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Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Winner of the Coffee Test

A few weeks ago I wrote about my efforts to find a way to make good coffee without an electric drip pot.

We tried a Porcelier, a porcelain drip pot made in the 1930's-1940's, a big aluminum drip pot that makes 18 cups, a stainless steel drip pot because we wanted to be able to keep the coffee warm on the gas stove, and a plastic drip funnel with mesh filter.


The winner is: the Porcelier!


Here is the winning combination: 
  •  Decaf Eight O'Clock beans: I had to order these on Amazon because I could not find decaf beans in our stores here. We went to decaf when my blood pressure got a little higher than normal and honestly I can't tell the difference.
  • My old coffee grinder: I have an electric one but the goal is coffee without electricity. We used this one for years and it does a perfect job. 40-50 turns of the handle (less than a minute) and you have enough for a pot. The pre-packaged ground decaf was too fine to work properly with the Porcelier. The hand-cranked grinder can be adjusted and the coffee brews beautifully and fast.
  • The Porcelier drip pot: This top part of the pot comes off. It has small drip holes in its bottom, and there is another interior lid. You put the coffee in, then put on the interior lid. This lid also has drip holes in it. Then you boil water in a kettle and pour it into the top section. The water filters down through the drip holes in the interior lid, through the coffee and out the bottom drip holes into the pot. 
We found the Porcelier at a local junk shop for $14.95, I think it was. The coffee has to be tasted to be believed. It is just delicious.

The only downside: now we make more coffee so we're spending more! Where a a 3-lb can would last a month or more, now we've used 3 bags of beans in less than a month. Ah me. I guess my next quest is a cheaper source of decaf coffee beans.

6 comments:

  1. I don't drink coffee but I think it would work well for making tea too.

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  2. Ah, that coffee scent and the first sip ... Interesting coffee pot.

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  3. I think so, Angela. The same principle is involved.

    I like this pot, Joy. My sister found one just like it to experiment with making her coffee. She liked it so much when she was here, she wanted to do the same thing at home.

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  4. I had coffee in a Thai place a while back. They brought in it two stacked sections. A cup with condensed milk in the bottom, a dripping container of very strong coffee seeping from the top. Once the coffee was in the bottom cup, I gave it a go. It was fantastic. But I think it might have been the sweetened condensed milk that did it.

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  5. I loved the coffee you and Larry made! I didn't have palpitations or an upset stomach. I'm in disbelief you wrote this because when I tried the decaf from our store...ewwww. I was wondering what the secret ingredients were!!! Yay! One decent, great tasting, not bad for us cup of coffee coming up!!!

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  6. Julie, I'm going to try Community Coffee, roasted in Louisiana. My friend Bayou Woman writes about it on her blog, and when I looked on Amazon it was really inexpensive. Ever onward!

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