I run a startup[1] for quality control in the craft beverage industry (coffee, beer, distilling), and we have over 7,000 full sensory reviews of the flavor profile from various brewing methods.
I would highly suggest that anyone interested in brewing better coffee at home (or in the office, etc), invest in the following:
1) freshly roasted coffee - flavor profile degradation begins around day ~10 in most 3rd wave light-medium roast coffees. I would suggest Intelligentsia coffee, Blue Bottle, Stumptown, or Counter Culture. These guys are the "big 4" and trying either single origin or blends from them will give you a better idea of what to look for in high quality beans.
2) a conical burr grinder. Do not use a spice grinder (whirly blade) which will shatter the bean causing large amounts of micro-fines and make your coffee bitter. Capresso makes an OK home grinder, or (if you have the patients for it) the Hario hand grinder (with a ceramic burr) is excellent (but takes a while.... though it can be used in situations lacking electricity). In our dataset, conical grinders increase the Perceived Quality of "3rd wave" beans by 1.4 standard deviations on average - there is almost no effect on burnt beans or lesser coffee.
3) a Chemex or French Press. These are both simple, elegant, and allow you to make a range of quantities depending on how much coffee you have and who's drinking. Both of these brew methods score .75 standard deviations higher in perceived quality than average with less experienced (in our dataset that means 'non-expert') tasters. The average perceived quality can be further improved by correct dosing and pouring methods.
4) a swan neck kettle. This is 80% of what you need to to perfect your pouring method. The rest is practice.
Finally, one of the best things that you can do is record and rank the coffees you consume. This will help you objectively remember what you liked and disliked about the product, and gain intuition on your preferences. My company's tools are built for professional tasters in quality control, but anyone serious about coffee could find suitable use for it. Gastrograph Review is available free on the Google play store here[2].
I buy my coffee from a local chain: Dunn Bros, always within few days of roasting. Often the same day it was roasted. After having a particularly good cup of coffee there (they offer a "free" large cup of the variety of the day with every pound you purchase), I went on a quest to understand why their coffee always tasted better than mine. Finally it came down to the grind as the last variable and it totally blew my mind how different the taste was whether I bought it ground from them or with my "whirlybird" grinder.
Ground in store, made with a cheap drip brewer tastes infinitely better than ground at home with the crappy grinder and a French press. Unbelievable!
Another recommendation on the brewing is the AeroPress (http://www.amazon.com/Aeropress-Coffee-and-Espresso-Maker/dp...). Pour overs are great and I love my Chemex, but if you're looking to brew a single serving - or want something which is easy to pack for travel - the AeroPress is incredibly hard to beat. It's cheap, fast, small, easy to clean, and makes it trivial to consistently brew a great cup of coffee. The Porlex grinder mentioned above happens to fit exactly inside the AeroPress too.
If you're going to do a pour over, a gooseneck kettle really helps. If you don't, it's nice to have but not a necessity. Either way this kettle might be one of the most useful appliances I have: http://www.amazon.com/Bonavita-Variable-Temperature-Electric.... It's a gooseneck kettle with digital temperature control, built-in timer, and hold function. You give it a temperature and it'll keep your water there for an hour. It's ridiculously convenient.
FWIW, I started off with a French press, which uses a coarser metal mesh to separate the grounds from the coffee. Because of this you often end up with a small amount of "coffee ground sludge" at the bottom of your French press. The remnants continue to "brew" in your cup after you remove the rest of the coffee grounds, so you might end up with more bitter, overextracted coffee if you aren't careful.
I use the Hario hand grinder and it is by far the best grinder for anyone that is price conscious. It is significantly less expensive that other ceramic burr grinders. The only draw back is that you must manually crank it and this takes time. That said, a single serving of coffee takes only about 2 minutes to grind so it really isn't that bad unless you are preparing a larger number of servings at once.
I've been using a Baratza Virtuoso grinder for 2 years now. I'm really happy with it, and it probably suffices for everything up to super fine espresso grinds. ~$200 on amazon [1] -- $230 right now but watch it for a couple days [2]. Just one warning: if you live in an apartment, it produces a fairly loud low grumbling sound. I think it's fine, but if you have super thin walls up get up at the crack of dawn it's something to consider.
Once I found Stumptown House Blend, it became my espresso's staple. If you are used to Starbucks, it is certainly an eye opened about what a well roasted quality bean can produce in flavor and smoothness.
How does a Chemex or French Press compare to a Moka pot? I like the strength of my Moka pot coffee which is somewhere in between an espresso and an Americano or drip coffee.
After going through the hassle of 1-50 steps to make perfect coffee over and over, I relish a powerfully flavoured drink where you just pour hot water over leaves.
I absolutely love coffee. And I don't mean that in a way that I'm dependent on it to be awake and get work done. Coffee is my second biggest hobby just after programming. I'm so glad Nick Cho is the author of this article because he's the person who turned me on to the Kalita[0] products that have taken my home coffee brewing addiction to a whole new level. Nick also has another great video of the technicalities of brewing pourover coffee[1]. It's a great watch.
I think coffee is a lot like programming, really. Coffee is incredibly simple when you distill it down to the basics, which is what pourovers do. Hot water, ground beans, gravity and time. That's it. And just like software, we have complicated the heck out of coffee with all of these electronic machines that promise a decent cup of coffee in 30 seconds.
Coffee is something I love to share with other people. As I've gone from workplace to workplace I always bring my hand grinder, kettle and Kalita dripper with me. After the eyebrows are done being raised, my coworkers have always embraced the quality of the coffee as well as the fun experience of making coffee together. It's been great for the culture of the companies I've worked at.
I almost always do a pourover at home in the morning (except the last two mornings when I was out of filters and did a french press instead). I think they're significantly better than what you can get out of an automatic coffee maker, and easier than any other coffee-making process I've seen.
It's kind of odd that there aren't any links given to buy the stuff you need to get started:
There are a couple other things I do to simplify or improve the process:
* Wet the inside of the filter holder. This'll make it easier to get the filter to stay put.
* Wet the filter once it's in the holder, but before you fill it with coffee. I think this makes a difference in the final taste.
I use a rounded tablespoon of coffee grounds per 4-5oz water (i.e. two for a regular cup of coffee, and three for a travel mug). I don't worry about water temperature outside of whether or not it was recently brought to a boil.
I roast coffee at home and have been experimenting a lot with ratios and techniques for brewing. I've come to realize that my favorite technique is cold brewing. For home coffee brewing, I think it's underrated. I make a batch on the weekend, and for the rest of the week I have coffee ready to drink whenever I want it. The concentrate can last a long time without any big changes in the flavor profile, and I can make coffee of varying strengths (by adjusting the water dilution). I highly recommend cold brewing at home if you like coffee and have yet to try it.
I always wanted to try that. Care to share your technique, or link to a recommended one? I read that it uses a lot of raw coffee. I don't roast at home; these days I'm ashamed to say that I don't even grind fresh.
IMHO this is a fantastic way to make sweet, very flavorful iced coffee without it being too weak or containing an acidic aftertaste. On especially hot days it's nice to freeze some into large square or spherical ice cubes to put in glasses of iced coffee later. Serious Eats also has a great article on cold brewing:
I'm not a huge fan of cold brewing for normal coffee -- but then again, I kind of like a slight bitter taste to it (and I tend to drink it black). My technique was crazy simple though, so maybe I didn't do it very well?
I did, however, cold brew a whole bunch of coffee to use in a coffee oatmeal stout that I brewed once, and it was absolutely amazing.
I do this with a Toddy, and previously with large mason jars. It tastes great heated and makes for the best iced coffee. I love that I can dilute entirely with milk or water. You're right it tastes good for up to 2 weeks or so, but do you know anything about the caffeine content through that time? I figure (especially in the fridge) it should be pretty stable, but I don't have the domain knowledge to be certain of this.
Pourover is great because it lets you get intimate with the variables. Good coffee is in a state of tension, between bitter and sour flavors. If you find your coffee doesn't taste good, it's usually out of balance in one direction.
Luckily there are several ways to nudge your coffee toward one end or the other of the continuum, they are related as follows:
not to lessen your ideal,
but both sour and bitter fall into a category of complex flavors.
I absolutely agree that good coffee is a balance of sour (acidity) and bitter, but I take acceptation to the idea that it's a balance betwen these 2 flavors;
a coffee can be both very sour and very bitter!
Consider - nearly all of the complexity in coffee is from the development of acids as the coffee is growing, and the conversion of amino acids and proteins during the roasting process (Maillard reaction) of the bean;
if you over roast the bean the coffee will breakdown too far and develop carbonates, which are both cancerous and unpalatable. That's one type of bitter.
Coffee that's roasted a little less (but still far too much) will contain a campfire note (smokiness).
In both of these instances, good acids (which cause sourness) such as malic, tannic, and citric, are broken down - while less palatable acidic compounds such as acrylamide are produced.
Get a hot-air popcorn popper. A $3 one from Goodwill (thrift shop / flea market) will do, so long as the heating chamber is metal. Pour about 3/4 cup of green coffee beans in (you'll learn to adjust this to the popper). Turn it on. Wait until you hear the beans crack (you'll know) ... keep going just until you start to hear the beans crack again. Turn off, pour beans into cool steel pans, swirl them around until pan warms, repeat until beans are cool.
Home-roasted coffee, cheap, fresh. Your pour-over/Aeropress/etc process will have a foamy head much taller than you've ever seen. Flavor will be wonderful & rich.
Oh, and do the roasting outside. You'll stink up the kitchen good.
There is a golden ratio to brewing that has been determined to be 17.42 units of water per 1 unit of coffee. I have found this to be pretty spot on and most roaster recommend brew methods are right around this number. This isn't a definitive number, but a good baseline to begin with.
One of thing of note is there is most definitely variation between roasters, regions and even within the same bag. I've had certain regions come out with different tastes from different roasters. I've also had bags go from awesome to crap back to awesome all within a week of delivery.
Marco says, for example, that the CO2 thing is bullshit i.e. doesn't affect the coffee in ways he can notice. This is the kind of thing I'm most interested: someone who made all the experiences and came to a conclusion.
Is the CO2 thing specific to letting roasted coffee sit X days before use and blooming? While I haven't really tried to see if blooming matters when it comes to taste (it's a good indicator of bean freshness), I can say there is a difference in days since roast impacting taste. Beans release gas after roast and if you have some too close to roast date the taste can be dramatically different from a day or two later. In fact I've seen recommendations of beans best used for espresso have rested for 5-7 days post roast.
Your pour over brewing experience can be greatly enhanced by roasting your own coffee. It's surprisingly easy to do. Unroasted green beans cost half what roasted beans go for. You'll never have a dull pour over moment again. The roaster I started with and still use is the Behmor 1500 ($300). You can get started for closer to $150 (e.g., http://www.burmancoffee.com/roasting_equipment.html)
If you're in the US, there are several great home roasting web sites where you can buy fresh coffees from all around the world.
I'm having a hard time getting the current "hype" about pourover coffee. To me it generally tastes like Grandma's drip coffee. IMHO, it takes pressure and heat to really extract maximum flavor from the beans, thus espresso has been invented.
I've used a 6-cup Bialetti Moka Express for the last 6 years, it was the only piece of kitchen equipment we packed into our hand-luggage when we flew over to the states. It extracts a strong, flavourful liquor from most every coffee, although the typical US pre-ground coffee is a bit courser than optimal.
Steam pressure buildup in the reservoir forces sub-boiling water through the grind; not as high-pressure as an espresso machine so crema extraction is non-existent, but delivers a similar taste.
Why can't/hasn't this technique be automated into a "pourover-style" drip coffeemaker? If such a thing already exists, are cultural factors the only reason it hasn't displaced manual labor in frou-frou coffeehouses?
I used a Chemex until I dropped and broke it one day and then replaced it with a Bona Vita automatic drip coffee maker that I'm rather pleased with. The Bona Vita is oft-cited on the various forums I researched as striking a good balance of value and quality for demanding coffee connoisseurs willing to venture into a non-pourover option. It is supposedly "engineered" for optimal brewing temperature, water/grounds contact time and uses a shower head for good, uniform coffee grounds saturation.
Their are automated pour over machines out there, and they seem to be getting more popular recently. However, I doubt they will ever completely replace the manual pour over devices since everyone has their own technique when it comes to pour over, and everyone's technique yields a different taste. And that's ignoring the fact that different beans may require adjusting your pour over technique. It's the same with making espresso, sure some companies have made machines that automate most of the process and many people do use them, but in the craft coffee world, it's unlikely that they will ever become the standard.
They do. http://gizmodo.com/5773089/this-robot-hand-pours-coffee-bett.... You can even get cheaper ones for your house. I can't say why they haven't replaced people, but I suspect it is cultural. The air of expertise that people get from those who make pour over coffee in so called "frou-frou" coffee houses is part of the price.
In principle a quality machine like a MoccaMaster could control water temperature and rate better than pour-over. Pour-over seems like a pricing strategy for coffee that didn't come out of an espresso machine.
I'm really intrigued as to how much of the coffee connoisseur's appreciation of a coffee is down to the flavour and how much is actually down to a placebo style effect and the enjoyment of the ritual.
I love an espresso and make myself one every day but I can't shake the idea that if there were some blind taste tests 95% of the people who say they can really taste the difference between different pourings/grindings etc. (including myself) couldn't tell an aeropress from an old school drip filter machine.
I think you're right that the ritual accounts for a lot of the pleasure, and I'm okay with that. Another drink I love, yerba mate, is all about the ritual. I don't know if this is universally the case, but the protocol I was taught includes the proper way to prepare the mate in the gourd, that the host always pours new hot water in, that making the sucking sound when you're out of hot water is okay (and I think even encouraged), and that everyone drinks from the same gourd together. It's an acquired taste, but the company and friendship that the ritual begets is worth the initial palate shock.
This is pretty much exactly what I do, and I based it on instructions I got over at CoffeeGeek. There is one difference with their method, though, and that is that they recommend that you give it quick stir after the second pour. Does anyone know why this might be good or bad?
This is how I made coffee when I lived in Costa Rica! Most people there prefer this method, even if they can afford a machine http://i.imgur.com/kDKCuMa.jpg
Indeed, "pourover": because "drip" requires a euphimism!
"drip" is often a negative word: liquid is falling from something, and it is not wanted. Careful not to drip on the carpet! You're dripping with sweat! Oil is dripping out of your engine's rear main seal ...
Also, "drip" is used as slang epithet in some English-speaking parts of the world. A drip is a person without a strong character: a lamer, downer, etc.
I'm glad we don't have to call it "drip" coffee any more; though "pourover" is uncomfortably close to "pushover", which is one of the synonyms that aforementioned slang use of "drip". :)
" Start with a grind size around that of coarse sugar. (Think Sugar in the Raw.)" Does anyone know what type of grind this would be (e.g. french press, conical)?
[+] [-] JasonCEC|11 years ago|reply
I run a startup[1] for quality control in the craft beverage industry (coffee, beer, distilling), and we have over 7,000 full sensory reviews of the flavor profile from various brewing methods.
I would highly suggest that anyone interested in brewing better coffee at home (or in the office, etc), invest in the following:
1) freshly roasted coffee - flavor profile degradation begins around day ~10 in most 3rd wave light-medium roast coffees. I would suggest Intelligentsia coffee, Blue Bottle, Stumptown, or Counter Culture. These guys are the "big 4" and trying either single origin or blends from them will give you a better idea of what to look for in high quality beans.
2) a conical burr grinder. Do not use a spice grinder (whirly blade) which will shatter the bean causing large amounts of micro-fines and make your coffee bitter. Capresso makes an OK home grinder, or (if you have the patients for it) the Hario hand grinder (with a ceramic burr) is excellent (but takes a while.... though it can be used in situations lacking electricity). In our dataset, conical grinders increase the Perceived Quality of "3rd wave" beans by 1.4 standard deviations on average - there is almost no effect on burnt beans or lesser coffee.
3) a Chemex or French Press. These are both simple, elegant, and allow you to make a range of quantities depending on how much coffee you have and who's drinking. Both of these brew methods score .75 standard deviations higher in perceived quality than average with less experienced (in our dataset that means 'non-expert') tasters. The average perceived quality can be further improved by correct dosing and pouring methods.
4) a swan neck kettle. This is 80% of what you need to to perfect your pouring method. The rest is practice.
Finally, one of the best things that you can do is record and rank the coffees you consume. This will help you objectively remember what you liked and disliked about the product, and gain intuition on your preferences. My company's tools are built for professional tasters in quality control, but anyone serious about coffee could find suitable use for it. Gastrograph Review is available free on the Google play store here[2].
[1] www.Gastrograph.com [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gastrograp...
[+] [-] HeyLaughingBoy|11 years ago|reply
Ground in store, made with a cheap drip brewer tastes infinitely better than ground at home with the crappy grinder and a French press. Unbelievable!
[+] [-] gabbo|11 years ago|reply
Another recommendation on the brewing is the AeroPress (http://www.amazon.com/Aeropress-Coffee-and-Espresso-Maker/dp...). Pour overs are great and I love my Chemex, but if you're looking to brew a single serving - or want something which is easy to pack for travel - the AeroPress is incredibly hard to beat. It's cheap, fast, small, easy to clean, and makes it trivial to consistently brew a great cup of coffee. The Porlex grinder mentioned above happens to fit exactly inside the AeroPress too.
If you're going to do a pour over, a gooseneck kettle really helps. If you don't, it's nice to have but not a necessity. Either way this kettle might be one of the most useful appliances I have: http://www.amazon.com/Bonavita-Variable-Temperature-Electric.... It's a gooseneck kettle with digital temperature control, built-in timer, and hold function. You give it a temperature and it'll keep your water there for an hour. It's ridiculously convenient.
FWIW, I started off with a French press, which uses a coarser metal mesh to separate the grounds from the coffee. Because of this you often end up with a small amount of "coffee ground sludge" at the bottom of your French press. The remnants continue to "brew" in your cup after you remove the rest of the coffee grounds, so you might end up with more bitter, overextracted coffee if you aren't careful.
[+] [-] gaoshan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devindotcom|11 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/Porlex-JP-30-Stainless-Coffee-Grinder/...
[+] [-] x0x0|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006MLQHRG
[2] http://camelcamelcamel.com/Baratza-Virtuoso-Conical-Coffee-G...
[+] [-] mey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reedlaw|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] true_religion|11 years ago|reply
After going through the hassle of 1-50 steps to make perfect coffee over and over, I relish a powerfully flavoured drink where you just pour hot water over leaves.
[+] [-] jimmaswell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubiquity|11 years ago|reply
I think coffee is a lot like programming, really. Coffee is incredibly simple when you distill it down to the basics, which is what pourovers do. Hot water, ground beans, gravity and time. That's it. And just like software, we have complicated the heck out of coffee with all of these electronic machines that promise a decent cup of coffee in 30 seconds.
Coffee is something I love to share with other people. As I've gone from workplace to workplace I always bring my hand grinder, kettle and Kalita dripper with me. After the eyebrows are done being raised, my coworkers have always embraced the quality of the coffee as well as the fun experience of making coffee together. It's been great for the culture of the companies I've worked at.
0 - http://kalita-usa.com/
1- http://vimeo.com/42382657
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|11 years ago|reply
It's kind of odd that there aren't any links given to buy the stuff you need to get started:
* Coffee filter holder: http://www.amazon.com/Cilio-Porcelain-Coffee-Filter-Holder/d...
* Filters: http://www.amazon.com/Melitta-Coffee-Filters-Natural-Brown/d...
There are a couple other things I do to simplify or improve the process:
* Wet the inside of the filter holder. This'll make it easier to get the filter to stay put.
* Wet the filter once it's in the holder, but before you fill it with coffee. I think this makes a difference in the final taste.
I use a rounded tablespoon of coffee grounds per 4-5oz water (i.e. two for a regular cup of coffee, and three for a travel mug). I don't worry about water temperature outside of whether or not it was recently brought to a boil.
[+] [-] slaven|11 years ago|reply
It makes a very good pourover, I recommend it if you don't have the time to do it properly.
[+] [-] x0x0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] traughber|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morsch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmeranda|11 years ago|reply
http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2012/04/best-way-to-make-cold-...
[+] [-] mcdougle|11 years ago|reply
I did, however, cold brew a whole bunch of coffee to use in a coffee oatmeal stout that I brewed once, and it was absolutely amazing.
[+] [-] aganders3|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gegtik|11 years ago|reply
Pourover is great because it lets you get intimate with the variables. Good coffee is in a state of tension, between bitter and sour flavors. If you find your coffee doesn't taste good, it's usually out of balance in one direction.
Luckily there are several ways to nudge your coffee toward one end or the other of the continuum, they are related as follows:
The first time I applied these threories and ACTUALLY improved my coffee was an epiphany[+] [-] JasonCEC|11 years ago|reply
not to lessen your ideal, but both sour and bitter fall into a category of complex flavors.
I absolutely agree that good coffee is a balance of sour (acidity) and bitter, but I take acceptation to the idea that it's a balance betwen these 2 flavors;
a coffee can be both very sour and very bitter!
Consider - nearly all of the complexity in coffee is from the development of acids as the coffee is growing, and the conversion of amino acids and proteins during the roasting process (Maillard reaction) of the bean;
if you over roast the bean the coffee will breakdown too far and develop carbonates, which are both cancerous and unpalatable. That's one type of bitter.
Coffee that's roasted a little less (but still far too much) will contain a campfire note (smokiness).
In both of these instances, good acids (which cause sourness) such as malic, tannic, and citric, are broken down - while less palatable acidic compounds such as acrylamide are produced.
[+] [-] gegtik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctdonath|11 years ago|reply
Get a hot-air popcorn popper. A $3 one from Goodwill (thrift shop / flea market) will do, so long as the heating chamber is metal. Pour about 3/4 cup of green coffee beans in (you'll learn to adjust this to the popper). Turn it on. Wait until you hear the beans crack (you'll know) ... keep going just until you start to hear the beans crack again. Turn off, pour beans into cool steel pans, swirl them around until pan warms, repeat until beans are cool.
Home-roasted coffee, cheap, fresh. Your pour-over/Aeropress/etc process will have a foamy head much taller than you've ever seen. Flavor will be wonderful & rich.
Oh, and do the roasting outside. You'll stink up the kitchen good.
[+] [-] TarpitCarnivore|11 years ago|reply
One of thing of note is there is most definitely variation between roasters, regions and even within the same bag. I've had certain regions come out with different tastes from different roasters. I've also had bags go from awesome to crap back to awesome all within a week of delivery.
[+] [-] macavity23|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swah|11 years ago|reply
Marco says, for example, that the CO2 thing is bullshit i.e. doesn't affect the coffee in ways he can notice. This is the kind of thing I'm most interested: someone who made all the experiences and came to a conclusion.
[+] [-] TarpitCarnivore|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdnier|11 years ago|reply
If you're in the US, there are several great home roasting web sites where you can buy fresh coffees from all around the world.
The Captain's Coffee: http://thecaptainscoffee.com/shop/green-coffee-beans
Roastmasters: http://www.roastmasters.com/new.html
Sweet Marias: http://www.sweetmarias.com/store/coffee-list.html
Burman Coffee Traders: http://www.burmancoffee.com/coffeelist
[+] [-] koffiman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falsedan|11 years ago|reply
Steam pressure buildup in the reservoir forces sub-boiling water through the grind; not as high-pressure as an espresso machine so crema extraction is non-existent, but delivers a similar taste.
[+] [-] pinko|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cfield|11 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/Bonavita-BV1800-8-Cup-Coffee-Carafe/dp...
[+] [-] maxerickson|11 years ago|reply
I think drip machines are the way they are because they are cheap and reliable and people mostly don't care that much.
[+] [-] dntrkv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UprightCitizen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dilap|11 years ago|reply
- There's a nice zen-like quality to the simplicity of the method
- As others have noted, you are very intimately connected to the brewing process, which lets you make subtle (yet important) changes.
[+] [-] gelstudios|11 years ago|reply
The creators intend to sell it to coffee shops, but I can't remember what it was called.
[+] [-] Zigurd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nascro|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sequence7|11 years ago|reply
I love an espresso and make myself one every day but I can't shake the idea that if there were some blind taste tests 95% of the people who say they can really taste the difference between different pourings/grindings etc. (including myself) couldn't tell an aeropress from an old school drip filter machine.
[+] [-] nesyt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aestra|11 years ago|reply
Ritual food and drink are certainly common around the world. The thing that pops into my mind is the Japanese tea ceremony.[1]
There's nothing at all saying people can't have a personal ritual - indeed it is very common.
Also I think it might be having a sense of more control over the process is made gives a sense of pleasure as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_tea_ceremony
[+] [-] sramsay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metaldood|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maninalift|11 years ago|reply
Pour over hot water to just cover, stir until saturated, fill cup, allow to settle, drink.
No need for filters or devices. All the flavour stays in the cup.
[+] [-] taternuts|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|11 years ago|reply
"drip" is often a negative word: liquid is falling from something, and it is not wanted. Careful not to drip on the carpet! You're dripping with sweat! Oil is dripping out of your engine's rear main seal ...
Also, "drip" is used as slang epithet in some English-speaking parts of the world. A drip is a person without a strong character: a lamer, downer, etc.
I'm glad we don't have to call it "drip" coffee any more; though "pourover" is uncomfortably close to "pushover", which is one of the synonyms that aforementioned slang use of "drip". :)
[+] [-] stevebot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]