Jane Galt has written about plenty of important topics these last few years, but none as important as Best Practices for Coffeemaking. It’s a subject near and dear to my heart, especially since I recently moved back to paper filters after two years using a gold filter. We recently bought a new coffeemaker, because Amy concluded that having coffee waiting for her when she wakes up is never a bad thing, and the old one wasn’t programmable.
Despite my issues with buying products from German companies, I went back to the Krups well on this one. They haven’t done me wrong yet, and this new model’s been working out okay. But the big change, as I mentioned, is tossing out the gold filter and going back to paper. This was supposed to be a temporary measure, but I’ve been pretty happy with the coffee in the morning, so I’m sticking with it. Also, contra Galt, this new machine has a built-in water filter. I may take up her suggestion and get a Brita pitcher.
Which brings me to my #1 suggestion for good coffeemaking: get good coffee. This means whole bean, and not the Starbucks beans at your supermarket. For me, the best affordable stuff ($7.99/lb.) is the Kenya AA “Out of Africa” beans I get at Chef Central. When I wanna splurge, I head into NYC for Porto Rico Importing Co. and buy Hawaiian Kona ($24.95/lb.).
In the afternoons, I have a second dose of the stuff. I make this with a French press mug from Bodum (which they don’t seem to make anymore, according to their site). My coworkers goof on the devotion I have to making this stuff (“You actually grind coffee in the morning and bring it to work?”), but I believe that life is too short for coffee that comes out of a prefilled bag from a “drinks station”.
(At a conference & trade show in Paris in October, some exhibitors had complimentary coffee for attendees. This was my first experience with pod-style coffee, and it’s a poor substitute; trust me.)
So get good beans, grind your own either the night before or in the morning, and maybe use filtered water. And you can go too crazy trying to get “the perfect cup”. As one of the commenters on Jane Galt’s site put it:
The problem with increasing one’s level of coffee snobbery too far, is the same as the problem with wines, home audio, or any other hobby that deals with diminishing returns: the increase in required investment (time, money, or frequently both) to go to the next level of enjoyment, begins to far exceed the marginal return from doing so.
(One major caveat I need to make: I take my coffee black. I’m pretty sure I adopted this style because it reduced the amount of variables that go into preparing the stuff. This way, I only have to deal with the quality of the beans, the water, and the coffeemaker. No worries about the milk being off, or having the wrong kind of sweetener available. Maybe I also drink it this way to avoid the chemicals and/or calories in the additives. Or I’m just all hardcore and shit.
The point is: my best practices for coffeemaking need to be balanced against this bizarre predilection I have. Similarly, never trust me with any issues involving alcohol.)
Mine comes with a filter too, but they charge you $10 plus shipping for a filter that lasts two months. The cost to replace filters for my Brita pitcher is $3 every two months, plus I get to have filtered water all the other times. (My building’s pipes are a little scary). I’m not against the in-machine filter per se; I’m just cheap.
Ok, it’s pretty scary that discussion of coffee interests me enough to elicit a comment… but, I can’t help myself. I have to disagree that decent coffee has to be expensive. You’re right that buying whole beans and grinding them at home is the way to go, but for me the key is making sure the beans are relatively freshly roasted. There should still be a film of oil on them when they’re ground, which means not buying more than you can consume in a few days. I inadvertently found a brand of beans that are pretty cheap and make amazingly good (better than many brands that cost twice as much) coffee. I didn’t understand how this could be until I realized that it’s a local company, so I must be getting fresher beans from them than I do from even the pricey brands.