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| Sweet Maria's Clever Coffee Dripper on top of my favorite coffee cup |
I
make a good cup of coffee. No! Wait a minute! I make a great cup of coffee. I’m
not ashamed to say so. I’m not blowing my own horn. Nor am I blowing my wife,
Nancy’s, horn. She taught me. I am blowing my son, Benjamin’s, horn. He’s the
one who taught Nancy. I don’t know where he got it from. Maybe, like Athena, it
sprang steaming and dark from his own brow.
For
those of you interested in coffee, here is what I do. First off, I make sure
the beans I use were roasted yesterday, or maybe, in a pinch a day or two before.
Fresh roasted is critical. A coffee bar down the street prides itself on its coffee.
Let me tell you, it shouldn’t. I asked the barista when the beans were roasted.
She said two weeks ago. Amateurs!
They
are not alone. I rarely order coffee out. Most American restaurants haven’t a
clue how to make good coffee. Or, more cynically and probably truer, they know how
but they also know that most of their customers haven’t a clue how good coffee
is supposed to taste. How else can you explain the popularity of coffee bar
chains whose coffee, on a scale of 1 to 10, would rate, maybe, a generous 5?
One of our favorite Cambridge restaurants, a $$$ one, makes coffee that is as
bad as their food is good. It is astonishing how bad American-made coffee can
be.
Why
am I picking on American coffee? My son lives in Madrid. Now there they know
how to make coffee. Ditto, Italy. I haven’t been to France for a while. But if
you go to India, as I just did, switch to masala tea for the duration. The
coffee at the Taj in New Delhi—I stopped in for a taste—is execrable. I suspect
they use Nescafe.
Anyway,
back to the grind. I measure out 32 grams of fresh-roasted coffee beans. I like
Vienna dark roast. You’ll have to find your own taste center. I grind the beans
in my indispensible (and expensive) Preciso coffee grinder with the
micro-adjuster set about halfway. Properly ground beans are essential. The
ground coffee goes into a paper filter that sits inside a gold filter that fits
inside a Clever Coffee Dripper that Nancy purchased from Sweet Maria’s in San Francisco. That too is indispensible. If you
get one, you’ll see why. Next I pour boiling water into a plastic container
that is sitting on a scale. I stop when the scale measures 17 ounces. That exchange
from water boiler to plastic container is sufficient to lower the temperature
to the proper 200ºF plus or minus 2º. I pour the water over the grounds, set my
timer to 4 minutes, stir the mixture, put a plastic lid on top and wait. Four
minutes later, I stir again and place the Clever Coffee Dripper over my cup and
let it run through.
You
can drink it black if you like. I prefer my coffee sugared and light. Here is a
final tip. Never use milk. It interacts chemically with the coffee and leaves a
slightly bitter taste. Either cream or nothing.
One
day my plumber came to the house. I made him a cup of coffee. He came again
today. He said his wife refuses to make coffee the way I do. With small kids in
the house her life is hard enough, she says.
I
can sympathize with that. Each morning I work for my coffee. But when the work
is done, the reward is commensurate.
