He normally uses his espresso maker to make himself lattes, but sometimes in the afternoon, he doesn’t want to fire up the machine and instead, he’s been using a French press to make plain coffee.
However, he’s been unhappy with how his coffee tastes. He’s not using the same beans he uses for his espresso—he actually roasts his own espresso beans, believe it or not. Apparently, coffee beans are different than espresso beans, so instead of using his espresso beans to make coffee, he bought some coffee beans.
He wondered if it was the way he was making his coffee, so he brought out his single cup coffee maker from Brookstone and made a cup side by side with a cup of coffee in his French press.
Verdict: the coffee actually did taste different, but they both didn’t taste very good. He says it’s because the beans are old, and I had to argue for a few minutes to convince him that life is too short to waste on bad coffee!
He finally threw out the beans, thanks to some proactive nagging on my part.
About the French press versus coffee maker—even though it was the beans’ fault, he also thinks that the coffee maker does not produce as good a cup as the French press. Mostly because he can control how long he steeps the grains in a French press, whereas he can’t control that in the coffee maker.
He also read that when the hot water hits the coffee grains in a coffee maker, it’s actually a few degrees lower temperature than ideal. The water is supposed to be 208 or 205, but in a coffee maker, it’s often at about 200 instead. Which supposedly contributes to an “inferior” cup.
Me? I can’t tell the difference.
How about you? Do you care about a French press cup or one from a coffee maker?
Camy Tang writes romance with a kick of wasabi. Her novels Single Sashimi and Deadly Intent are out now. She runs the Story Sensei critique service, is a staff worker for her church youth group, and leads one of the worship teams for Sunday service. On her blog, she gives away Christian novels every week and ponders frivolous things. Sign up for her newsletter YahooGroup for monthly giveaways!
