Blah blah blah blah coffee
mdt:
Yes, I am posting this again because of he high level of awesomeness…
Also so as to properly second the comments/emotions of asphalteden, who speaks truth. The Baratza grinder recommended below is great for home use and I am extremely partial to the vac brew method he mentions, although my go-to vac pot is a Cory versus the Hario. If you are into electric drip pots, I live and die by the Technivorm at our office. Basically, life is to short to bother with bad coffee.
A new coffee import called Blue Bottle will be opening near my apartment. The shear level of doucheness of this place is completely off the charts:
Every drink at the new outpost will be made with incredible precision, with the drip coffee poured by hand in a meticulous process that takes about three to four minutes a cup. The espresso machines are Italian, but the iced coffee slow-drip devices are Japanese. Brewed at 88 drops per minute, the entire process takes 10-12 hours and is made overnight.It’s bound to be a manic success, and who knows, maybe it’s worth the FOUR MINUTES TO POUR through that crazy bong. Probably not though.
Well, this is definitely Alice-Waters-style douchery, but from its Bay-Area incarnations Blue Bottle pours some of the finest bitter water I’ve ever consumed. You may end up eating your own words. It all depends on whether you think coffee is just coffee.
future anthropologists are going to find this shit and smash it instantlySounds awesome.
I guess that makes me a douche.
Oh well.
in this post-indulgent society of ours, I try not to throw stones, even if my own life contains no obvious analogs to fancy glass bulb coffee. I’ve never had enough money to burn, though I suppose my $2000 set of Jack Vance books could be considered my only ultimate indulgence …I use one of these $62 Yama siphons and it makes the best coffee I’ve ever had. Making excellent coffee does require a decent grinder, which will set you back about $90 (or less for a refurb). So you can get into good coffee for about $150. Of course, with the Japanese, they’re always going to take something to the Otaku extreme. Although I’m not sure they’d consider it an indulgence, since preparation ritual and presentation seem integral to their culture. Anyway, I try to stay away from loaded words like “indulgence.” Does it mean “exploring one’s interest to great lengths” or “wasting money on fancy junk you don’t need”? Seems a slippery slope towards class discussions.
It should be noted that the 12-hour cold-brew method described above is neither new, nor unusual. You can do the same thing at home with a $38 Toddy setup, although it won’t look as pretty. This is an accepted brew method for reducing the level of acidity in the coffee, and it’s standard for making iced coffee. Using cold water limits which compounds are extracted from the coffee, but takes much longer. In the end you actually end up with a coffee concentrate.
Also, there’s nothing remotely odd or precious about 4-minute hand-poured coffee. That is the average brew/steep for most methods. It’s the same time you’d let a French press steep, or a drip machine drip. Of course if you do it by hand your’re going to have to stand there slowly pouring from a kettle for 4 minutes. This allows proper water temp (most drip machines operate well below correct brew temp) and better overall control. It requires more user attention, but actually doesn’t take more total time than using a Mr. Coffee. Personally, I’ve found manual pour-over problematic for brewing a small amounts of coffee; it works best with larger amounts, like the full-sized Chemex. This has to do with the various brew variables in relation to the extraction curve of the coffee compounds.
Your friend,
Douchey McCoffeeDouche
This post was reblogged from mdt.
