Percolator Coffee
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They are not percolators they’re moka pots. Percolators keep on recycling the water through the grounds.
Yes I know I have those as well, they were hip'' here back in the days
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Wow, the coffee subject is hot, and persistent! Thank you for all the good coffee talk. Maybe I'll try another food and/or beverage post. But don't drop this one. Carry on!
You should post on the subject of Postum although it might get uncivil.
I have an antique real cowboy percolator if you want to trade some pipe tobacco for it.
Sexy; You got a brikka in there? I use the Brikkka keeps that 'crema
In good company; If we did this on the beer forum I belong to I'd be banned for life.
I grew up listening to my mom's perc plop, plop, plopping in the morning. I joined the US Army at 17 and started drinking coffee because, as a member of a mechanized infantry unit it was the only part of chow that was still hot by the time it found us in the field. I now work with a retired Navy chief. Whoever gets to the office first makes the coffee. Some mornings he'll warn me on the way to the kitchen that it's "mid watch" coffee; it's hard to set at my desk after a cup of that! Occasionally he'll put in a pinch of salt as a nod to the old times.
Cowboy coffee, as I understand it, isn't percolator. It's where you just throw the ground coffee in the pot and boil it, and most of the grounds settle to the bottom. Another basic way to brew coffee is to put the grounds in a sock, a clean one if you're fussy, and tie a knot, and boil that. My stove top percolator is way uptown, with a metal basket with a cover, an attached lid, and glass perc globe up top. I have a small pot and drink the whole thing to get started in the morning. My grandma had Postum, and my folks had a jar of it once, but no one seemed to like it much. I think it was a Depression thrift, but it cost as much as inexpensive grocery store coffee, I think, and in any case, didn't have much flavor. Coffee substitutes never amount to much, in my opinion. I'd rather just go to tea or cocoa or something else, if I can get actual coffee.
Wow haven't heard the wrod Postum in years; Remember sanka
I'll drink almost anything. But when I used to go camping with scouts, one of the adult leaders always use percolator to brew coffee. Definitely better than instant. Then there was another leader bringing full glass french press big enough for all the adults. Usually on my turn, it's starbucks or folgers instant with coffee mate. I want to get going quick in the morning!
FYI, I'm still percolating my coffee. Other ways of brewing are fine. I like my wife's French press version, coffee brewed by drip in cafes and restaurants, and other various methods and machines. At one of our medical stops they have a robotic machine that actually does some rich coffee we both like. We even stop by when we don't have an appointment there for a coffee break, to their amusement, so far. But the percolator coffee, stove-top please, has a special lightness with depth and resonance that rings my chimes. Not for everyone or most, maybe, but just right for me. I suppose the idea that it is sort of outdated as a brewing method has definite appeal as well. I don't like to do things just for nostalgia or eccentricity, but when it works, it works.
So, the past two summers I was employed as a caretaker at a semi-wilderness camp in Michigan’s Upper Penninsula. No real electricity (we had solar power, sometimes), a 200 gallon water tank that gravity fed a bit of running water in the lodge...and a massive, commercial restaurant stove fed with propane, that I cooked for groups on.
It was percolator coffee, every day. Out of a massive, antique 1-gallon (!) percolator. I’d get that puppy percolating at 5AM when I had a group of college kids in that I had to cook for. I needed that fuel to get me through the stress of setting out breakfast for 30 hungry kids at 7 in the morning.
If it was just me in camp (and God, did I love when it was just me in camp!) I’d leave that sucker a-bubblin for quite a while, and make a pot of coffee that I could stand my fishing rod up in. I’d have a cup of that, and maybe a pipeful of Chelsea Morning or Old Gowrie, plop down on the rocking chair on the porch, and look out at this:
That’s facing south, over 30 miles of forest and water and very, very few people. Most days, it felt like it was all mine. After a leisurely morning of coffee and pipe, I’d gear up for camp maintenance, or if none needed to be done, I’d load up the truck and get lost in the woods, searching for the next favorite trout pond or pike lake.
Now that I’m back in civilization, I drink drip coffee. I could easily get the percolator out of my camping supplies and make some, but that taste and smell is something that I want to reserve, only for when I’m at that camp.
If heaven is a place, for me it will be that camp. And dammit, it’ll be percolator coffee or no coffee at all, thank you.
It was percolator coffee, every day. Out of a massive, antique 1-gallon (!) percolator. I’d get that puppy percolating at 5AM when I had a group of college kids in that I had to cook for. I needed that fuel to get me through the stress of setting out breakfast for 30 hungry kids at 7 in the morning.
If it was just me in camp (and God, did I love when it was just me in camp!) I’d leave that sucker a-bubblin for quite a while, and make a pot of coffee that I could stand my fishing rod up in. I’d have a cup of that, and maybe a pipeful of Chelsea Morning or Old Gowrie, plop down on the rocking chair on the porch, and look out at this:
That’s facing south, over 30 miles of forest and water and very, very few people. Most days, it felt like it was all mine. After a leisurely morning of coffee and pipe, I’d gear up for camp maintenance, or if none needed to be done, I’d load up the truck and get lost in the woods, searching for the next favorite trout pond or pike lake.
Now that I’m back in civilization, I drink drip coffee. I could easily get the percolator out of my camping supplies and make some, but that taste and smell is something that I want to reserve, only for when I’m at that camp.
If heaven is a place, for me it will be that camp. And dammit, it’ll be percolator coffee or no coffee at all, thank you.
To put it bluntly, I looked at the Moka pots and percolator coffee. I prefer something with a filter because it's easier on my stomach. I have a ceramic cone but I can't seem to make a decent cup. Even with my Bonavita gooseneck.
Jaylo, those are some memories. UP is a special place to discover for sure. My late wife and I were there for the mayfly hatch one year, and she overcame her bug phobia in about fifteen minutes. Then there's the joke about UP folks going to the beach on Lake Superior and spotting some people putting down there blankets a quarter mile away and leaving because it was getting too crowded. That is some seriously cold water, even a little inland at Lake Au Sable. Yup, percolator coffee is the elixir.
I remember my dad once told me that you can settle the grounds to the bottom of the pot by dropping a DRIED eggshell piece into the pot once the boilin' is finished.
That’s how I always make my coffee. I don’t even own a coffee maker. I do have a small French press, but I rarely use it. I also don’t use tap water. I always use spring water.
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