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Part one of a four part series on HOT DRINKS.
My fellow coffee drinkers....yeah, see this post's title. A previous thread here sorta pits coffee against tea, but I typically alternate between both, enjoying them in different, but equally fussy, ways.
"Specialty coffee" is actually quite cheap here in the Philippines, since we are a coffee exporting nation, so most of our coffee at home is identifiably from Batangas. Unfortunately, the roast preferred by the whole household is dark, and to be fair that is how coffee is traditionally enjoyed in the Philippines, but I've recently come to appreciate lighter roasts, since they allow the coffee to predominantly taste anything other than bitter. Still, the fact that the coffee we get is in bean form means that my daily driver retains a lot of complexity, and ensuring such complexity isn't lost is the function of my fussiness.
For coffee, my fussiness is somewhat technical. I weigh the beans, grind them to a fine consistency, and add them to the basket of my moka pot, whose lower chamber I will have already filled with boiling water. Setting the pot over the stove, the heat has to be at its lowest, and the finished coffee has to flow out of the spout slowly, without any sputtering. Our pot tends to produce the equivalent of about four to six shots of espresso; half, I drink immediately, while the other half I keep for later consumption.
When drinking coffee immediately, I rarely adulterate it, and if I do, it's with condensed milk. Caffe' Americano -- espresso diluted with hot water -- is actually quite nice, but this is one of those instances where I willfully retain some degree of chauvinism, as the idea that my enjoyment of concentrated coffee is more masculine really tickles my bones. The coffee I otherwise store, I do drink diluted, either with plain hot water or, if I'm feeling summery, with a mixture of cold water, lemon, and honey, i.e. Cafe' Mazagran.
For prepared coffee, I typically get a plain espresso, in no small part because it's cheapest xD. But no, the stimulation I derive from coffee, when taken without milk and/or sugar, I derive beyond its caffeine or even its colloquial strength (i.e., its bitterness). Nevertheless, there's a reason why I prefer to alternate coffee with tea, and indeed I drink more tea in seasons when I'm not particularly busy, and this has something to do with the aforementioned fussiness....though I'll reserve that discussion for part two.
My fellow coffee drinkers....yeah, see this post's title. A previous thread here sorta pits coffee against tea, but I typically alternate between both, enjoying them in different, but equally fussy, ways.
"Specialty coffee" is actually quite cheap here in the Philippines, since we are a coffee exporting nation, so most of our coffee at home is identifiably from Batangas. Unfortunately, the roast preferred by the whole household is dark, and to be fair that is how coffee is traditionally enjoyed in the Philippines, but I've recently come to appreciate lighter roasts, since they allow the coffee to predominantly taste anything other than bitter. Still, the fact that the coffee we get is in bean form means that my daily driver retains a lot of complexity, and ensuring such complexity isn't lost is the function of my fussiness.
For coffee, my fussiness is somewhat technical. I weigh the beans, grind them to a fine consistency, and add them to the basket of my moka pot, whose lower chamber I will have already filled with boiling water. Setting the pot over the stove, the heat has to be at its lowest, and the finished coffee has to flow out of the spout slowly, without any sputtering. Our pot tends to produce the equivalent of about four to six shots of espresso; half, I drink immediately, while the other half I keep for later consumption.
When drinking coffee immediately, I rarely adulterate it, and if I do, it's with condensed milk. Caffe' Americano -- espresso diluted with hot water -- is actually quite nice, but this is one of those instances where I willfully retain some degree of chauvinism, as the idea that my enjoyment of concentrated coffee is more masculine really tickles my bones. The coffee I otherwise store, I do drink diluted, either with plain hot water or, if I'm feeling summery, with a mixture of cold water, lemon, and honey, i.e. Cafe' Mazagran.
For prepared coffee, I typically get a plain espresso, in no small part because it's cheapest xD. But no, the stimulation I derive from coffee, when taken without milk and/or sugar, I derive beyond its caffeine or even its colloquial strength (i.e., its bitterness). Nevertheless, there's a reason why I prefer to alternate coffee with tea, and indeed I drink more tea in seasons when I'm not particularly busy, and this has something to do with the aforementioned fussiness....though I'll reserve that discussion for part two.
