Coffee

Day 7 in NovemBlog

If you're ever in South America you'll find out that,outside of Buenos Aires, there really isn't a great coffee culture. Sure you can find "coffee" almost anywhere... but if you look a little closer you'll see some oddities. Supermarkets may not have ANY coffee beans. Finding a whole bean coffee is actually kind of a chore, most supermarkets are stocked completely with instant coffee. If you can find ground coffee be sure to read the labels, most are with sugar added to the coffee grounds.

Here in Paraguay the caffeine culture item is Tereré. Tereré is a yerba mate infusion with cold water, it's more common in Argentina to drink Mate with hot water, and even cold fruit juices over the cold water variety. Stores here have aisles dedicated to tereré and all the herbs that are commonly added. It can be a little confusing walking thru a store and having 3 or more separate areas to buy spices. Tereré spices, cooking spicing, baking spices, and possibly grilling spices. Nearly everybody you see carries around an insulated thermos to keep their water cold, as they add a little bit to their cup and drink it before it warms up throughout the day.

Back to the coffee...
I poured our two coffee cups worth of water into the pitcher to see how much water they contained. I normally add whole milk to coffee but some water will remain with the grounds. 617mL of water then goes into our electric kettle.

We like our coffee a little on the intense side so we went for a 1:18 coffee water ratio. 1:15-20 is common for a french press. By this time our water was almost boiling. "Perfect" coffee comes from a 93 degree steep... but there is heat losses to the grounds and the glass... so try to get the water a little hotter and find out what temperature is after about minute when you mix the water in. At the end of the day what works best for your taste is what you should do. No reason to make coffee not the way you like it.

Instant coffee has to be dried to be stored, you loose a lot of oils and aromas. Looking at the bubbles after you stir the grounds with the water and you can see the rainbow colored bubbles that tell of flavorful oils and compounds that are usually missed. One thing I can't capture for you is how much better the smell is. This is the coffee you want to wake you up in the morning.

After 4 minutes I press the filter through the pitcher and immediately serve the coffee. It's sweet, bright, and quite pleasant. I top off the cup with whole cold milk which brings the temperature down to be pleasant to drink. While I can appreciate a black coffee, it just doesn't quite hit the spot in the same way as a cup with a little cream, or whole milk.

This is the first time Camila has had french pressed coffee and she very much approves. "It feels like real coffee. Bitter but no need for sugar. The smell is amazing, like perfume." I caught her smelling the pitcher after she finished her cup.