Yesterday, Lifehacker published a piece on getting a great cup of coffee without spending loads of money. In other words, making the coffee you brew at home better. (Sorry, no matter how many Starbucks hacks there are, it'll never be that cheap.)
Lifehacker has six tips. While they're all helpful, as a serious coffee drinker -- we're talking 12 cups a morning -- I've found there's pretty much only one tip serious coffee drinkers need to know. So throw out the other five hints and focus on this one.
different beans and grindings and waters will change the taste, the
best way to get a smooth cup of coffee every time is with the French
press. The French press wins over every other method, from drip to
espresso, not by doing anything spectacular but just being consistent.
Espresso may be stronger but it's also more expensive. You not only need
an espresso machine (and home models almost never brew like
professional coffee-store ones) but also specialty espresso coffee. The French press won't give you that pop like espresso will, but
simply letting the coffee grounds steep in the water a couple of extra
minutes will.
Of course, by using a lot of beans, you could get
the same results with drip coffee, but increasing the number of beans
defeats the cheap purpose, and there's no way for drip coffee to bring
out a bean's darker, intense flavors. The aftertaste of drip coffee is
not so much disappointing
as it is nonexistent. The design of the French press makes it the easiest
to customize strength and flavor. Even using the same beans as you
would in drip coffee, the French press flavor is noticeably richer.
Cheap
is the French press's motto. I bought a glass one for $12.99 (plastic
ones run in the single digits), and it never requires one filter. The
one problem is that you do need to boil water, but any pot will work.
So
why do Americans continue to drink drip coffee over French press? It's not
as if there's some powerful drip-coffee-lobbying group. It comes down
to inertia. I didn't start using one until I was 22, and only then
because it was cheaper than a drip machine. I was afraid
it would be hard to figure out, but it's simple. Now I buy them for my
friends and tell them all the same thing: It takes five minutes to
figure out and yields a lifetime of great coffee.
They make terrific gifts because they don't cost
much but they look expensive, and you can fill them up with sample packs of
coffee or candy.
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As if LifeHacker's 10,000th regurgitation of the same content posted everywhere else on the Internet wasn't enough already.
Thanks for 10,001.
Please, let the dead horse be already.
I don't know, man. I bought an FP not long ago -- the second one I've owned. This one, like the first one, never fails to make a brackish cup of not-very-good-tasting coffee. I treat my drip coffee maker like crap and use a ten-year-old electric coffee grinder and store my beans in cavalier fashion and the dripper still makes a better cup than Frenchy, most of the time. But that's not saying much.
It's still better than the coffee we make here in the office. Gag a maggot!
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