Coffee

There’s a lot of different ways to make coffee, the drip coffee maker sitting in the kitchen is only the beginning. They get pretty crazy with things that sound more like household items – the vacuum method, the plunger – to name just a couple. All of the methods produce a slightly different final product and just about all of them are at least worth trying once.

The most common method is with the Drip Coffee Maker, which is also called the filter method. Just about every household has at least one of these.

Coffee is made when water is poured on to grounds. The water filters through the grounds and into a coffee pot or mug below. For further instruction, please locate the nearest coffee maker in your house and take a look inside.

Another common method with enthusiasts is the French Press. They also call this the Plunger or Cafetiere.

Ground coffee is added to the bottom of this glass and metal cylinder shaped device. Hot water is poured in and then stirred around. The water saturates with the grounds for a few minutes before the plunger is pushed down to separate out the grounds. It’s said to extract the most flavor of any method.

At one point, the Percolator was the most common way to make coffee, however it was replaced by the drip coffee maker about fifty years ago. The reason that it lost it’s popularity is pretty simple, it produced horrible tasting coffee.

The Percolator looks like a kettle with an electrical cord attached to it. Water is put into a heated reservoir in the bottom, then as it heats up it cycles through the top where the grounds are. It goes through the cycle over and over until it’s ready. It makes the kitchen smell delicious, it even sounds good, but the taste has become sub par.

An increasingly popular appliance in many households is the Espresso Machine. They can be used to make espresso, but also cappuccinos and lattes.

While they can be sometimes very complicated machines, the process is simple. Hot water is injected into coffee grounds at high pressure into the waiting cup below.

Turkish Coffee or the Arab Method is the way coffee was mostly likely made originally. It produces a very dark and strong brew, so it isn’t for everyone.

It’s made by first grinding the beans by hand into grounds. Then it’s put into a pot called an ibrik with sugar and water. They bring it to boil three times, then it’s poured into cups to drink.

The Vacuum Coffee Maker is probably one of the most unusual looking methods. It looks like two glass pots placed on top of each other.

The vacuum method involves water heated up to near boiling, then it’s forced through coffee grounds into a chamber above. The mixture steeps until the heat is turned off and as it cools, the water is sucked back into the lower chamber.

If you don’t mind waiting for your coffee, you can try the Cold Water Method.

It’s a ten to twelve hour process that starts with ground coffee mixed into a large container with water. It’s left at room temperature for the day, then the grounds are removed and the extract can be mixed with hot water to make a cup of coffee.

The Neapolitan Flip may sound like some sort of ice cream desert, but it’s another interesting looking method of making coffee. It looks like two metal coffee pots on top of each other.

The two metal looking coffee pots are actually two chambers with grounds between them. The lower chamber is filled with hot water and brought to a boil. It’s then removed from the stove and flipped over. The water drips through the grinds into the serving pot below.

Some might argue that it’s not a legitimate way of making coffee, but Instant Coffee is made in thousands of cups across the country every morning.

It’s the easiest form of coffee to make, just add water, but taste is often a causality of the process.

Instant coffee is made by removing the water from grounds by freezing or heating it. That produces the powder that you can buy at the grocery store.

Growing in popularity lately because it’s so simple to use is the Single Serve Coffee Machines. Some consider it to be the future of coffee because you only have to insert a k-cup, pod or disc into it and press start. The result is a fresh cup of coffee in a few moments.

Mike Crimmins is a coffee fanatic. He’s not your traditional coffee expert or barista. He’s just your average joe, looking for that perfect cup of coffee. You can learn more about coffee at his blog http://dailyshotofcoffee.com/

See coffee maker photos.

Author: Mike Crimmins
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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When brewing coffee the ratio of ground coffee to water is vital. Generally the rule is 1 standard coffee scoop (2 tablespoons) of ground coffee to every 6 ounces of water. The only problem here is that coffee scoops can vary in capacity. The ideal way is to measure the capacity of your coffee scoop and adjust your subsequent coffee measurements accordingly. If weaker coffee is preferred then the 2 to 6 rule applies. Make it full strength and then dilute to taste with hot water or milk.

There are many ways to brew coffee but a percolator should not be one of them. Percolators violate two of the fundamental rules of good coffee brewing. They boil the coffee which extracts bitter and sour substances that should play no part in coffee and they pour water that is too hot over the grounds repeatedly. The water should be just right and poured only once.

There are many recommended methods of brewing a good cup of coffee.

The filter cone method involves pouring the hot water through ground coffee that has been measured into a filter set inside a cone. Over recent years this method has become increasingly popular. Connoisseurs prefer to use gold-washed metal filters but paper filters are convenient and easy to use.

Electric Drip machines operate in much the same fashion as manual filter cones except that they pour water over the coffee electrically from a pre-measured reservoir. The flat-bottomed cupcake shaped filters are thought to allow the water to saturate the ground coffee more evenly than the cone shaped filters.

The commonest version of the Metal drip pot is the old-fashioned stovetop pot divided from top to bottom into chambers for hot water, ground coffee and brewed coffee. These are excellent and produce coffee, which is full in flavor and body.

Plunger Pots or French Press Pots operate in a unique manner. The course ground coffee is placed into the pot. Hot water is then added and the grounds are left to steep. Then a metal screen attached to a plunger is slowly pushed down forcing the coffee grounds to the bottom of the pot. This coffee has a thick texture and is particularly appropriate to the flavors of dark roasted coffees.

Espresso coffee is fast becoming popular and the term espresso refers to the brewing method and not a coffee bean. This method gives the fullest bodied coffee by far. Espresso machines force hot (not boiling) water through finely ground coffee at high pressure.

Almost certainly every nation of the eastern Mediterranean brew coffee with a very simple method which is though to have originated in the coffee houses of Cairo in the fifteenth century. Very finely ground, sweetened coffee is lightly boiled several times in a medieval looking long handles brass or copper vessel called a cezve in Turkish and ibrik or briki in Greek. Although the coffee is not filtered the grounds stay in the bottom of the pot but some sediments will find there way into the cup where it sinks to the bottom and remains.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Coffee [http://coffee-guides.com]

Author: Michael Russell
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Espresso is strongly brewed coffee made by forcing steam and hot water
through darkly roasted and finely ground coffee beans. The aroma of
espresso makes it especially hard for many coffee lovers to resist.
Coffee aficionados the world over know that a shot of excellent
espresso is crucial to making a good cup of coffee. There are a
variety of espresso machines in the market that can produce great
tasting espresso.

So how do you make a great cup of espresso? Here are the basic steps:

1. Remove coffee ground residue of the previous shot in the shot
holder before using the espresso machine to make a new cup of
espresso.

2. Have adequate ground coffee ready and place it in the grinder hopper.

3. Release seven grams of the ground coffee into the shot holder,
making sure that you get a full pull as you do so.

4. Using a hand tamper, even out the coffee grounds. Tamp only once
and do not twist the tamper as you tamp the coffee grounds. By doing
this, you are assured that the hot water and steam will evenly extract
the coffee. You can also correctly gauge the pressure if you use a
hand held tamper to pack down the coffee grounds as well as remove
excess coffee grounds from the shot holder.

5. Secure the shot holder in place and lock the espresso machine
handle so that water does not leak as it passes through the coffee
grounds at a high pressure.

6. Position a warmed up espresso cup under the the espresso machine’s
coffee holder spout. Start the espresso machine. Keep an eye on the
the color and consistency of the brew coming out of the spout. In 15
to 20 seconds, you should have about 1.5 ounces of freshly brewed
espresso in the cup.

Making a well-brewed cup of espresso does take time and practice. The
presence of a creamy honey-colored foam called crema that is about a
quarter of an inch thick sitting on the coffee’s surface is a sign
that you have successfully made an excellent cup of espresso. And if a
teaspoon of sugar can rest on the crema, you can probably consider
yourself an espresso guru!

The crema is the result of several important factors: the coffee
blend, fineness of the coffee ground, extraction time, water
temperature and amount of coffee used. You achieve a perfect cup of
espresso every time if you can consistently attain an optimum mix of
these factors.

* Most espresso aficionados will agree that the coffee blend should
include some Robusta beans.

* Several reasons could account for a dark color of crema: too much
coffee grounds may have been used; the coffee grounds were packed too
hard and too tightly in the shot holder, resulting to a longer
extraction time of the coffee; the coffee grounds used was too fine;
or too much water was used.

* There are several reasons, too, for less crema: the coffee used may
not have been enough; the time it took to extract the coffee may have
been too short since the coffee used was coarsely ground; there was
not enough water to pass through the coffee; the coffee grounds were
packed too lightly in the shot holder; or the water that passed
through the coffee was not hot enough.

* If the espresso machine, shot holder or cup is cold, it may affect
the amount of crema produced.

Espresso can be served as it comes out of the espresso machine or it
can be served in a variety of ways. In fact, many of the specialty
coffee drinks today has espresso as their base. Some of the specialty
coffee drinks that have a shot of espresso include macchiato (espresso
topped with foamed milk), espresso con panna (espresso topped with
whipped cream), cappuccino (espresso with milk and foam), café latte
(espresso with milk, but without the foam), mocha (espresso blended
with milk and chocolate syrup) and Americano (a “weakened” espresso
made by adding warm water).

For more great tips on making the perfect brewed coffee at home visit: http://www.coffee-paradise.com

Author: Tom Jensen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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