Crooked Kitchen

I have a bad habit.

It’s a habit a lot of people have. A habit that drains money faster than cable TV. Faster than broadband internet.

My name is Matt, and I’m addicted to Starbucks. (Hiiii Maaaatt.) That’s right. I pay $2.65 every weekday morning for a large (fine, venti) iced coffee.

But now I’m trying to get off that habit. I’m going back to making my own coffee (which, I have to admit, tastes much better than Starbucks’). Today I’ll cover my method for making hot coffee. Later I’ll write about cold-brewing, which is good for both hot coffee and iced coffee.

The Beans

If you’ve never tasted coffee made from freshly roasted beans, you’ve never had really good coffee. By freshly roasted, I mean roasted within the last 10 days. That excludes anything on the supermarket shelves. Even Starbucks’ beans are older than that. If you want to try freshly roasted coffee without making it yourself, find a coffee shop that roasts on premises, or can at least assure you that they receive daily shipments of beans roasted at a nearby facility.

I’ve been ordering my coffee beans from CoffeeAM.com. They’re roasted fresh when I order them, and shipped the same day. I want to find a local place to buy beans, though, because the shipping costs are a bit high. Still, it’s cheaper to buy the beans and have them shipped than to buy coffee at Starbucks every day.

And please don’t buy preground coffee. Ground coffee loses its flavor very quickly.

The Grind

The most important thing to consider in grinding your coffee is consistency in size. The actual grind size will depend on your preferred brewing method, but each brewing method works best if the grounds don’t contain dust or giant chunks of beans.

A burr grinder will get you this consistency with a wide range of available grind sizes. A blade grinder will chop up the beans into pieces of all different sizes - “dust and boulders”.

I use a Solis Maestro Plus for grinding. It has 31 grind settings, from very coarse to drip to Turkish. I use the third setting (coarse) for brewing in my French press.

The Brew

I use a French press because it makes a fuller-flavored cup of coffee. With the metal mesh filter, it allows the fragrant coffee oils to make it to the cup, rather than getting trapped in a paper filter. The brewing method of steeping all the coffee in all the water, rather than continuously running water through the grounds, seems to make better coffee as well.

Steeping time can be anywhere from 1 minute to 4 minutes, depending on how coarsely you’ve ground the coffee, how strong you like it, and how fine the French press’s filter is. Once the coffee’s brewed, it’s important to push slowly and evenly down on the plunger. This not only avoids the possibility of jamming and explosion out of the top of the press, but keeps the grounds from trying to sneak around the edges of the filter.

My Method

1. Start heating the water. Wait until the water has boiled and you’ve killed the heat before proceeding. An electric kettle is faster than a kettle on the stove. I use only filtered water in my kettle.
2. Grind the beans. I grind two scoops (about four tablespoons) of whole beans on the third-coarsest setting on my grinder. For me, that makes about one and a half mugfuls (regular mugs, not the giant Starbucksian latte/cappuccino mugs).
3. Mix the grounds and water. Add the coffee grounds to the French press, then pour the now-slightly-cooled water over the top. Waiting until the water has boiled before grinding the beans will let the water cool to a temperature that’s more conducive to extracting the coffee flavor without the bitterness.
4. Stir the grounds. You can use a spoon or a chopstick. Just stir to mix it up and get all the grounds wet. If your beans are fresh, you’ll see a good bit of foam.
5. Let steep for 1 to 4 minutes. Put the top on the French press to keep in the heat, but don’t push the plunger down. I steep for 3 minutes.
6. Slowly press the plunger down. Once you get to the bottom, let it sit for another minute to allow any fine sediment that made it through the filter to settle to the bottom.
7. Enjoy your coffee. Gently pour the coffee out into your mug of choice. If you like your coffee very hot, you might want to preheat your mug with boiling water. Coffee comes out of a French press cooler than drip coffee.

In my opinion, the French press is a fairly easy and very effective way of making coffee. French presses come in several sizes to accommodate small groups of people. However, if you’re making coffee for a large group, say 8 or more people, it might be easier to make drip coffee. Doing it manually with a paper filter and a carafe meant for the job will work well if you’re a control freak, but some coffeemakers do a good job also. The French press is still best for everyday morning coffee.