Question: “I like coffee really hot, so was interested in a double-walled stainless steel cafetiere/bodum, rather than the usual glass type. But I was wondering whether the steel would adversely affect the taste of the coffee. Any comments much appreciated. Thank you.” - Mrs. Sodera

Answer: I confess that I was not entirely familiar with the stainless steel French Press until I received your question.  I’ve only ever seen the glass French Press, and it’s the one that I use in my own home.  In fact, I’ve used it twice today already.  My biggest complaint is that the glass construction is not at all insulated so once you start drinking, you have to drink it progressively faster until it’s gone (and obviously cooler by that point).

For those of you not familiar with the French Press method of brewing coffee, click the link to learn more about it.  For many, it is the ideal way to make the best possible coffee at home.

I did some research when I received your question.  The answer is that the stainless steel construction will not adversely affect the flavor of the coffee you prepare in it.

The only comment related to flavor that I could find from somebody who uses one is that he felt the flavor did have a subtle difference from a glass French Press.  He was sure to point out that it was different, not worse and not indicative of steel in the flavor of the coffee.  I took this comment similarly to the different types of mugs that people use to drink coffee, and how many will say that it affects the flavor.  I personally like coffee best out of a ceramic cup but with my travel schedule, am often drinking out of a thermal mug.

The other factors to consider are look and price.  Many people prefer the glass look.  On price, you’ll pay approximately $70 for a stainless steel French Press.  And for that, you will have a coffee that stays hotter longer, and that will not break.  Let’s face it with a glass French Press, I’m bound to break it at some point, it’s just a matter of time .

Thanks for the question.

NOTE: Since this post was written, I did indeed break my glass French Press by putting it in the dishwasher and running the cycle.

Question: “Dear Marc, I never thought these letters were true until something happened one night…oh wrong forum for this one. Sorry…

I would like your thoughts on coffee makers in hotel rooms. Are they cared for and cleaned regularly? There must be stories of BAD things happening to them.” - Bill S.

Answer: Bill, thank you for putting your magazine down long enough to ask this question.

It’s a great question, and if you follow me on Twitter, you know how much time I spend traveling, and in hotels.  All of this amounts to a LOT of bad coffee.  Unfortunately at times, I agree whole-heartedly with the following quote from David Lynch, “Even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.” And if you don’t follow me on Twitter, you should be following me on Twitter.

Hotel lobby coffee is likely made with all of the same care, or lack of it, as hotel restaurant coffee.  It’s definitely the lesser of hotel coffee evils.  But, hotel room coffee should be avoided unless you absolutely need one and there isn’t any in the lobby.  It’s a rare case where I’d sooner recommend an energy drink.  Here’s why:

- Coffee maker is of bare minimum quality.  The maker in the room is designed to heat water, drip it over the filter, and not blow up in the process.  As I type this, I’m staring at a Sunbeam coffee maker, probably the same quality as the mini Mr. Coffee that I used for making coffee in my room in college.

- You don’t have access to filtered water.  The water you use to make coffee is so important.  When staying in a hotel, you’re probably using tap water from the bathroom.

- Between guests, the coffee pot cleaning is suspect.  In a five-star hotel, I’ve seen housekeeping clean the coffee pot with a facecloth in the room’s bathroom sink.  Over your next hotel stay, look at the cart that housekeeping has to service the entire room, and compare that to how you would clean your coffee pot at home between uses.  Your question was about maintenance of the machines, and I doubt very much that the hotel is running vinegar cleaning cycles through its machines before they reach the end of their lives and are disposed.

- The coffee will NOT be good.  I stay in hotel rooms almost half the time.  I’ve never had a quality coffee in a hotel room.  At home, I stick my face in the bag of new coffee each time I open it.  I wouldn’t even think to breathe in from a single serving of the mass-produced pseudo-instant coffee that are in the rooms.

Venture into the lobby for a coffee.  I find myself favoring chains that put coffee in the lobby 24 hours a day.  The best hotel room coffee experience I’ve ever had was at a Marriott in Portland, OR – they had a pod coffee maker in each room and an assortment of pods of coffee.  It was so exciting for me (and due to my kleptomania), here’s a picture that I had tweeted of what happened when housekeeping left their cart unattended in the hallway…

Question: “You made no mention of brewing coffee with an electric percolator. I collect vintage percolators, and my favorite is a WestBend that I purchased two years ago from the stock of a local hardware store that went out of business. They found it in the attic of the store, new in the unopened box, and it had been there since the 60s. I grind my own beans in a burr grinder. Everyone always comments on my coffee being so good. I just wanted you to know that everyone does not use drip coffeemakers. I also occasionally use a french press, which I enjoy very much.” - Kim Taylor

Answer: It’s great to hear that you’re making good coffee for yourself and for guests.  One of the finest compliments a person can pay me is to tell me I’ve made them a good coffee.

The only reason I omit mention of the percolator is because of the manner in which it brews coffee.  It was invented with the intention of exposing ground coffee to hot water, and it certainly does that.  The traditional percolator would bring water to a boil, expose that boiling water to the coffee, keep the once-exposed coffee-water at a boil and re-expose it to the ground coffee until it was strong enough for your tastes.

The drip-brewer was invented with a couple changes in mind.  First, the expression is true that “boiled coffee is spoiled coffee”, that boiling water shouldn’t come in contact with coffee.  When you use your french press, for instance, you allow the boiling water to simmer down before pouring it onto the coffee.  The drip-brewer heats the water to an optimally high temperature without boiling it, before dripping it onto the coffee.  Second, many will say that coffee shouldn’t be reheated after the brewing process has started.  For this reason, the drip-brewer was designed to “drip” only a small stream of heated water onto the coffee so that the exposure to water and coffee only happens once before the brewed coffee drips into the pot.

As you point out, the only “correct” way to make coffee is the one that works for you and the one that makes you a good cup of coffee.  Like you, I alternate between brewing methods for different reasons or just for mixing it up.  Thank you for the e-mail!

Question: “When I get down to have a pot, I have to swirl my coffee because it settles at the bottom.  What can I do?” - Linda Powell

Answer:  Hi Linda, It’s a great question because it can make a big difference to your coffee.  I assume you’re referring to the sediment that can sit at the bottom of your coffee pot and will end up sitting at the bottom of your coffee mug if you don’t swish the pot before pouring it.

I also assume you’re using a mesh permanent filter.  If you were using a paper filter, it would catch those coffee solids.  Those solids were extracted from the coffee in the brewing process, they contain flavor and make for a stronger cup of coffee but not when they get trapped in a paper filter.  And if you’re using a mesh filter, it’s not particularly pleasant to get a mouthful of that sediment in your last sip.  So if you swish the pot before pouring that last cup, it dissolves the sediment back into the coffee.

I’m in the habit now of even swirling the cup before my last sip.  I know it sounds like an extra step and for that reason, my parents stopped using their mesh filter despite my pleading with them not to go back to a paper filter.  The choice is yours.  I don’t find that it’s an unmanageable amount of sediment and for what it contains, I want it in my coffee.  But not everybody does, and the paper filter would be your best option to avoid it.

Learn more about paper and mesh filters.

If you like camping, I don’t need to tell you that we settle on many things.  Sure, we may grill meat over charcoal instead of gas and talk about how awesome it is, and yes, breakfast somehow tastes better when you’re roughing it than when you make it in a kitchen.

But, one thing we definitely settle on is our coffee.  At least, I used to.  Because the addict in me would rather drink awful coffee than no coffee, and energy drinks have only recently popped up everywhere, it was standard to bring instant coffee, sugar packets, and powdered whitener on camping trips.  It’s a terrible combination and I was sure to drink less coffee but it was something instead of nothing.

One year, one of the big grocery store coffee brands had introduced “coffee packets” which looked like tea bags and sat at the bottom of the cup.  You’d pour hot water on it, let it sit, and then remove the packet.  I thought this was the answer to coffee on camping trips but learned soon enough that it was really just more instant coffee in a perforated packet.

This year after everything was packed and I stared at my coffee bar waiting for the answer to hit me…it did!

French Press coffee brewing (sometimes called the Bodum from the brand name) is for many, the best way to brew coffee.  Click here to learn more about the French Press brewing method.  The short explanation is that you pour hot water over coarse-ground coffee that sits at the bottom of a container like the one you see above.  After a few minutes of exposure between the coffee and water, you press a filter downward to hold all the ground coffee at the bottom so that everything above the filter is great brewed coffee.

I thought, how ironic could it be that one of the best ways to brew coffee in your kitchen might also be the best way to brew it while camping.  As long as I bring coarse-ground coffee that I’d grind before leaving the house (and which would keep fresh well enough in an airtight container over the couple days that I’m camping), and the French Press itself, all I need after that is water heated over the fire or gas stove, and a cup to pour it in.

The setup is to the left.  Coarse-ground coffee measured out of my ceramic airtight container and deposited into the press.  Water brought to a near-boil (don’t pour boiling water on coffee!) and poured into the press.  Wait a few minutes, press the ground coffee down with the filter, pour into your cup.

It’s worth repeating…how ironic when we settle on things while camping that one of the best ways to make coffee is the same in the campground as it is in the kitchen!

The first time I ever heard of making coffee by “pour-over” was almost a whole year ago.  Click here to see the video I found back then of a tiny Japanese robot preparing coffee by this method.  I commented at the time that it seemed like a lot of work when I was getting coffee from my drip brewer just fine.

Late last year, I was asked for my thoughts comparing the pour-over technique to the French Press.  I came back to my opinion that the French Press is held in such high regard that there must be a reason why, whereas I wasn’t hearing as many advocates for the pour-over technique.

This month, I visited the Planet Bean roastery in Guelph Ontario and saw something for the first time.  All coffee served in their retail cafe was prepared by the barista using the pour-over method.  I asked Bill Barrett about this, and he gave his opinion that this was an ideal method to brew and get maximum flavor from coffee.

By coincidence, I was given another chance to answer this question when Dawn Foster e-mailed me and asked,

“Marc, what is your opinion of the Chemex coffee maker. A friend swears by it.”

What’s the difference?  Is it worth the bother?

Your drip-brewer at home heats the water and dispenses it over the filter of ground coffee.  That filter fills up with the heated water that extracts solids from the coffee that drips into the pot.  Grind some coffee, pour water in the machine, flip a switch, wait, enjoy.

By contrast, the pour-over method involves you slowly and gradually pouring the hot water in a thin continuous stream over several minutes rather than flooding the ground coffee at once.

To the left is the Chemex coffee maker.  In the home version of the pourover technique, this is the name I have heard the most often.  To brew coffee in this way, you would still use a paper filter in the cone opening seen on the left.  Once your water is boiled, you would let it cool slightly so that you are not pouring boiling water onto coffee (which spoils it).

What follows is the slow and deliberate process I shrugged at a year ago, of pouring the water onto the coffee in the filter.  This happens in three steps: pour once to saturate the ground coffee, pour a second time to build a volume of hot water in the filter to drip into the bottom chamber, and pour a third gradual time to use up the rest of the water.  In case it isn’t clear, I don’t own one but don’t worry, instructions come with the Chemex .

The Professional Way

Planet Bean prepares all of their retail coffee by the cup in this manner.  It has the definite appeal of quality that can’t be rushed in how it’s made.

The pour-over station is set up for each cup of coffee sold in the shop.

From the many varieties of coffee available that day, yours is organized in a single serving that is pulled from the shelf and brought to the pour-over station.

The coffee is emptied into the filter.

And the pour-over begins. It is the same process as I described with the Chemex above, with three separate pouring steps before your cup is ready and served to you.

The exciting part for me is that all of this is very new to me.  I can’t deny the East Timor coffee I had on-site at Planet Bean was awesome, but they have quality in every step so it’s difficult to say it was all about the pour-over technique specifically.

I’d love to hear from you if you have experienced the pour-over method – comment here or always feel free to send me an e-mail.  I’m very intrigued to learn more about the pour-over technique.