The FenReview
Cowboy Coffee
(03 Mar 2009)
I'm still doing research for tomorrow's comic. In fact, there is a very real chance that the page is going to be late, even by a whole week. I want to make sure it's accurate.
So, while I've brought some of you here with my advertising, I might as well leave you with something useful.
Please enjoy some of my hands-on work!
Trying it at home.
As just about every website on the internet will attest, "Cowboy Coffee" is about the oldest method out there for brewing a cuppa. It also has a wide variety of variations and extra little tricks. But basically, you boil some water, steep some grounds in it, let the grounds sink, then drink what's on top.
I'm following some slightly more baroque suggestions based on a couple of other websites, and trying my own improvisations to boot. So, today's proceedure is this:
1. Grind the beans with the bottom of your mug or cup:
What happens if you have whole beans but no grinder?!? You find a way to grind your beans with something else. I probably should have spent more time on this step, as my grind (or "crush") was rather coarse. Probably too coarse. It is this step which probably explains the result I got. I am now in the process of repeating my experiment with machine ground beans.
2. Boil some water (about 1 cup per Tbsp of grounds).
Some people say that you shouldn't do this. Start with cold water. I'm trying this first, because its what the one website said to do.
3. Put your grounds in the boiled water and boil again.
Another method is to boil the water first and then just pour it on your grounds and skip this step altogether. Again, i'm following the first set of instructions I found.
4. Steep it!
No matter what you do, you gotta steep it for some time. Probably, the coarser your grounds the more time you gotta steep it. If you have properly ground coffee, the suggestion is 5 minutes. I did 5 minutes.
5. Let the grounds drop (or strain it)
Cowboys don't have strainers (unless you count their socks). I do. I'm impatient. Apparently, you can let the grounds drop on their own, and most of them do (as I've seen in my second experiment already). You shouldn't need an egg or cold water or anything like that. But it's really up to you.
Results
The first time I did this, with the coarse grounds, it created a weak colored cup of joe that tasted woody and beany. I could grow a taste for that kind of thing, but it's not my usual choice for coffee.
My machine ground coffee has turned out much better. I followed all of the same instructions except that I used our bur grinder. Unfortunately, it's too fine. This has made the coffee a little bitter, and powdery. But it's not too acidic or acrid, so obviously I've got a good blend for this trick and the timing of the boiling and steeping is about right. Next step is to try it with blade ground coffee, which should be a happy medium.
I don't have a blade grinder, so I'm probably going to skip to the other variations I've mentioned above.
In the mean time, I've got a whole coffee house of baristas and coffee roasters to help me edit my findings. So, hopefully, when I get tomorrow's page done it'll be the most useful comic page on the internet.
It'll also be available as a poster.
edit: I've now tried it skipping step #2, boiling the water for the first time with the grounds in it. I also cut the steeping time down to 3 minutes to compensate for the extra time the grounds are in the water. I really like the results of this one, but my palette is now a bit spoiled after the first two cups. I'll have to retry this method on another day, comparing it to the next two versions.
Posted by Fenmere
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