I’ve just arrived in New York City. What a place! Just smell those skyscrapers. Had breakfast at a little deli on Ninth Avenue. Cheese Danish and a cup of coffee, black as a moonless night. Hit the spot.
~From the television show Twin Peaks by David Lynch
Fundamentally, brewing coffee is the very epitome of simplicity. There really isn’t anything to it. Add some water to some coffee and let it sit until it tastes good. But this is where the real fun begins. This is where the science meets the voodoo. Once you have your materials such as ground coffee beans and water, there are essentially only three variables of the brewing process, and these three components with few exceptions are common to all methods of making a cup of coffee.
Water temperature is the first up. Although cold water can in theory and practice be used to make coffee, it’s typically not commonly done, and takes much longer than the average caffeine head could possibly withstand. The customary water temperature to subject your ground coffee to is between 90 – 93°C. Boiling water should not be used for two reasons. Boiling causes over extraction of the oils which results in a degradation of the natural coffee flavour and boiling will also release some of the more bitter and unpleasant tasting compounds.
Next to consider is how one introduces the water to the coffee. Really there is only a couple of ways to do this. The first is a manual process whereby the individual carefully heats and adds the water, whilst all the time orchestrating and nursing the procedure. The second is automatic, and the individuals to greater and lesser degrees put their faith in some form of machine that is supposed to take out the guesswork, and effort of the more labour intensive manual process.
The last component is how you separate your now tasty beverage from the used grinds. This process too can range from the sublime to the ridiculous. The various ways of doing this will be covered in an upcoming post on brewing methods.
Awakened at midnight
by the sound of the water jar
cracking from the ice
– Basho