The Nectar of the Bean

Regulars here at sandgateroad.blogspot.com (both of you) should be well aware of our fondness for tea. It has had no less than two entries on its lonesome and various other mentions throughout. So, one could be forgiven for thinking that this trend did not apply to other hot beverages. In actual fact, there is another hot drink which surpasses tea in so much as how much we like it. Can you guess what it might be? Two uni students and a teacher?

Yes, its coffee. Gad AND/OR zooks! How we love our coffee! We always have four varieties, which can be made up on one of our five machines. We drink it any time of the day or night. We just can't get enough of the nectar of the bean.

Here's our inventory:

• Dan's expensive stuff
  
• The decaf for late night jaunts
  
• Tom's cheap stuff
  
• The instant stuff (a necessary evil)
  

And the machines:

• A kettle
  
• A plunger
  
• A drip style percolator
  
• A large stove-top espresso pot
  
• A small stove-top espresso pot
  
• A cheap Breville Espresso/Cappuccino machine
  

At present the drip-style percolator is broken, (thanks to my putting the hot jug under a cold tap). A tragedy, yes, but one that opened the doors of opportunity in this place. The plunger, which had hitherto only been used once or twice got its chance to shine. And struth, how it shone. I had never really gotten into plunger coffee before - my own loss. Perhaps I wasn't making it properly. And so, by way of a warning to others, I will finish off with instructions on how to make a perfect cup of plunger coffee.

1. Firstly, boil you jug. Then let it sit. We want the temp to cool down to around ninety degrees celcius (-173º F).

2. Meanwhilst, warm up your pot. Rinse it out with the quasi-boiling water.

3. Put your coffee in. A heaped tablespoon per cup is a good guide.

4. Pour the water over the coffee and stand for 3-4 minutes (The plunger, that is. You can sit down if you want.)

5. Gently lower the plunger. If all was done properly, you should get a nice layer of crema on the surface.

6. Serve as per how you like it.

Now Dan likes to put the milk in first. In coffee speak, this is what we call post-lactum coffee. You can also have pre-lactum coffee and, I suppose, simultaneous-lactum coffee as well, if you were that fussy. Personally, I think the whole thing is just silly and pedantic. Like when people insist that you stir the sugar in a clockwise direction, or squeeze the toothpaste tube from the end, or spell yogurt with an "h", or fail you on your driving test because you didn't give the person in the next lane an opportunity to merge into your lane even though it was perfectly obvious that she was turning into a side street anyway. But I digress.

Plunger coffee has more caffeine than espresso-made coffee (except decaf) because the caffeine needs longer contact with the water to come out. I think there's something in that for all of us.

Good night.