Coffee, Tea and Mecoffee grounds »

Coffee or Tea, Hot or Cold, But No Soda For Me

RT Cunningham — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:53:35 +0000

There are some things in life where I will accept no substitutes. Coffee and tea are two of these things.

This is the second of two articles I wrote for my main site. This one was originally published in April of 2008 and I've moved it here (with minor rewriting) because this site is about coffee and tea and the other is not. Keep in mind when it was written as I made references:

Recently, I was reminded by Claire (A little piece of me) that while some people like lemon in their tea, others do not. She, like me, does not like lemon in her tea. She needs "proper" tea, whatever the heck that means.

Tea, Cold or Hot

I've noticed, at least locally, that much more tea is sold with lemon added than without. In fact, I can rarely find instant tea that doesn't have the added lemon flavor. Yecch! At times, I have resorted to doing the tea bag drill and making my tea that way. I prefer iced tea, but when it doesn't feel like a sauna in my house, hot tea works just as well. The instant tea brand I always look for as unsweetened, without any added flavoring, is Nestea (a product of Nestlé. If I can't find any, I resort to buying the Lipton tea bags.

Local restaurants like to stick a slice of lemon in with the iced tea when it's served. The first thing I do is toss out the lemon before it ruins the flavor of the tea. I love the natural flavor of tea. I am guilty, however, of sweetening tea with sugar, but not too much. I don't want the sugar flavor overwhelming the tea flavor.

Black tea (an American all-time favorite), oolong tea, or green tea, it doesn't matter. They're all good to me. What a lot of people don't know is that all three are produced from the same plant. See "Tempest in a Teapot" for more information.

Coffee, Hot or Cold

Growing up, I was enticed into becoming a coffee drinker by the strong aroma wafting from the coffee pot percolating in the kitchen. I can remember my mother putting coffee grounds into the pot, letting it perk for however long it took, and then people sitting around the dining room table drinking it. Back in those days, the coffee pots were tempered glass and it took more than just a few minutes for the coffee to be ready. Nowadays, we have automatic drip coffee as well as instant coffee.

I prefer instant coffee, but not just any instant coffee. It has to be either the Folgers or the Nescafé (another product of Nestlé) brands. Other coffee brands just don't seem to taste right to me.

While I was in the military and stationed in Japan in the eighties, I had to settle for iced coffee, usually arriving as a can from a vending machine. When Starbucks started marketing cold coffee, it was already old news to me, so I didn't get suckered into buying it all the time.

When I was young, non-dairy creamers like Cremora and Coffee-Mate (still another Nestlé product) didn't exist (well, they did, but I never saw them). It's a good thing they didn't because partially hydrogenated oils are bad for you. Everyone that didn't drink it black used evaporated milk from a can. I drink coffee with sugar only these days.

Carbonated Beverages

It doesn't matter what you call them. In some places they're called soda. In other places they're called pop. In yet other places they're called soda pop. I can't drink any of them. When I was much younger, I drank soda because it was convenient. The vending machines were everywhere. It didn't matter which brand I preferred because it changed from month to month. As I got older, I realized that soda (while not knowing how bad it really is for you) just didn't do the trick in quenching my thirst.

A couple of months ago, I found myself drinking a soda because it was the only thing available at the time. We were out of bottled water and I was thirsty. I poured the soda over ice cubes and it still didn't water it down enough to tame my thirst. I ended up driving 11 miles to buy bottled water. Don't get me started on the tap water. The tap water where I was at was worse than the water you find in swimming pools, it had so much chlorine in it.

What Are Your Favorite Drinks?

Aside from alcoholic beverages, what do you like to drink? Coffee, tea, soda, other kinds of drinks or just water? Can you tell me why? If you're a beer-aholic (someone who drinks beer for the taste, not the alcohol), can you tell me why you prefer it over anything else?

(Image sources: The "What's in Your Pot?" Swap and Well of Illusions!)

Similar Posts:

Coffee Beans, Coffee Roasters and Coffee Grinders

RT Cunningham — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 13:15:18 +0000

I normally don't recycle pictures to use on multiple articles, but I really have to make an exception when it comes to coffee beans. There only so many ways to present them and hunting down new photographs is a chore in itself. Anyway, that's obviously not what this article is about. No, I just wanted to throw out some things about coffee beans that some people aren't aware of.

Coffee Beans are NOT Beans

When my 23-year old son doesn't know that coffee beans aren't real beans, it's time to mention it over and over again and as often as possible. People who aren't familiar with the history of the coffee plants, especially young people, take way too much for granted by the way things are called.

Coffee beans start out as berries on the coffee plants. They're then dried and the seeds, the part that people call the beans, are removed and dried before heading off on their next stop in the journey from the plant to your stomach.

Roasted Coffee Beans

From what I've seen, most coffee beans sold AS coffee beans in supermarkets and other such places are roasted beforehand. What I mean to say is that you usually can't find coffee beans that haven't been roasted yet. I know raw coffee beans are available; otherwise coffee roasters wouldn't be available to the general public.

I don't trust my cooking skills, much less any kind of roasting skills. I could screw up barbecued hot dogs. No, I will always leave that step of the process to others.

Coffee Grounds

I really don't have any idea why ground coffee is called "coffee grounds". I guess it was coined by some unimaginative per person way back when. I would call it coffee flakes or coffee powder (I've actually heard "coffee powder" used and it's even on some instant coffee labels), but never coffee grounds.

In most supermarkets, heck even in most supermarkets in the Philippines (where I live — no, I'm not a Filipino before anyone asks me yet again), you can buy coffee beans that only need to be ground up to be used. Usually, one or more coffee grinders are available nearby, including generic bags to put the results in.

Although coffee grinders are available for home use, it's still another area step in the process that I'll gladly leave to someone else. I won't use a coffee grinder to grind coffee beans at the market and I won't grind them at home. It's just way too easy to get coffee that only needs one step from the container to the cup and I'm basically a lazy person when it comes to doing things for myself.

There is a special kind of coffee bean that I can't seem to find here in the Philippines, that I'm really fond of, but I'm not going to mention it yet. I'll save that for my next article. After reading all that I wrote above, can you guess what I'm going to be writing about? Hint: They're sold at places that have the same title as this blog (or a slight variation of using "or" instead of "and").

Similar Posts:

The Coffee Percolator, An Old-Fashioned Coffee Maker

RT Cunningham — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:40:57 +0000

I shouldn't really say "old-fashioned", but I couldn't think of another way to describe coffee makers that most people don't use anymore. The Pyrex coffee percolator pictured is the exact style of coffee pot that my mother and older sisters used when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s.

Pyrex

"Pyrex" is a word that was made up by Corning Incorporated in 1915. Although they sold the consumer products division in 1998, "Corning Incorporated" still appears at the Pyrex web portal. They no longer sell any kind of coffee pots, from what I can see.

Pyrex is a brand name that was synonymous with glass. It didn't matter what type of glass they used although they originally used borosilicate glass. I believe they now use soda lime glass. I also believe their glassware is tempered and heat resistant. I'm relying on memory, but I never saw any glass coffee percolators crack.

Operation

The glass coffee percolators that I've seen operate in the same ways. I understand there is another kind that operates a little differently, but I've never seen one in person.

Coffee grounds are placed in a basket at the top of long cylindrical tube which almost reaches the sides of the basket. I've never seen any baskets made from anything besides aluminum. The tube for a glass coffee percolator is also made of glass and the pedestal at the bottom, which rests against the bottom of the pot, is made of glass as well. In fact, the only other metal part of this particular coffee maker is the band that goes around it. I don't remember if the band served to secure the handle or not.

After the coffee is brewed to the point of completion, usually when the coffee is dark brown, the heat is lowered enough just to keep the coffee pot warm. I can remember many times when the coffee sat long enough to be considered burnt. It tasted nasty at that point. I used to watch the liquid percolate; I could see it hitting the inside knob of the lid. I think the lid was designed the way it was for exactly that reason.

During times of little money, my mother and siblings used to re-use the coffee grounds. It took longer for the coffee to brew the second time and it usually never got as dark as the first time. A third time was out of the question. I think modern automatic drip coffee grounds can't be used in the same way, but I've never tested any to find out.

Metal Coffee Percolators

A cursory search using Google Image Search will reveal coffee percolators of all kinds still in existence, though none quite like the image I found that matched what my mother used. There were others that I remember, like the metal coffee pots that were used during camping trips. They operated in the same way, but brewing time had to be estimated because the liquid couldn't be seen.

Some of the images I found on Google were misleading. Some younger people might be fooled when they see an image of a coffee decanter versus a coffee percolator. The decanters are only used to keep coffee hot for serving. They can't be used as coffee makers in any way, shape or form. Some of them appear to be metal and aren't — they're made of plastic that looks like metal.

Image Source

I spent hours going from website to website looking for the particular model to use as a thumbnail for this article. Trust me when I say that I only found one site that had it displayed and it was with a message that said "out of stock". It was a Japanese website, but for the life of me, I can't find it again. I'll be happy to credit the image to the appropriate source if someone can point it out to me. Because I believe in "fair use", I did not provide the larger, original image and the image used is at a much lower resolution.

Similar Posts: