Wednesday, December 17, 2003


coffee appreciation in short supply all over; welcome to sophia?

"the message from the calcutta coffee drinker in one of the many newly-opened cafés in town is clear -- understanding the beverage has very little to do with consuming it."

it's not just a problem in india, i must say! all over many people drink coffee without truly appreciating it, just as for many years americans drank california wine without knowledge.

to improve california wine, the industry realized it needed educated consumers with some palate training. and the specialty coffee industry, at least, is following in this track. thus the invention of the scaa consumer membership, aimed at creating a venue where coffee lovers can develop their palates and appreciation for the world's most social and intellectual beverage.

if you're a coffee lover interested in increasing your understanding of our favorite drink, i welcome you to join us!

also, long-time readers may recall that i often muse as to what exactly is in those supermarket brand x cans. low-grade arabica mixed with steamed and processed robusta, plus whatever they need to add to make it taste and smell like coffee? i dunno.

who does? well, one woman has found out exactly what was in her supermarket can.

finally, i made coffee this morning in the lovely new-to-me silver napoletana. what's interesting about it is that it requires an amazingly coarse grind. large bits -- larger than kosher salt, almost rock salt size!

the interior container -- it looks like a flour shaker -- has 2 filters: one with very fine holes for the coffee to drip through into the serving pot, and another with extremely large holes to serve as a "showerhead" for the hot water to spread evenly across the coffee.

you have to grind the coffee coarsely enough that it doesn't fall through the showerhead while the water boils before you flip the pot. a usually reliable site tells consumers to grind the coffee fine. no dice: if you do this, the coffee will slip into the boiling water. all bad!

we never want to boil coffee! boiling water should never touch coffee! we want this kind of drip coffee to have water between 195 and 205 degrees.

i suppose if you have problems grinding this coarse, you could cut a piece of coffee filter paper and use it to line the showerhead side of central container, but that would reduce the body of the brew somewhat. . .

my napoletana holds 12 oz. (about 355 mls.) of water (for 2 american 6 oz. cups or 4 italian 3 oz. cups); so i would expect to use somewhere between 17 and 20 grams of coffee (or roughly between 0.60 and 0.70 oz.) in it. this morning i used 19 grams, and found it a teeny-tiny touch too strong for my personal taste. i might back down to 17 grams and see how that tastes.

i found this morning that the napoletana makes a nice coffee that drips somewhere between bialetti moka pot brew and cafetiére (aka french press) coffee. it is just as clear and silt-free as moka coffee, but seems to have a little more body, just as the press pot does.

or maybe that was just due to the sweet, syrupy gillies carioca coffee i made in it. . .

certainly flipping the pot is fun. the only drawbacks to this method that i can see are that coffee sometimes dribbles out of the steam vent as you pour that last cup and that it's a little hard to clean the hot coffee grounds out of the likewise hot central container.

i love my napoletana. what should i name it? i have carlos, silvia. . .should i name this silver loveliness sophia after one of naple's most famed beauties?

posted by fortune | 9:23 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments