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February
16,2011

Siphon-Brewed Coffee

Author | Marc Wortman

Pierre Richard is the owner of Ottawa-based Happy Goat Coffee Company.  Not only is Pierre a local roaster, but he has also taken to a form of brewing coffee called siphon-brewing.

You’ll see by the above link and video that it looks more like a Chemistry class experiment than coffee brewing, but a very interesting procedure.  It seems to combine the infusion of Espresso brewing with the steeping of French Press brewing, which according to Pierre, makes for a coffee flavor you cannot produce with any other brewing method.

One feeling off the cuff is that I have to try this coffee.  It requires a trip to Ottawa to do it because my other feeling is that I won’t be investing in this kind of equipment to make coffee or as Pierre points out, going through this labor-intensive way to brew.  It all looks really cool, just like a lot of work.  The interesting thing about it is that there’s no way for Pierre to “ship” his process like one could with beans, you have to go to Pierre (or another siphon-brewer) to take in the experience.  I plan to!

Anybody out there who has tried coffee made this way, I’d love to hear from you.

Categorized In | Buying Coffee

February
11,2011

How to Host a Coffee Snob

Author | Marc Wortman

Question: “What mustn’t you do so as not to offend a coffee connoisseur? Stay away from instant coffee?  Keep the Bailey’s out?  With thanks.” - Bill Garfield Suzuki

Answer: Bill, I can tell you that’s a great question because unfortunately, I find friends and family all too concerned about the coffee they serve me in their homes.  The exception is my parents, who have been making coffee longer than I’ve been alive, so aren’t all that concerned with what I think!

I have a friend with a formal culinary background who tells me everybody is afraid to cook for him.  I have another friend who informally is just as much a cook, and I can’t host him at my house without him taking control of the cooking.  And so it is with coffee snobs, it really depends on the person.  Anyone who would take offense to any part of being hosted is too much of a snob, let them be offended.  Here are some pointers I suggest:

1. Make everything optional
Serve the coffee black, and bring out the cream, sugar, and Bailey’s so that they are available whether the snob wants them or not.  Depending on the level of snobness, they may not want to even be asked whether they will take anything in their coffee.  So, don’t ask.  Put it all on the table and let them whiten or sweeten to taste.

2. Find out what they know that you don’t
When my friend commandeers the cooking while I’m hosting him, I watch him like a hawk.  He knows what he’s doing and so I’m intensely curious so that I can pick up a thing or two.  In fact, if you’re hosting a coffee snob, make it a point to learn one new thing about making coffee that you didn’t already know.  Or, take it a step further and ask a barrage of questions like the snob will never be in your home again.

3. Tell them what they’re getting
Maybe you are genuinely interested in being a great host for the snob.  My advice when serving the coffee is to tell the snob exactly what they’re getting – almost a presentation of the coffee.  “This is Nescafe Instant, it’s not terrible.” or “This is Starbucks House Blend I buy at the grocery store.” or “I got this as a gift, it says it’s Kenya AA, but that’s all I know about it.”  If the snob thinks you’re interested to know more, he or she probably has something interesting to share about that coffee.  If the snob is the Cliff Claven of coffee, you may have bitten off more than you can chew, but remember, you said you were genuinely interested in hosting this person.

4. Tell them to bring the coffee
Let them know what equipment you have to make coffee, and tell them that you’d be honored if they would make coffee for everybody after dinner.  No coffee snob will be offended by this.

The one I get most often is my host will pull their coffee out of the freezer, looking at me sideways because they’re pretty sure that’s not where they’re supposed to put their coffee.  So if you yourself are a coffee snob and you’ve read this far into my post, keep quiet at a time like that.  Let them ask you if that’s a good place to keep their coffee and only in response, tell them why it isn’t.

I don’t like snobs, so I try not to be one.  I’m one of the people that’s afraid to cook for my friend the chef.  And it’s not because he’s a snob at all, I’m the one who is self-conscious about it.  But, he always has small helpful tips that make a big difference for as much cooking as I do.  Turn the experience into a learning one, the snob knows things you don’t.

Categorized In | Serving Coffee

February
6,2011

Planet Bean Coffee

Author | Marc Wortman

I was very fortunate recently to receive a couple half-pounds of whole bean coffee as a gift from a dear friend.  The coffee comes from Planet Bean Coffee, a worker co-op and coffee roaster based in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.  The name was immediately familiar, because another friend who lives in the area told me about them last year.  Specifically that he had sampled coffee from many different suppliers, and chose Planet Bean as the only coffee he would serve in the food services unit that he manages.

I was treated to a half pound of Planet Bean’s Morning Glory blend, and a half pound of their Freedom Fighter blend.  Both delicious, and together covering a nice roast range between medium and dark.  All of Planet Bean‘s coffees are roasted on-site, and the company is a clear champion of Fair Trade Organic coffee.

First of all, you can see the labeling steps I need to take while I work my way through my current coffee overstock – click for a Tale of Too Many Coffees.  But, it’s a must, these are all great coffees so I need to keep them straight.

The Freedom Fighter blend on the left is clearly a dark-roasted coffee.  If you like your coffee dark (without the burnt flavor you get from some places), this one has a full body and is full of flavor.

The Morning Glory blend on the right is a mostly medium-roasted coffee with some dark beans mixed in, which you can hopefully see in the picture above.  I’m used to roasters keeping the roast consistent, so this has been a fun one to try.  There is definitely a nutty flavor from the medium-roasted beans and a “bold” accent from the dark beans that doesn’t overpower the medium-roasted beans.

I hope to learn a lot more about Planet Bean in the weeks to come. Their website shows they are a very interesting roasting business, with a sense of community and responsibility for coffee growers and the people that work within their operation to make it a success.  Learn more about Planet Bean Coffee.

Categorized In | Buying Coffee

February
5,2011

Does The Coffeemaker Purify My Water?

Author | Marc Wortman

The short answer is no!

JP and I were tweeting back and forth on Twitter about the importance of your source of water when making coffee.  I wrote recently on the different options between top, filtered, and spring and what it means to the flavor of your coffee.  After all, coffee is 99% water so you should use the best water you can.

There is some misconception that your source of water isn’t important because it’s going to be heated through the course of the coffee being brewed.  If you use a standard drip-brewer, the water will never get hot enough to be considered purified, so don’t consider the heat of the process to be “cleansing” the water that ends up in your coffee mug.  In fact, consider the quality of that water to be the same at the end of the cycle as what you pour into it (for the most part).


For water to be purified by heat, it has to be boiling heat.  The boiling point of water is 212 deg F or 100 deg C (yes, doesn’t Celsius make so much more sense to use?!).  We don’t want to boil water just before its contact with the coffee because “boiled coffee is spoiled coffee” – coffee taste is seriously affected and bitter if it is boiled at any stage.

So, the optimal temperature at which to boil water is 195-205 deg F, hot enough to extract optimal solids, oils, and flavor from the coffee but not hot enough to boil and ruin the coffee.  Heat is needed to extract flavor as the water passes through the coffee in the filter, but it is just shy of enough heat to have a purifying effect on the water, so the water quality doesn’t change to a significant degree.

That means you can’t count on your coffeemaker to purify water as it makes your coffee.  I suggest again to check out the recent post on water quality so you can be sure you’re using the right kind of that all-important ingredient to coffee – the water itself.

Categorized In | Brewing Coffee

February
3,2011

A Tale of Too Many Coffees

Author | Marc Wortman

Coffee is best when it’s fresh, and it’s FRESHEST 2-3 weeks after it was roasted.  This means a few things:

1) You should buy your coffee from a place where you know it was roasted recently.  It wasn’t roasted recently if it comes in a big tin pre-ground, or if it’s instant.  Also, the friendly staff at Starbucks probably don’t know how recently their whole bean coffee was roasted.  Go to a local roaster.

2) Only buy as much coffee as you intend to consume over the next 2-3 weeks.  For me, that means two trips to my local roaster each month to buy a pound at a time.  I go through a pound of coffee every 2 weeks, the average person probably 2-3 weeks so I definitely suggest buying one pound at a time.

3) Finally, do as I say and not as I do…

I currently have SIX different coffees in the house.  You’ll see by the pic above that not only have I had to label them individually with masking tape and a Sharpie marker, but one of them is still in an unopened bag and one of them is in a tupperware container because I’ve run out of coffee cans.

The last time I had to deal with a coffee overstock, it was because I had just bought some at the same time as some friends had gifted me with some.  That happened to me again, but at the same time, I’ve made two separate unplanned trips to my local roaster and couldn’t help myself but get more while I was there!

Here’s what I have in-house to work through:

I’ll talk about the coffees individually at a different time.  For now, what’s important is deciding how to handle this situation so that I can enjoy these great coffees before they go stale.  It may help to read about my last coffee overstock situation.  The circumstances here are a little different, so my guideline going forward is all about balance.

There has to be an order (even if there are ties) for which ones I want to drink the most.  If I want to enjoy them at their best and drink them first, it means the others will go stale faster.  If I drink the least fresh ones first because the fresher ones have time before they go as stale, I’m likely to be drinking all of this coffee in a less than premium freshness.  And those are the three factors that I will need to weigh against each other as I make daily decisions on which one to grind and brew:

1) Roasting date: The more recently it was roasted, the fresher it is.

2) Preference: Which ones am I most interested in.

3) Quantity: How much do I need to go through, and is there a little left of any of them to go through those quickly.
The Triple-Peckered Billy Goat coffee was roasted the furthest back, and I have about a half-pound of it left.  It is also the one I’m least interested in.  I may not get to it at all.

The Fire Roasted Coffee in Costa Rican and Peruvian were roasted at approximately the same time – a week ago – and I am interested in each of them very much because they are both new to me from this roaster.  I will make these a priority, but I have some time to get to them.

The Fire Roasted Coffee in Kenyan was just purchased today.  I’m very anxious to try this one again from my local roaster but I have some time since it was roasted within the last few days.  In fact, I could go a week without touching this one, but just couldn’t help myself buying it today.

The Planet Bean blends, Freedom Fighter and Morning Glory, were probably roasted a couple weeks back.  They’re both very good and I don’t want to waste either of them.  They were also gifted to me in half-pounds so there isn’t that much left of either of them.  I’ll make them an immediate priority as well since they won’t last long.

And of course, that one idea that always slips my mind…there’s always the option to pass some on to good friends that enjoy good coffee.  Does anybody want this Billy Goat coffee or did I already mention it didn’t make the short list?

Categorized In | Buying Coffee,Storing Coffee

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