Design Update

Please excuse our dust while we update Metro Espresso's design. It should be finished in a day or two.

Coffee Crossword

Mr. Will Shortz, I believe you have some competition.

Tonight I constructed a coffee inspired puzzle. I invite all of you to download it, and solve my creation. (Click here for the larger picture of the puzzle) While most of them are doable, there are a few toughies including some puns. Best of luck and tell me what you think!

(credit: http://www.puzzle-maker.com/CW/)

Moka Pot: A Few Questions

During this week, I made a concerted effort to only use my Moka pot (generically known as a percolator) because in the past, I have often brewed rancid and bitter tasting coffee from it. Rejecting systemic defeat due to my own deficiencies, I researched, read some guides, watched Coffee Nate's Moka pot video, and did some tinkering.

This is not a step-by-step guide, you can find plenty of them around. Instead I posted a few questions or problems that I wanted to pose/expose hindering good moka coffee.

1. Pertaining to aluminum moka pots, people say that the aluminum imparts unwanted tastes giving a "metalliky" taste to the coffee. They recommend having a coffee film from previous brewings to accumulate. Is this film visible, dark like such:

Or would it be better to leave a thinner film that removes the thick coffee coating leaving the oils in place but a cleaner look?

2. A corollary to the first, how long does the coating last before it turns rancid?

3. The rubber O-Ring, pictured below, does it trap any unwarranted tastes that affect the coffee? If so, is there any specific way to clean it?

4. Finally, the bottom half that holds the water. I have noticed some coffee staining from coffee that hasn't percolated. Does this impart any taste, and is there a way to remove this, if it is necessary?

Conclusion: One concrete finding that supports many of the guides around the internet, is that through multiple brews the acrid, bitter taste goes away because of the coffee film building up. Today, I drank a lovely, full bodied brew with little bitterness. Yet, brewing everyday in the moka pot is: A. Gets boring B. Quite selfish of the moka pot.

The answers to these questions point to keeping the moka pot ready for the first brew without priming it. Is that possible?

Editorial: Does Coffee Make Us Severe?

Jonathan Swift stated, "Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical."

Is that true? When reading this quote from the author of Gulliver's Travels, it caused me to wonder whether there was anything specific to coffee, the thing in and of itself, that makes humans be the aforementioned adjectives. Or is it simply the culture that derived around coffee that makes it so.

First, to state the obvious, coffee is a hot drink often to wake oneself up or bring warmth into the body on a cold day in late autumn or winter. Without any sugar or cream, it is a black oily substance (when steeped with water) with a bold, perhaps bitter, taste. Certainly, the properties point to it being severe and grave, like Calvinism.

Second, how does it make us philosophical? Is it simply that one drinks coffee over time slowly sipping it? Espresso lasts a mere 30 seconds or so to drink. Perhaps it is an equation to how long the coffee lasts, the more likely it is make someone be reflective. This correlates to how much coffee you have in your cup. As I stated, espresso is not effective in making oneself reflective as it is consumed quickly. An equation may be how long (T) it takes to drink per ounce (OZ) of coffee equals reflectivity (REF). It looks like OZ/T=REF.

It is a silly equation because reflectivity does not have any units (among other reasons) unlike ounces or time either in seconds or minutes, though I do tend to be more reflective when having a cup from a French Press rather than an espresso.

An assumption in my logic is that the longer one drinks their coffee, the more reflective one is. Why is that so? I could drink a cup of coffee, and be thinking of nothing at all. I could be staring at my white apartment walls.

From the little I know of coffee properties, I believe it stimulates brain activity, spurring or encouraging activity in the brain (whatever that may mean), but there is nothing inherent in coffee to make the person search for True knowledge.

Another explanation could be that literally having a cup of coffee in one's hands, allows us the luxury for a few minutes or a half hour to reflect. We cannot be doing much else because of our hands being occupied by the cup. The cup of coffee gives us a short goal to complete, and we cannot continue on in our morning or evening until we finish the coffee.

Now, let me pose the question to my readers at Metro Espresso, does coffee make us more philosophical and grave? Please comment below! In order to uplift as well, here is a picture of a dog that appears to be smiling. Clearly he has not had his daily coffee.

Return! New Posting schedule, Costa Rican Brewer, and Intelligentsia Video.

Hello all, I have recently begun my second year in graduate school, and took a period to re-acclimatize myself to that what is graduate school. While I cannot be as active as I was in the Summer, I plan on posting once or twice a week on my travels through coffee land as per usual. This way I can still provide content to Metro Espresso readers, but will not feel overly taxed on posts accompanying my academic work schedule.

With that said, I saw this interesting photograph of a Costa Rican Chorreador. The white sack or sock is used as a filter holding the ground coffee. Hot water is poured into the sack, and drips through into the cup below. While I am sure not all Chorreadors look this nice, I do appreciate the nice wood finish. I can only imagine the clean up afterwards.

With that said, cue the immature innuendos.

Also, check out this fancy video featuring an Intelligentsia barista speaking about Espresso. Nice artistic look, but somehow pretentious to my taste.

Espresso, Intelligentsia from Department of the 4th Dimension on Vimeo.