First blog - coffee

I am, clearly, becoming a creature of habit for the first time in my life. For nearly a month I have started most every day by hand-grinding some beans and making l'café latté. And I'm loving it so much as to really want to write about it in loving, annoying detail.

This all started with a winter solstice gift from the family of a small backpacker's espresso machine. As you may know, once upon a time espresso was made on the stove top, rather than at Starbucks. (Disregard those who say this is not espresso merely because it is brewed with hot pressurized water rather than hot pressurized steam...)

It was lovely, and made a very fine cup of coffee... but, much as I loved it, collecting the thick dark liqueur from the machine in a regular coffee cup (held because once full it over-balanced the now-empty base) was enough of a pain that I did not use it regularly. So I purchased the small double-walled espresso cup from MEC, only to discover (in the expected way) that it was too small to collect a full charge from the machine. And then I found an espresso pitcher in a kitchen shop on Granville Island.

Ah! the joy, the rapture! Now, I stumble downstairs in the dark, turning on lights over the plants. I find the hand grinder and begin cranking. I insure the coffee maker is scrupulously clean (half the time I didn't clean it after the previous use-one of the habits I'm still in the process of creating for myself.) Then I load it up and set it on the stove's small back burner. Due to the very small base, I don't turn the heat up way high. Having timed it, somewhere a bit above medium heat is the fastest it will get to a boil, with higher heat settings being slightly slower but much more annoying as the pitcher's handle gets to the branding temp and it's difficult to get the maker to cool down rapidly enough to reduce the chance of damage to the rubber seal.

While the espresso maker gets going, I empty out the dish washer, or try to do so before the espresso is ready. It's on to boil within 2 minutes, and not long after I'm enjoying the results. Sometimes I remember to microwave the milk to hot before the espresso is done, and sometimes I don't. 1 teaspoon of sugar (either turbinado or, for a decadent punch, a slightly mounded one of demarrara sugar...) is perfect for either straight espresso or a latté.

It used to take about 120 cranks of the grinder to make the perfect amount. I'd mound it slightly in the basket, and tamp gently with the back of the spoon, hardly more than smothing it down. But yesterday the crank nut was loose and slipped, and I ended up with gently crushed coffee beans rather than ground. So I cranked it down pretty tight, and reground... only to discover my 120 cranks was barely enough to half-fill the basket with a micro-fine powder. Nearly 250 cranks were necessary (and cranking is rather more effort than it once was) to fill it appropriately, but the espresso was rich and dark if slightly more bitter. I may try to back it down slightly, enjoying the enriched taste but having read that too fine is not necessarily a good thing.

One way I like to have espresso is "Canadian Lumberjack"... I put a small amount of cinnamon in with the ground coffee, then sweeten with maple syrup. Mmmm....