Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1875 — How to Make Coffee. [ARTICLE]

How to Make Coffee.

Much has been written on the making of cotfee, and patent coffee-pots and other apparatus of more or less intricaie construction have been devised for the preparation of the popular beverage, and yet it must be confessed that a really good cup of coffee is Father the exception than the rule. The problem is not so simple as it seems at first thought. The virtue of the coffee berry consists in its volatile aroma and its fixed extractive matter. To prevent the former from escaping into the air and the latter from remaining in the grounds is the desideratum, but the ordinary methods of doing the one interfere with doing the other. By the French plan of filtering boiling water through the ground coffee the aroma is readily extracted, but the fixed matter is mostly left behind. On the other hand, by the common Yankee plan of boiling the grounds for a long time in water the extractive matter is utilised, but the aroma flies off with the steam. Prof. C. A. Seely has contrived a very sensible process of killing bosh birds with one stone, which he thus describes: “ I take rather more than the usual amount of coffee and pour on it hot water when it is ready to be used; in other words, 1 make French coffee. The grounds from this operation i leave to soak in the pot till the next day, when I begin coffee-making by pouring hot wa'er on these grounds, which hot water I use according to the French . plan in inaking coffee from fresh-ground coffee. The process is now in full operation, and every time coffee is wa .ted the manipulations of the second morning are repeated. I thus extract all the soluble and useful matter of roasted coffee and waste nothing. To put the art in ihe most practical form I have thought it necessary to modify the cofft-e-poi. Perhaps the simplest apparatus is the most ordinary pot provided with two strainers. The strainers are of cup form and fit into ea h other and into the, top of the pot. For use I set a strainer on the top of the pot, and in the strainer I place freshground coffee’; over this I use the second strainer containing the grounds of the last operation. Now hot water is poured into the steamer and percolates down into the) pot, carrying with it all the goodness remaining in the grounds, and the arornai and much of the extractive of the frpsh-ground coffee. U hen the water has passed down I throw away the now useless contents of the upper strainer and upset the contents of the lower strainer into the pot.” — Rural New Yorker.