[geeks] Barbeque Geekery

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 07:08:51PM -0400, Dan Sikorski wrote:
> Hrm, They don't look too bad, but don't make anything that would really 
> fit into the way i use water.  I can't see devoting precious kitchen 
> countertop space to one of those.  The Pur and Brita filter pitchers 
> that i can put in the refrigerator work well for me, but I'm thinking of 
> switching to a water cooler with the 5 gallon jugs for drinking water.

The people that I know who have them use them for all of their potable water.
We use a Britta pitcher for anything that goes in our kettle, tea, coffee
(my daily cup) and the occasionaly quick boil to make pasta. For us, one
filter lasts about 2 months. 

The current one in our filter should have been replaced April 10th if
you follow the rule of setting the date in the little reminder wheels
to one month later, and it's starting to show signs of needing replacment.

At that rate, any other filter hardly makes any sense. 

If I needed on for all of drinking and cooking water, that would be different.
My wife and two sons take a 1/2 liter of drinking water with them each day,
the bottles are from commercial bottled water, but we refill them until they
no longer can stand up or start to leak. We fill them partialy full with
water and freeze them so the water is cold when they drink it. 

I fill them from the tap or the cold water dispenser of our refrigerator. 
It has sediment filter, but does not remove anything dissolved.

The Berkey is nice because it comes with two elements, but has room for
6 or 8 (I forget exactly). You can add them to increase the speed of
filtration. The really good ones are ceramic micropore filters and can
remove almost anything. Once they get clogged, you was them off, scrub
off any accumulated crud and continue to use them.

The only thing I don't like about them is the metal ones have as far as I
can tell no way of knowing how full the collection pot is. The plastic
ones are see through, and as a gimic can be had with LED lights, but I'm
sure they are not as sturdy as the metal ones.

> I chose my drip coffee maker because at the time, it was regarded as 
> being the best at maintaining 200F for brewing water.  My limited 
> testing has indicated that indeed it holds very constant water 
> temperature throughout the brewing process. 

That's also IMHO important too, but I would prefer 180F to 200. More of
whatever it is that adds bitterness to the coffee comes out at 200F.



>  I use a Rancilio Rocky 
> coffee grinder, which gives me a pretty consistant grind. (I had a DOA 
> Mazzer Mini, and decided that it was just too big for my kitchen.)  
> Using the same grind setting, same amount of water and coffee and the 
> same type of coffee, i get very consistent results.

That's also the key, the size of the grounds is controlled by the space
between the burrs, and not how long you hold down the button, how much is
in there, etc.


> It took quite a bit of experimentation to get coffee that i really enjoy 
> out of the french press.  Once again, careful control over grind 
> coarseness, water temperature, and in this case, brew time is 
> essential.  I've made some awful coffee with the french press, but I've 
> also made some of the best coffee that I've ever had. 

It can be done. I'm not sure that I could find the coffee to do it here.
I certainly don't have the need for a burr grinder, I would spend more time
and effort cleaning it after grinding my few teaspoons of coffee each day.


> Here in the US, i order Peet's coffee.  They roast and ship the same 
> day, and i get it a couple of days later, right at  what should be it's 
> peak flavor.  There are also a few coffee shops in town that roast 
> daily, but they don't seem to have as good of beans as Peet's. 

Unfortunately I have never found a good dealer of fresh roasted coffee
here. I understand there is one in Tel Aviv, but here the number one
coffee store (at least the best known) thinks that fresh means they
opened a bag today. 

Green beans can be bought, but although I brought my Shirocco coffee roaster
here, the filters needed for it are no longer available. I probably could buy
a hot air popcorn popper. I invented roasting coffee in it, and should
have patented it. For many years they were very expensive and hard to find.



>  It's 
> amazing what a difference freshly roasted coffee makes.  I haven't taken 
> the next step and tried home roasting, but I've considered it. :)

I've seem some good home roasters, but they cost a lot of money ($500+).
You probably could roast them in a pan in your oven if you were carefull
or one of those stove top popcorn poppers. Hot air poprcorn poppers will
roast coffee, but I was never able to get what I wanted out of it. The chaffe
goes all over the room (and it's HOT!!) and getting the exact roast I
wanted was difficult. 

There was also no price savings, the best deal I ever got was a 15% discount
over roasted beans, and the loss in weight is closer to 20%. Add in the cost
of the roaster and the price of electricity and it was far cheaper and easier
for me to go to the Reading Terminal farmer's market on the way home and buy
a small quantity of still warm beans. :-)

I have no idea if they are still there or not, or the price or quality of their
product, but if you live in Philly and take the commuter trains home from work
it would IMHO be worth checking out. 

I have not been in the U.S. since 1996, and I fear that the small independant
coffee producers have all be forced out of business by Starbucks and their
ilk. When I was in London in 2001, it had become one big strip mall of
cellphone stores, Starbucks and it's competitors, the Gap etc. It looked
like a full Monopoly board where the houses and hotels were chain stores
dispensed randomly. 

I assume you could find better things if you got out of the main area,
but I was staying in "The City" and wandered a few places outside
(Soho). Is Andalucci's (spelling probably bad) still there and as good?

I was watching a TV series from Oz called "Living Coffee" and they visited
one of the oldest commerical coffee roasting companies there. The roaster
(person) said that in his experience coffee needed to age for a week after
roasting to get the best flavor. He's probably right, but to be honest,
I'd take a fresh roast cup of coffee anyday over one that was a week old.


> I'm not real big on most of those types of coffee products, primarily 
> because i prefer to grind the beans fresh.  In effect, whole beans 
> package the majority of the coffee inside the bean and protect it from 
> drying out.  Grinding exposes that coffee to air, so if you put it off 
> until the last minute, you are doing everything you can to keep the 
> coffee fresh as long as possible.

These are sealed in little foil envelopes so air contamination is not
a problem. There still is a loss or change (depending upon your point 
of view) due to aging and room temperature storage. 



> A Cafe Americano here is just that, espresso with hot water.  While that 
> is similar in strength to drip brewed coffee, it tastes quite a bit 
> different, as I'm sure you know.  Since is is made with espresso, it 
> changes the fundamental properties of brewing: temperature, pressure, 
> time in contact with ground coffee. That means that it changes what is 
> extracted from the grounds, and in the end, how it tastes.

I'm sure it's perfectly fine with a large pouring of milk and 
a few sweet-and-low's, but I'll pass. 


> There are quite a few here too, unfortunately, making great coffee 
> doesn't always seem to be their priority.

True. But we have progress beyond the stage where everyone served
"Ness" (instant coffee) or "botz" (mud, ground turkish coffee in a glass
with water poured on top).

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM