The Art of Making Coffee

I am a coffee drinker.  I don’t remember when I had my “first cup” but I have been enjoying that “first cup” every morning for as long as I can remember.  In Chilliwack I had a beautiful, red, Cuisinart Automatic Grind and Brew. I could program this with a timer and early in the morning the coffee would grind and drip and be all ready to drink before I stepped out of bed.  I loved my Red Cuisinart, even though it wasn’t always appreciated by family members that spent the night. They were not used to being woken by the sound of grinding coffee beans.

My electricity is now generated by solar panels or a diesel generator. I no longer receive a hydro bill in the mail, but in exchange I am more careful about how much electricity I use.  The biggest consumer of electricity is any appliance that generates heat.  Needless to say I no longer use a slow cooker, heating pad, toaster, electric wok etc.  And…the last heat generating appliance I gave up when I saw how much power it required was my beautiful, red, Cuisinart Automatic Grind and Brew coffee maker.

Now I make my coffee the old-fashioned way with a glass percolator on my propane range.

There is an art to this…and it took awhile to master it.  The ground coffee beans go into a metal container which sits inside the glass coffee pot.  The glass coffee pot goes onto the propane burner which is initially set on high.  Once the water begins to bubble up and over the container of coffee grounds I turn the burner down to low.

It stays on low until the coffee is finished and then I remove it from the burner and let it sit for a minute or two for any stray grounds to settle on the bottom.  You may wonder how I know when  the coffee is “finished”. Well…that’s where the art comes in. The smell and the color tell me when it’s ready.

I carefully fill my first cup and pour the remainder into a carafe for later.   Ahhhh…that first cup!