Percolators 2 the taste test
Posted on: 2016-10-28 2:50 PM I read recently that percolating has become a thing again. It only took me a few calls to get a percolator shipped to my home to try it out to see what all the fuss was about. A couple of things you’ll need to know about using a percolator make sure that you have some disc filters or you’ll have grainy coffee.
Contestants
Drip coffee maker
This is our usual method to make coffee in the morning. Mostly because we have five coffee-drinking adults in our home and we need to make two pots before 7:30 am every day. I’m going to use this as our baseline because we run good quality coffee through the machine and get consistent results and a good cup of coffee.
French press
I have received a number of French presses over the years and after the novelty of trying the newest one out I typically banish them to the Island of Misfit toys or some such place. While they all typically make a decent cup of coffee it’s just too much work and when I’m done I usually have to reheat the cup. The exception being our Espro press which keeps the coffee warm. Imagine if you will, needing to make 12 cups of coffee by hand every day. I’d feel like a milkmaid churning butter if I had to do that every morning.
Moderate high-end coffee maker
I have access to fashionable high-end coffee maker when I need to run these tests. This is a formerly commercial coffee maker from a failed coffee shop experience. I took my bag of coffee over and asked for a cup of black coffee. It was hot, and smooth and very enjoyable. It's a better cup of coffee than from the drip machine but not by much. The biggest difference is that the coffee from the high-end coffee maker is much hotter so those adding cream or milk don’t end up with something between an ice-coffee and a hot coffee. But for the money the drip machine is fine and cleaning it a breeze.
Percolator
OK, I’d never percolated other than in the wild over a campfire and candidly nothing beats the smokey taste of campfire coffee. But it could also be that you have a craving for any civilization when you’re sleeping under the stars for a few days. I digress. Following the instructions to the letter we make a pot in our new percolator and guess what…it was probably the best cup of coffee that I’d had in ages. It was smooth hot and there was no bitterness. None, nada it was a cup of coffee flavored coffee. I’m disappointed because I realized that I’ve been settling all these years. It’s our mainstay now and our drip machine is soon to be off to the Island of Misfit toys.
Three-in-one instant coffee from Thailand
My daughter brought me some various three-in-one and four-in-one (flavor added) coffees from her recent trip to the far East. It’s a thing over there. While better than our instant by a country mile, it wasn’t very good. They will be relegated to the emergency section of the pantry and maybe even to the hiking kit.
High-end instant coffee
In North America, we have instant coffee. For those folks on a budget or with only a kettle it’s a reasonable source of caffeine. But as a day-in, day-out source of coffee drinking pleasure, I’m sorry, but it's not really my style. I will say though that while the coffee flavor itself was not up to snuff it was less bitter than either the drip machine or the high-end coffee maker.
Keurig – please forgive me.
If you read me regularly you’ll know that coffee pods are on my personal vendetta list. I’m happy to go all “Office” on one as soon as I can. If I’m going to pay $2.00 for a cup of coffee I’ve got a number of great cafés near me that I can walk to. OK, the coffee was the same brand as the grounds being used for the experiment, Starbucks.
What a horrible cup of coffee. It was tepid weak and actually not as good as the instant coffees in our taste test. It is the TV dinner to the five-star restaurant of this taste test. So to all of my coffee pod users you’re missing out on good coffee and wrecking the world.
The Winner.
If you haven’t guessed…I’ll be percolating from now on.
