Who Likes Vacuuming?

I know, I know, it's a loaded question. But we're not talking about vacuuming the apartment here (or, if you're lucky enough to have one, vacuuming the house). Actually, just the other day, Significant Eater was complaining to me about having to vacuum the apartment down in DC. She was mentioning that she had to take the vacuum out of the closet, plug it in, turn it on...etc., etc. Basically complaining about all the things you do - when you vacuum! See, she really likes it when I do the vacuuming, but that's another story. So let's talk about this kind of vacuuming instead...

Now THAT'S a vacuum - although some call it a syphon pot, it's more well-known name is a vacuum pot. For some reason, I seem to remember seeing this type of coffee maker in my grandmother's house, when we lived upstairs in a semi-detached two-family house in Queens. Though her main method of brewing was the percolator, I have her to thank for my life-long coffee habit - I know she started me on coffee with lots of milk or heavy cream when I was just a year old (hey, at least she wasn't giving me drags on her Marlboro reds). It might even be why I'm so mellow and calm right to this day.

Back to vacuuming - I've been kinda wanting one of these for a long time, so I sprang for it a week ago - under $40, delivered in perfect condition, ready to brew. And guess what? It makes a damn good cup of coffee.

There's no need to go back through all the basic steps involved in making a great cup of coffee, is there? Because I did that back in this post. All about fresh coffee, good water, yada, yada, yada. Read that one and you'll be caught right up to date.

Here's how the vacuum pot works, in a nutshell. Oh, there are various nuances involved, but let's just go basic here. You put the water in the bottom half of the pot, you put the filter and the proper amount of freshly ground coffee in the top half of the pot, put the pots together (they go together nice and easy and there's a high-quality rubber seal that holds them that way) and then place the whole unit on the heat. Bring the water up to a boil, the water expands, flows up into the top half and looks like this...

Keeping it on the lowest heat, give the brewing coffee a few stirs and let it brew for your desired amount of time...I've been working on 2 minutes though your brew time can be anything you want (well, less than 5 minutes, please), depending on how strong you like your joe. The brew will be lightly sputtering and bubbling, but it's not boiling up there, so don't worry about over extracting. Once the brewing is completed to your liking, turn off the heat. A vacuum is created in the lower chamber (maybe that's where the name comes from?) and the coffee gets sucked back down, through the filter that you see in the first photo, ending up like this...

Gently remove the top half of the pot, place it in the stand that comes with the pot, and pour yourself one heckuva delicious cup of coffee. And that's the truth - this cup falls somewhere between French press and drip coffee in body, without any of the muddiness I sometimes associate with French press. You know how with the French press you end up with grounds at the bottom of the cup? Not happening with the vac pot. The filter is cloth and reusable, and filters out even the finest of the coffee grounds. Bringing the flavor profile of a French pressed cup, this vac pot will be replacing the pour over drip method for my daily go-to coffee.

Now...I gotta go vacuum.

Cawfee

Yes, I'll admit it, I'm a coffee freak (nut, bean, whatever?) I've been drinking coffee for a really long time. In the "olde" days, it was coffee that my grandmother brewed (we lived upstairs in a semi-detached 2 family house in Forest Hills), or should I say, percolated. I'm pretty sure it was Maxwell House or Chock Full o' Nuts, the heavenly coffee. Probably like an ounce of coffee and 6 ounces of cream along with 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar. And it was damn good to this yet-to-be enlightened coffee drinker; and, as I said, it was a long time ago - I'm a child of the '50s and '60s, after all.

So, fast forward a few years, and look what that begat...here is some of my coffee paraphernalia.

Starting way over on the left, a small French press, accompanied by a few of my Moka pots, which I have in every size and shape imaginable, a Vietnamese coffee maker, a couple of drip filter makers (because I break them a lot), an old Neapolitan brewer, 2 grinders and the queen of the show, the Rancillio Silvia espresso maker, or as she's known in the biz, Miss Silvia (that's the shiny gal in the middle of it all).

No matter what, Significant Eater and I always start our day off with a cup of drip - it's quick, easy, and delicious and even when slightly hungover, quite doable.

Now, there are just a few rules about coffee - and don't believe anything anyone tells you if they're not following these rules...that's my totd (tip of the day)...

1. Freshly roasted coffee - or coffee roasted within the past week to 10 days - 2 weeks at the most. Properly stored, coffee may last longer, but that means properly stored, and check out those 2 little mason jars of beans - that's how you store it...not in the fridge, not in the freezer, but at room temp (to really be insane, you could suck the oxygen out of those jars, but let's not go overboard here). BTW, if you're storing coffee in the fridge or freezer, every time the door is opened, condensation forms. Not good for the beans and that's why room temp is best.

2. Freshly ground coffee - if you don't have freshly roasted coffee, this doesn't matter, but then who cares anyway? Coffee needs to be ground right before you brew it...it starts to go stale from the minute it's ground, trust me on this. You can open up a can of ground coffee, or use those pods (god forbid), but there is no way that the coffee will ever be as good as freshly ground. Have you ever tasted wine that's been open for a week or more - well, the same thing happens to coffee. Might be good for that beef stew, but not for drinking.

3. Good water, freshly heated. Need I say more - coffee is about 95% water folks, so it better be good. If you don't like the way it tastes, how can it make good coffee? And don't use water fresh off the boil - it needs to cool down 10 or so degrees, otherwise it will extract the not-so-great tasting components of the bean. Espresso is a whole other story, but we can talk about that later.

Once you've followed these rules, you can use any method you like to brew your coffee (well, any method except percolating) and it will be better than most of the coffee you've tasted.

Now, I've tasted lots and lots of different coffee from a whole mess of different roasters. I was home roasting for a while, but the neighbors thought a Charbucks had moved in, so I abandoned that. Blue Bottle, Stumptown, Gimme, Ritual, Terroir, Peet's, Counter Culture, et. al. all roast some pretty fine coffee. But my favorite of them all is the coffee from Intellegentsia, headquartered in Chicago. They roast to order and usually ship the day after an order is placed. So, I can place an order on Monday and have coffee that was roasted on Tuesday in my hot little hands by Thursday. Not bad - not cheap, either, but really, what is these days? It's worth it. It's great. Try it.

Oh, and for our second jolt (and third and fourth, if it's the weekend), that's when Miss Silvia makes an appearance...nothing like a shot of Black Cat to perk one's self up.