All Aboard: Coffee leads men to
trifle away their time, scald their chops, and spend their money, all for a
little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking, nauseous puddle
water. ~The Women’s Petition Against Coffee, 1674
Tickets Please: Lots of people have
a drinking problem. But it usually is an issue of drinking too much alcohol. My
problem is with a beverage of another sort – coffee. I am a hardcore coffee
drinker. I have 3 coffees a day, whether I need them or not. Over the past
several months, I have indulged in the world of coffee more than I have in any
other period of my life. I’d like to share a little bit of that journey with
you.
Brewing: This whole period
started out with buying a new coffee brewer. Our old brewer had a carafe that
was constantly spilling annoying streams of coffee whenever it was poured. It
was my sister, Heidi, who finally became fed up with this. She offered $100 to
us if we would buy a new coffee maker. This got the ball rolling.
I did some research on the internet
to find out what the experts thought about drip coffee makers. We own a
Starbuck’s Barista espresso machine, a stove-top espresso pot, and a French-press
coffee maker as well. I wanted to add a top-of-the-line coffee brewer to that
line-up. The experts were unified in their praise of one home coffee brewer:
the Technivorm line of brewers.
Technivorm’s brewers were singled
out for several reasons: their ultra-hot brewing temperatures, their
dependability, and their approval by the Specialty Coffee Association of
America. The Technivorm brewers use a 1400-watt heater, as opposed to the 800-watt
heaters of most household coffee brewers, to get water to a steamy temperature
of 200°F. Apparently, this is the ideal temperature for brewing delicious
coffee. Their dependability indicates that the company uses quality parts and
materials and assembles the machines properly. I don’t know much about the SCAA
but it sure sounded respectable to me.
So, we bought the Technivorm KBT741
from Transcend Coffee, a coffee shop in Edmonton (www.transcendcoffee.com), and we are
more than pleased with this brewing unit. The coffee is hot; I measured the
temperature of the water before entering the filter cone and it was indeed
200°F as promised. The coffee tastes great. I would even say it tastes better
but that may be in my head. And it is carrying the workload of brewing many
pots of coffee for my wife, my friends and family, and me.
Grinding: All the coffee
aficionados out there insist that one of the keys to great coffee is having
freshly roasted beans that you grind just before preparing. More on the fresh
beans later, but first let’s talk about grinding. The essential tool for
grinding coffee beans is a birr grinder. They are more expensive than a blade
grinder but are superior for several reasons – the most important of which to home
coffee makers is consistency. Birr grinders can be set to consistently grind
coffee to a uniform grind. We had our new-fangled coffee brewer and it only
made sense to buy a grinder that would match the brewer. We ended up purchasing
a Krups Birr grinder from Starbucks. This little unit is relatively quiet and,
like our brewer, we have been very pleased with the results.
Coffee: We found ourselves
on the verge of being able to produce an exquisite cup of coffee. We were
always content with the coffee we made before, but, our new journey into
coffee-nirvana was a slippery slope. We couldn’t own a birr grinder and the
queen-mother-supreme home coffee brewer and be satisfied with the regular
coffee we always used. So the search was on for the final ingredient for
top-notch coffee – freshly-roasted coffee beans.
I “Googled” the words “coffee
roaster London Ontario” and came up with a site that listed a coffee shop that
I was not familiar with: Fire Roasted Coffee Company (www.fireroastedcoffee.com). This
store must have come in under the radar because I’m usually on top of coffee
developments in my town.
On my first visit, I was fortunate
enough to be able to roast some coffee beans in a home roasting unit with FRC
Company’s proprietor Dave. He sent me home with a small batch of coffee that he
and I roasted, as well as a couple pounds of freshly roasted coffee. The coffee
from FRC is outstanding and its freshness has got to be one of the reasons.
Freshly-roasted coffee has a “pop” to it that is unforgettable and the
intensity of the flavours has me hooked. I have made many trips back to Fire
Roasted Coffee Company’s Art Roastery Studio in London. I have been there to
buy coffee: single varietals, coffee blends, espresso blends. I was also
invited to partake in a coffee tasting evening which was a lot of fun. We tasted
12 fair trade organic coffees from around the world with exotic names such as
Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Mexican Oaxaca and Dominican Republic Bani. It was
almost shocking how different coffees from different regions can taste. You
would think that coffee is coffee but not so. The variety of tastes and
textures was definitely unexpected. Fire Roasted Coffee Company is going to be
my portal to the next stage of my coffee odyssey which will be home roasting.
There are home roasting appliances that are both effective and user-friendly.
And the opportunity to have the freshest roasted coffee possible is something
that I need.
So there you have 3 of the main
aspects of a good coffee: brewing, grinding, and roasting. Where to and what
else will my passion for a good cup of coffee take me? I’ll let you know. Oh
yeah, and by the way…just because I get a headache in the afternoon if I don’t
have a coffee in the morning doesn’t mean I’m addicted. It’s not the caffeine I
crave, it’s the epicurean experience.
Last Stop: Apparently, a “cup of
joe” has been a term to denote a coffee since the early 1900s. There are
several explanations for this term. Here is the one I like the best:
In 1914, the secretary of the US Navy,
Admiral Josephus ‘Joe’ Daniels abolished the officers’ wine mess. From that time on the strongest and thereby drink of choice on board navy
ships was coffee.
It was dubbed ‘a cup of Joe’ after the secretary.