A consistent cup of coffee

Transcribed from this recording using HappyScribe.

[00:00:00.050] Hello everyone.

[00:00:08.900] So today I’ll be talking about making a cup of coffee. A couple of years ago, my dad gave me an Aeropress for my birthday. It’s kind of a nice contraption. This is the bottom portion of it. I’d put it in the same category as French bread. Sort of like some other fancy coffee maker that you made. It makes good coffee. It’s kind of tricky to use though. Show of hands

[00:00:35.110], has anyone here made their own cup of coffee?

[00:00:40.170] That’s more than half of you guys. I’m sure you all have had the experience of making a cup of coffee and the coffee not coming out quite right. Whether it’s a little weak or bitter or maybe even sour. And for those who don’t drink coffee, think about an experience where you’ve experimented with a recipe, you’ve tried it out and it doesn’t quite come out right.

[00:01:05.280] Today I really want to talk about the process of making a cup of coffee. My normal cup of coffee, but I think there’s a lot of other applications too. So yeah.

[00:01:18.590] So to set a baseline, let me talk about the worst cup of coffee I’ve never had. I was sitting at an all you can eat buffet in Las Vegas. And I asked for a cup of coffee. It’s early in the morning and like I just want it all pick me up. So I asked my waiter, hey, can I get a cup of coffee and she walks over to this industrial sized coffee machine. It’s full of coffee that’s probably been made yesterday. She pours out a cup. She comes over and she hands it to me and I bring it up to my face. The steaming liquid

[00:01:51.620] and like expectations of bitter coffee and it’s sour. Coffee is not supposed to be sour. Coffee comes from the coffee bean or the coffee berry and berries can be sour. But coffee is not supposed to be mouth puckering sour. So back to this Aeropress. I made it a few times when I first got it and when I made it it was sour. Coffee is not supposed to be sour. So the process that I used to make coffee that’s not sour is to do it once., look it over, and do it again.

[00:02:32.760] OK. So how do you make coffee with an Aeropress. First you read the instructions, like any reasonable person does. So what this is actually is this bottom piece is kind of like a filter. You have this paper filter. You put it down, you screwed onto like a cylindrical piece that’s not pictured here. You’ll, you’ll take a scoop of coffee. You’ll look for finally grown coffee because you’re making somewhat of an espresso. You take water, you boil it and you make sure that the water is one hundred seventy six degrees Fahrenheit or 80 degrees Celsius and you pour it up to this line.

[00:03:14.830] That’s two because two is the number I want. Then you stir for 10 seconds. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, ten. And then you take this plunger and you plunge it into this container for 20 to 40 seconds or however long like you can put up with it and out comes a thick coffee brew. It’s like espresso, but it’s not espresso because it’s not pushed through a machine where you’re putting very hot water to very fine grinds for a short amount of time, but it’s pretty thick and I add water to it

[00:03:54.770] to make an American. So take a sip. And yeah I screwed it up. It’s sour. I keep making sour coffee. And so this is the point where you’ve done it once and you’re trying to figure out why didn’t come out the way you wanted it to. So what you do is you go to Google and you type in, “Why is my copy coming out sour”. And I’ll save you the results and I’ve already kind of put it down into a small form. Coffee is sour if you under extracted it and you can screw up coffee in three ways: one the grind can be too coarse or too fine, the water can be too hot or too cold, or the brewing time could be too short or too long.

[00:04:42.300] So I followed the instructions. I think the brewing time’s fine. I heated up the water to — I don’t know, I don’t know what it was actually. It’s not boiling and I waited for it to stop making a noise and when it stops making a noise it’s roughly the right temperature. Finally the grind. Very inexperienced coffee, I grinded my own coffee. And I wasn’t really sure whether the coffee I made was good enough. So I looked up online. What you should do is five pulses, one second each and this gives you a very consistent grind.

[00:05:16.690] You can, you can kind of see what it looks like. So cool. The grinds are actually smaller than they were before. So let’s do it again. So I take a new filter, I put it in, I twisted on pour in my coffee grinds, I pour in hot water stir, for 10 seconds, plunge for 20 to 40 seconds, add some water, taste it and it’s OK. This is like my normal cup of joe. This is this is what I expect not sour coffee but just kind of a good coffee, whatever good is to you.

[00:05:53.830] So this process of doing it once looking over and doing it again is something that I kind of do in a lot of different places, not just coffee, although I’ve made this coffee now over 100 times and it’s come out consistent. It’s not sour. It’s not good. It’s like it’s not very fancy or maybe even particularly good but consistent and it’s not ever. So yeah I like doing this in all sorts of different ways. I think I’m researching about something. Kind of understanding what you’re doing and then being able to control the different variables when you’re making something is very.

[00:06:38.230] It’s a nice feeling. So I appreciate the normal cup of coffee and I hope you guys if you want can make your own brew too. Thinking.