autodrip
(This is what my Black Decker does)
This is the most popular way to brew in the US...(We all see this method in all the hollywood movies... A borosilicate glass kettle under a drip with a lot of black coffee in it) Drip brewing is simply pouring hot water over ground coffee in a filter and letting the brew drip out the bottom.... Drip brewing is a very good way to brew and can give an excellent cup if the correct equipment is used with the prescribed amount of coffee.... A primary issue with autodrip machines is that they don't brew at the right temperature.... If one has a good autodrip machine or
one decides to heat and pour the water themselves, the next issue to surmount is the filter.... Paper filters can impart a taste on the coffee and also do not allow many of the coffee oils and organic compounds through...I think this can be an issue with the dip tea pouches we use...I never thought about it.... A good gold-plated reusable filter is a great option for drip brewing (Gold plated right...he he he...I checked my machine and it doesnt have one :-( )... Another slight drawback is that drip brewing, in general, does not give the operator much control over extraction time...Well this aint a real problem for bachelors...they have all the time in the world ;-) (Joski will kill me if she reads this)
French Press or Press Pot
French-press brewing gives the operator complete control.... While itmay be more labor-intensive than autodrip, the brewing variables(temperature and pressure ) can be easily and directly controlled... Coarsely ground coffee is placed in the glass carafe, then water at the desired temperature is poured over the grounds and the top is placed on. When brewing is complete, the plunger (a mesh filter on a stick) is pressed down, pressing the grounds to the bottom and leaving the coffee liquor on top to be poured off....The filter is not as tight as a paper filter and because of the larger pores, a coarser grind is required so the grounds are filtered out, and the plunger does not become almost impossible to press down... The mesh of the filter allows the coffee oils and all those delicious dissolved and undissolved solids through without a problem. Also, because a coarser grind is required, a longer steep time is req uired (because of the decreased surface area to volume ratio).... A brew time between 3 to 6minutes is common for French-pressing. This prolonged, direct contact of the grounds with the water allows for a more complete, more controllable, and even extraction.... Unfortunately, even with the highest quality burr coffee grinder or mill, a coarse grind will still result in some very small coffee grounds.... These grounds are not filtered by the French-press filter and thus end up in the cup. A cup of French-pressed coffee with be noticeably fuller, with much more body, an d often with more flavor, it will often also have the tell-tale sedimen t at the bottom of the cup....French Press coffee was served in cafe coffee day few years back...when I saw it the first time I had to actually ask the guy who came with my order what to do with the press pot... The press pots are readily available in the market and I think it should be a part of default utensil set in every house....
So this is about brewing coffee.... Jo got me a nice pack of italian ground beans from costa coffee..... even after all this research , good quality coffee and some good tips from jo's dad I ended up making another cup of terrible coffee for myself but this time it didnt go in the wash basin :-) ..... Well I guess one cant go by theory for everything....somethings are meant
to be perfected by practice....I will keep trying till i get that perfect brew....
