coffee

[cellio]

Dear LJ Brain Trust,

We recently received a Keurig coffee maker as a gift. This is one of those gizmos that takes individual packets for making coffee (or tea or cocoa). Pour in water, put in individual packet, push the button, and out comes a cup of hot drink a couple minutes later. As the pitch goes, if you and your spouse like very different things, this gadget's for you.

To my surprise, I have found a coffee-based drink that was actually pleasant. This is a first, so I turn to you, o brain trust, to guide my further explorations. Because while this was fine, it isn't exactly healthy. Also, I'd kind of like to know about non-dairy options (for meat meals), assuming any exist that I'd like. For this experiment I started with Dani's mantra that coffee is a good source of calcium.

What worked: a French vanilla packet turned into 8oz of coffee (the gadget supports 6-10), about 4oz (!) of half-and-half (didn't have cream in the house), and about two heaping tableteaspoons of sugar (ack). These were added incrementally, alternating half-and-half and sugar in small quantities until it tasted good. So possibly a better answer is more milk product/no sugar, and I don't know how cream versus half-and-half will play out. There is also the question of other coffee bases to try, particularly if I can find them in variety packs or something so I'm not committing to a whole box of something we turn out not to like. I am categorically uninterested in decaffeinated coffees (defeats the purpose of coffee for me).

For calibration, I also like most black teas. For a "regular" tea I default to English breakfast. I do not care for Early Grey but Lady Grey is ok. I like most strongly-flavored or spiced teas, so my instinct is to look for coffees with some flavor additive. (This is why I gravitated to the French vanilla, and I have my eye on the hazelnut packet.) I think what this all means is that I don't like bitter flavors. What does that imply about coffee roast types? I see a variety of descriptors in that space but I don't know what they tend to mean for flavor. And how should I be thinking about the trade-off between stronger coffee flavors and brew strength?

Comments

[dsrtao]

How do you feel about liqueurs?

The fact is, most flavored coffees have the cheapest, nastiest artificial flavors sprayed on them, and because these beans are destined for such chemical crap, they use the lowest quality beans.

Whereas if you start out with a nice cup of a decent, low acid, light roasted bean, you can add one of:

- a drop of real vanilla, or a sprinkling of ground vanilla bean pod
- a tablespoon of liqueur
- a glug of a flavored syrup

to add the flavor you feel like.

Beans that fit this profile:

Brazilian Santos
El Salvador Cerros Las Ranas (Lake of Frogs)
Ethiopian Yirgacheffe
Panama Boquete
Sumatra Mandheling

These are all typically light-roasted, with low to moderate acidity levels.

Another thing you can try to get low acid extraction is cold brewing coffee.

[alienor.livejournal.com]

The fact is, most flavored coffees have the cheapest, nastiest artificial flavors sprayed on them, and because these beans are destined for such chemical crap, they use the lowest quality beans.

Ya, this. I can't stand flavored coffee, even though I love flavors in my coffee.

[cellio]

Thanks for the tips! It had not occurred to me to add the flavoring afterward. I like liqueurs. (Mmm, need to get some suitable for this purpose; I don't think Chambord or the honey one would work well, though the Godiva might be interesting...)

[dsrtao]

But the Chambord AND the Godiva might work. At least, chocolate raspberry is one of the classic flavor combinations, so...

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how well this would work with your setup (I grind my own beans and make the coffee in a French press), but I occasionally flavor my coffee with some ground cinnamon or ground cardamom. I add the spices directly to the coffee grounds and steep everything together-- maybe you could try adding something to the coffee pot before it drips in? I also find that the spiced coffees taste better to me without cream so that could work when you want a non-dairy drink.

[cellio]

Thanks for the suggestions.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I was thinking Ethiopian, so that's seconded.

If you like the vanilla flavour, you could try using vanilla sugar (keep a vanilla pod in your sugar jar) - ah, but is the high sugar content one of the things you're trying to finesse. There are parts of the world where cardamom is a traditional flavouring (bash a cardamom pod to release the seeds, throw the whole thing into your cup, don't try to swallow it) and might work for you...

[cellio]

I hadn't heard of vanilla sugar before -- interesting. I do want to get the sugar content down, though. On the other hand, something like this could add an interesting dimension for other uses of sugar (e.g. sprinkled on fruit).

[spiritdancer]

For vanilla sugar, a pretty good ratio is one vanilla bean per 2 to 4 cups of sugar (I used 2 cups of sugar, since that was the jar size I had handy). I split a bean, scraped the seeds out & mixed into the sugar, then I tossed to bean skin into the jar as well. I plan to pull the skin out when I'm using the sugar.

You definitely want to use a good quality vanilla bean (I had some on hand from Penzey's). Dried out vanilla beans are no fun to work with :)

[cellio]

Thanks. I've never bought vanilla beans before, but we have a Penzey's here so it sounds like that can be fixed.