The Coffee Wanker's Guide

Lovely cup of Joe

This is a guide to the perfect cup of coffee.

Introduction:

The world of humans may, for convenience, be sorted into two categories: people who like coffee and people who do not. If, in conversation, someone with no reason to joke or lie should tell you that they don’t like coffee then, assuming there is no medical issue to take into account, stop listening to them immediately, they have nothing of worth to say. Tell them so if you feel politeness dictates, but let that be your last interaction with them. Turn your back. Walk away if necessary. Not everyone who professes not to like coffee is a post-hipster sociopath, avoiding societal norms for attention seeking reasons, but it’s not worth taking the chance. In any case you may be certain they will be treading some cold, lonely path through a bleak land whose stamp you don’t want in your passport. Abide by this one simple rule and you will be as sure as you can be that you’re sticking with the right people. Good people. Coffee people.

All normal, functioning people enjoy a cup of coffee. The only real question to ask yourself concerns the level at which you intend to participate. Where are you, if you will, at with your coffee drinking? Are you content to hoover in 1970s style freeze dried caffeine of uncertain origin, with no conscious discretion, like a wild animal rolling in filth for the scent? Or do you aspire to the highest echelons of the coffee drinking pyramid, the top drawer of truly appreciative sophisticates?

Have you ever seen someone looking at a chain coffee shop wearing an expression that suggests they can see human faeces smeared on the window? If so, and your first thought was “I wish I knew how to love coffee that much!” then the following guide to the best cup of coffee is for you.

Water Selection

You may hear the view expressed that the water used in making coffee is a matter of personal taste, or worse, that it makes no difference at all. You should realise at this point that you are listening to an idiot, with no more right to an opinion on these matters than a talking farm animal. They may as well opine that it doesn’t matter where along the track sprinters should distribute themselves at the beginning of a race. The water is the pedestal on which everything else must stand. Every reaction affecting taste that takes place before the mouth does so in your chosen water, which must be absolutely pure. There must be no chemistry occurring extraneous to that directly concerning the components of the coffee bean, otherwise anything could happen. Don’t be tempted to make do with ordinary distilled water which, make no mistake, still contains trace levels of chemicals and particles of broken up bacteria and viruses, you may as well use sewage.

Molecular grade water may be bought from any local supplier of scientific reagents, or alternatively you can make your own from scratch by burning two volumes of pure, filtered hydrogen with one volume of pure, filtered oxygen. There is some risk associated with this procedure so take care to read the packaging. Also, to avoid contamination at ignition, don’t use a chemical flame or spark, use curved Murano glass to focus clear sunlight.

Finally, it’s a matter of taste but personally I like to double  boil the water before the start of the coffee making process; I find this really brings out the neutrality of the flavour.

Bean Selection

Beans

There is a great deal of hoo-hah in the coffee drinking world with regard to the relative significance of the many different coffees available and indeed they’re certainly worth trying, but if you will take my advice you’ll ignore the bandwagon-Billies who won’t touch a hot drink unless it’s been through the digestive tract of this or that jungle vermin. Just tell them “No one drinks my coffee before me” and leave it at that.

Serious people know that all arguments were settled long ago and the true king of coffee is Monsoon Malabar. That said, most of what’s available these days is the mass produced stuff where the growers achieve the all important monsooning by means of raking the beans around a South Indian warehouse with no windows, in the rain. It’s worth paying a little extra to get the beans that have actually been sailed around the Cape Of Good Hope in monsoon season in the hold of an East Indiaman. Obviously these are quite seasonal and can be hard to get at the best of times, but it’s worth it to get that appreciative nod from the people that matter around the dinner table. Coffee people.

Roasting and Grinding

You’ll know your own roaster and its quirks, but aim to roast 90s - 2mins past the second crack, two days before consumption. This allows the interior of the bean to be properly rested. No one wants to be drinking coffee from unrested beans.

Many arguments have been had over whether to hand or power grind coffee, but to be absolutely honest it doesn’t really matter as long as you have an efficient, in-process particle measurement/distribution system in place. The old sieving methods for this stage aren’t really up to scratch as there is no way of holding back finer material than the sieve grade, making particle surface area to volume ratios unpredictable. These days a laser diffraction particle size analyser is the gold standard. Aim for an espresso particle size of 0.20mm with as small error bars as your equipment will allow.

Brewing and Drinking

Home Barocycler

There are many available routes to an acceptably well brewed cup of coffee, each with its associated pros and cons. The simplest are the pour over filter cones, the equivalent, more or less of sticking your snout in a coffee trough and rooting for caffeine. Similarly, percolators and filter machines that just make “some coffee” are enough to satisfy the less sophisticated, “rougher” end of the palette spectrum belonging to, say, garage mechanics or hospital consultants. As preferences become more nuanced, more controllable methods are preferred: the french press, the aeropress, vacuum pots and siphons. For myself however, having taken the trouble to assemble the finest ingredients possible, ultra high-pressure cycling is the only way forward, specifically between ambient and 45000psi. While any barocycler will do the job, make sure yours has temperature control.

(As an aside, I’ve also found that it’s not worth skimping on regular servicing with these machines).

Thus, 20-30 cycles, to taste, at 95’C and out pops (again, sometimes with some force if the seals aren’t properly maintained) a perfect, piping hot cup of coffee.

Some people, such as babies or humanities types may prefer to add milk and/or sugar at this point but they are, of course, mistaken. These are people who want to be seen to be coffee drinkers, to be associated with the “cool” that the lifestyle necessarily projects, but would actually rather be drinking sugary breast milk or even a “flavoured tea”. If, on occasion, you do find any of these sorts of people present in a coffee drinking session and for some social reason are unable to ignore them or eject them from the premises, then keep a jar of simple, freeze dried supermarket coffee handy. They won’t know the difference and it will stop them wastefully parasitizing your efforts.

On a final note

Of course, coffee won’t be legal forever. While it is available it should be prepared properly and appreciated by the right sort of people. Serious people. Coffee people. Our people.

AA