Thursday, September 20, 2007

About cold coffee

I've had requests (actually that should be singular) to hear about the cold coffee brewer. The coffee is good but I did run into problems. The directions say to use the super size cups that are free with large drinks at fast food restaurants. Well we don't have those here. Those cups would be ideal because they slide down inside of one another. Since I don't have that I had a significant amount of coffee not hold in the brewer all time. I put a piece of Glad press n seal around it and still by morning i had about a 1/2 cup leak through. Not a huge deal as it was still quite strong stuff. Also I had a hard time getting the recommended amount of coffee and water that the directions called for. It was my first go so I tried to stick to the directions. I think I could do with a little less coffee and still get a good concentrate. Those were my only real problems. I used a drill instead of the finger drill. My containers were a pretty sturdy plastic. I was surprised that the cardboard stand worked so well. I didn't wrap it in plastic but I think that wouldn't be a bad move.

But no lies, the coffee is a concentrate! You can say "Oh I like it strong" all you want, but the stuff looks like syrup when it comes out of the brewer. I let the brewer sit up for most of the morning and when I finally slid out the ground they were stiff. Its a good cup of coffee at a 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 ratio. Hot or cold. I found that cold it seems to take more water.

I took the concentrate with me on our vacation last week. We were staying with friends who don't drink coffee and so going to there house hasn't been as much fun for me in the morning. I brought along a water bottle of coffee and my needs were met. Also I brought it for the hotel we were staying at. I hate that hotels here don't have real coffee pots, they give you instant. Who can drink that stuff? So I slid my bottle in the hotel fridge and sure enough next morning happy girl.

If you like your coffee brewing method at home as it is, stick with it, you don't need to go to the trouble. But if you work in an office that has nasty 10 hour bitter coffee (schools were awful about this), this is a good choice to bring and keep in the fridge. If you travel alot, and not by plane probably, this is a good choice. Truly though, its easy enough to put together you could bring the silly coffee maker with you and brew at your destination. I'm going to get heckled for that but truly its easy. Also if you really like fluffy coffee drinks, like iced coffee latte kind of things, this would make it easier. I have a great recipe for coffee date bread and this would be good for any recipe calling for strong coffee.

1 comment:

Jake T said...

Man--that's totally where I work. Nasty, burnt coffeeville. I like my French press in a Nalgene bottle setup, but the idea of having something in the fridget that I can nuke would be awesome.

On a related note, that site said to use cheap robusta instead of aribica. Any thoughts on that?