Before there was pour-over...

While I love roasting coffee, my primary interest has always been about drinking coffee. Brewing is just an unavoidable step between my two interests.

I learned to brew coffee early-on, long before I became interested in roasting. I learned first (and briefly) using a percolator (hardware stores sold percolators; grocery stores sold groceries). Then a short while later a Melitta came to live with us (from Turner's Hardware, of course). That early training stuck and I didn't vary the method till...

C and I discovered RVs in 2009. At that point we shifted to a drip coffee maker just cuz that's what other RVers were using. We bought the cheapest Mr. Coffee Walmart had on sale- it was $19.95 and looked something like this newer model. Conveniently it had a Strong setting like this newer model has. The Strong setting seemed to slow the brewing process a little so there was more time between 'burps' of water than when the Strong light was off. It was very decent coffee using the Starbucks Verona we were buying on the road. Or my own roast if we had any left. Happy campers.

Then when I started roasting more of our own coffee we went back to the Melitta. It was 'drip coffee' to me, essentially like the Mr. Coffee made except I had to pour the water from a kettle. To make sure I had water at a consistent temperature, I bought a kettle from Sweet Maria's that allowed me to set the temperature and hold it. C had worked out the formula: two 1/4-Cup measures of coffee beans ground in our cheap Capresso grinder, and 28 fl oz of water. That gave me exactly 12 oz of coffee and she got the other 14-15 oz (some water gets left behind in the wet grounds).

The concept of pour-over seemed a ritualistic process reserved for third-wave coffee snobs. My method was to slowly pour heated water (28 fl oz) over the coffee. No pause unless I poured a little too fast and the filter got full, then pause just long enough to get room to add the rest of the water. Oh... and I stirred the coffee after the pour. Anyone experienced with pour-over knows I was missing the most important step, but then they might also say "you can always tell a Bowman, you just can't them much!"

Whatever, we've had a lot of really good coffee by doing it 'wrong'.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Berkey water filter put Paid! to that casual brewing process.