Coffee Makers

Four of us enjoyed a rare gathering outside, spaced several feet distant around a backyard fire pit on a frigid afternoon. Our friends told us that they had tried different coffee brewing methods and settled on a Chemex brewer for their morning cup: ideal for its excellent flavor and fast clean-up.

The subject of coffee preparation has come up a couple of times lately. It’s interesting to note the machines and accessories and techniques people prefer: what makes good coffee, the right amount of coffee, what’s too much fuss, etc. It’s an interesting lens to look through when you consider all the choices available. So what is it we’re making, anyway?

For some people, coffee is just hot brown water that needs to happen—quickly—in order for life to continue. For others, there are subtle flavors to be gently coaxed out. Less often, there are those that value the ritual just as much as the final product, perhaps more—coffee as an act of creation. For some, coffee is a medium for delivering flavored syrups or milk.

To be clear, I try not to judge what anyone likes to drink, even though I sometimes poke fun at the tastes of friends and family. Some people find the very idea that a well-brewed cup of coffee is important to be faintly ridiculous, but I can't hear them over the sound of my conical burr grinder.

It is extremely tempting to equate a particular method or device with a level of discernment and taste, but it’s not always so. A coffee brewer is a lever that you pull. (metaphorically speaking, of course: very few have actual levers) You might just need the lever to efficiently produce coffee. Or you might think that the lever should be especially beautiful to look at or a pleasure to use. The lever might be cheap or durable or small enough to fit on the counter. You might enjoy adjusting and tweaking the lever until it's just right before you pull it with practiced skill.

But we are the coffee makers: we're firmly, if sometimes sleepily, gripping one end of that lever. (And merely pulling that lever is doing subtle work on us, too.) Any of the brewers can be supplied with high or low-quality coffee beans and water, and can be operated with varying levels of care. The gadgets we select are a small subset of a dozen different factors that impact what we use and how we use it to get a good (or maybe just good enough) cup of coffee.

An Acquired Taste

My sister believes that people who comment that they like to eat or drink something exotic or unexpected and say that “it’s an acquired taste” are simply being pretentious asshats. (I suspect she’s often right.) And sometimes it doesn’t have to be unusual: even Alton Brown has said that coffee objectively does not taste good—it takes some getting used to.

I had some chocolate ganache spread over graham crackers while sipping a dram of Irish whiskey tonight, trying to think of something to write. I could blame the odd combination on trying to use up random foodstuffs because, y’know, quarantine, but really I would probably think that sounded good almost any Thursday evening. I actually prefer heavily peated Scotch and Mezcal, so I guess I like candy and smoky gasoline.

I didn’t start drinking until my 30’s. A colleague talked me into going to my first Scotch tasting, knowing that I didn’t drink anything alcoholic because to me it all tasted bad. I resisted quite a bit and only reluctantly and haltingly tried each whiskey on offer. I ended up really liking a 10yr Aberlour and not much else. Shortly after that, Laphroig and Lagavulin became my favorites. Go figure.

Coffee is another drink that someone (my wife-to-be) tricked me into liking via the gateway drug of lattes with breakfast. Now I only drink it black: French press, Moka pot, Aeropress, pour over, espresso. (I prefer to enjoy my coffee and dessert in separate vessels.)

I don’t understand these developments of my palette, but I’ve come by them as honestly as I have unexpectedly. They are pleasant surprises: perhaps not so much acquisitions as curious inheritances.

Little Luxuries

This Spring my wife and I went for a chilly, drizzly, windy walk one morning to work up an appetite for breakfast. (Completely unnecessary: breakfast always sounds good to me.) Between the weather and the then-new stay at home order, we pretty much had the bike path to ourselves.

The birds seemed to be enjoying Spring. We saw a ton of robins, two bluejays, a Mallard duck couple, 2-3 cardinals: all out, singing their songs and doing their thing. Curiously, there was also a crawfish in the middle of the bike path about 40 feet from a footbridge that crosses a stream.

Ordinarily, I trust that animals know better than I do where they should be and what they should be doing, but in this case my wife and I decided to repatriate it to a more suitable habitat. I set him (He’s a guy, right? Should have asked directions, right?) down on the bank of the creek, where there were raccoon tracks in the mud from the night before. From the bridge, we could watch Bartholomew Crawfish (wife’s choice of name) slowly make his way down toward the water, accidentally rolling onto his back a couple of times, then righting himself. He was moving quite slowly, but deliberately. It could be my imagination, but he seemed relieved to stick his head back in the water.

Back home, we warmed up over hot oatmeal and coffee. Those comforts always seem to possess a depth beyond the ordinary when you’re cold and damp. A dinner companion of Ruth Reichl says it well in her book Save Me the Plums, “When you attain my age you will understand one of life’s great secrets: Luxury is best appreciated in small portions. When it becomes routine it loses its allure.”

This Post is About Coffee

I like coffee—a little too much, probably. Depending on my mood and the time of day, I’ll either make it with a French press (I wonder what the French call it? “Le Presse”?), an Aeropress, a Moka pot or a pour-over/cone/funnel thingy. I enjoy the ritual most days and it’s relaxing.

I caught myself wondering the other day how I would design an automatic pour-over device and how that differs substantially from a drip coffee maker. (Too much engineering and coffee nerd stuff to unpack in that sentence.) A machine, after all, could be more accurate and precise; it would save me time in the morning...

But part of the luxury of coffee in the morning is the ritual, even if it is a little hurried sometimes. If I delegated that to a machine, I may as well just use our Nespresso machine. (told you: I like coffee a little too much)

So second best is that I watch someone else make it for me. I get to enjoy the ritual vicariously through them. Also relaxing, also effective and efficient.

But really, the difference between a human (me or anybody else) and a machine making my coffee is attention. It feels better to make it myself because I get to indulge in giving the ritual my attention and control the outcome. It feels better to watch someone else make it because I can see them giving it attention as well as observing and indirectly experiencing the process of making it.

To precisely monitor and control the making of my coffee is not the same as giving it attention. Technology doesn’t have attention to give.