It happens like clockwork.

Like the sun rising.   I will be in my office here at work, quickly putting together an afternoon pot of something nice; and someone will walk by my open door.  Sniffing.

“Gosh, gosh that smells … nice!”  they say.

Being the nice person that I try to be, I will offer a cup.  I keep a stash of styrofoam dixies around just for these moments.  But usually, the response to my coffee making efforts is spurned.

“Oh, no,” comes the rejection, “I love the smell of coffee, but I can stand the stuff to drink.”

What is that?  Come on, what IS that really?  You like how it smells so much you’re willing to stand at an open doorway and sniff someone’s personal office but you wont’ accept a cup?  A FREE cup?  Maybe it’s the health thing.  They don’t understand my home roast has less caffeine than Starbucks.  Maybe it’s fear that they will become addicted, which is a real danger, by the way.  Or maybe … maybe it’s me.  They noticed my humped back, or my wild eye, or something caught in my teeth and they can’t stand to look at me.

When rejected and rebuffed in this manner, I will simply nod and say:  “Maybe next time.”   This is met with a similar nod and a quick dash from my door.

I then simply pour myself a cup, return to my paperwork, and perhaps scratch a bit at my hump.   Their loss.

Next up:  save money and roast your own beans!

If you check out prices lately, you’ll see that the little brown bean is costing a good bit of silver.  Still want the very best coffee, but at a cut rate?  Time to roast your own and pocket nearly half the cost!

We’ll show you several roasting methods, links and Internet store fronts that will help you get started!

Making Good Drip Coffee Is Easy

There is not a great deal of mental ability required to make drip coffee.

The simple list of ingredients is quite short:

1.  Coffee, ground to a fairly course consistency… consistent grain size is more important that anything else with drip.
2.  A permeable membrane, better known as a filter.  A paper cone works; as does an athletic sock.
3. Gravity.  Fairly common no matter where you live.
4. Water.  But it must be the right temperature.  That’s what this entry is all about.

It is widely accepted by those who know their coffee that the perfect temperature for making drip is…

195 degrees Fahrenheit

A cloth filter device for making cuban colador coffee.

The water that your pour over the ground coffee must be 195 degrees.  This is the temperature for properly releasing the flavors and oils trapped inside the grounds.   This is where the Mr. Coffee machines of the world fall down; they do not get the water hot enough to reach 195 degrees.  To be fair very few machines do, and those capable cost well over 250 US dollars tp purchase.  But you don’t have to spend a wad of money to get the water right, you just need to count.

Bring the water to a rolling boil on your stove.  Rolling, angry boil is what you’re after.  Simply take the vessel off heat, count to 5, and the water will have dropped from it’s 212 degrees Fahrenheit to just about 198-195 degrees.   Lift the container and simply pour.  Folks have found that this method of getting water to correct brewing temp is accurate and is consistent.   Fill your filter completely with the hot water, and let gravity do it’s job.  The idea is to have the water infuse with coffee as it passes through the filter.  I have found that the right amount of time for 2 cups of water to pass through my Chemex coffee system is about 5 minutes.  Longer than that means the ground were too fine and the filter clogged up.  To much less than that means the ground was too coarse and the coffee will taste weak.

So, when diving into the simple pleasure of making a cup of drip, shoot for the magic “five count” to target the perfect water temperature.  It is a time honored technique that will never let you down.

The mid morning light cut and shimmered through the misty jungle air.
Things were quiet.  The canopy of leaves far above swayed in silence; a natural ceiling that barricaded the harsh light and protected the warm cradle of life below.  There was no noise, no breeze to shake the leaves, no movement to create the natural creaks and pops that are a part of this protected environment.  The bird listened, but heard nothing.  No enemies, no competitors, nothing for it to worry about.  The bird darted and rocked his head from side to side.  Back to the work at hand: it was time to eat.

The bird stepped along the edge of the wild canopy, looking for a crop that was near and dear to his heart.  It knew that just outside the bubble of the jungle canopy was something that would fill it’s empty gut.  Something juicy and rich, something that would break and yield in it’s powerful beak.  The round, red cherries of ripe coffee called to this bird, and it would answer.  Its hunger was only the first step in the strange voyage of the Jacu Bird Coffee Bean.

Eating Man’s Crops; drinking ….uh…

The bird, known as a “Dusky Legged Guan” reminds some of a dark, perhaps athletic looking chicken.
Unlike most wild foragers, this bird is free to wander among the crops carefully cultivated by Brazilian coffee farmers.  The bird only chooses the ripest, largest coffee cherries, and eats them one after the other.  It would seem common sense that such an attack upon a farm crop would mean brutal counter-measures by the local farmers.  But that doesn’t happen here.  The farmers have learned how to take lemons and make lemonade from a seemly bad situation.  Actually, they’ve learned how to take bird droppings and make very, very expensive coffee.

A Special Process…

Preparing coffee beans for export usually involves either a drying process that takes the ripe cherries and dries them on screens until the fruit can be removed, or a wet process where soaking does the majority of the work.  The idea is free the seed inside from the fruit that surrounds it.  The chicken – sized jacu bird of Brazil aids in the process by wandering the coffee fields, eating the nicest of cherries, and then naturally stripping them of their flesh while riding about in their gut.  The seed is then unceremoniously deposited; to be collected by excited farmers as a premium bean.  The “stripped” bean is washed and dried and otherwise prepared for export and “Jacu Bird Coffee,”  the coffee prepared inside a bird’s digestive tract.

What’s It like?

Some say it’s great, somehow changed by the enzymes found in the bird’s digestive tract.  Others say it’s about the same as any other Brazilian coffee.  But no matter the taste, Jacu Bird Coffee commands special attention and a special price.  It is obviously a coffee in limited quantities, and does command a premium wherever you might find it.  But what is nice to see is that man has learned to profit from the natural habits of the animals around him.  Instead of killing them off, the coffee farmers have turned the bird into a partner.  Farmer gets a special crop westerners will pay dearly for and the bird gets the bean.  Can’t ask for a better deal than that.