I have long been obsessed with the idea of the  “perfect cup of coffee.” I mean, mmmmm, coffee, right? Morning cup of Joe.  The Java Jive.  Cuppa cuppa cuppa cuppa cup, ahhh…

WRONG.

What baristas coffee apologists will neglect to tell you is that the perfect cup of Joe is actually impossible to attain.

After years of niggling dissatisfaction with home-brewed coffee and reading tons of coffeegeek.com I have come to the conclusion that there are six primary factors at play in the pursuit of a great cup of coffee:

• Bean selection
• Roast (and period of time elapsed between roast and brewing)
• Grind (for optimal results, you need to use a $100+ conical burr grinder so as to avoid the dreaded “dust and boulders” problem that is inherent to blade grinders, plus you want to brew as soon after you grind as possible)
• Temperature of brew (anywhere from 190F – 205F yields acceptable coffee but different coffees brew better at different temperatures and you definitely don’t want to brew it too hot or too cold or your coffee will be broken)
• Length of brew (3-4 minutes)
• Strainer density (to filter out any remaining sludge for a “clean” cup without removing any of the tasty oils eliminated by a paper filter)

What I’m getting at here is that to make decent coffee, you need to construct what coffee dorks refer to as a “rig” of tools which take into consideration all of the above factors to produce a good cup of coffee.  And the costs of this rig add up quickly.  But why spend that dough if it won’t yield the perfect cup?  I’m talking perfectly extracted. Perfectly clean.  Oils intact.  There is but one who can bring this fantasy to life.  The bejeweled queen of rig componentry.

She is called Clover.

It’s the best coffee maker that money can could buy.  It takes into consideration all of the factors involved in brewing great coffee and then does the inarguably right thing with each one. It brews coffee at the precise temperature and length of time you specify, and then sucks the resulting brew through a 70 micron screen; using modern technology to make corporeal a cup which until recently only existed in theory.

It also costs $11,000.  Or rather, it did before Starbucks bought the rights to all of them so you can’t even get one anymore.   So, big whoop, you think, I’ll still be able to walk into any Starbucks and get the perfect cup of coffee, right?  OK, now watch this Starbucks ad:

Read: “We bet you can’t tell the difference between instant coffee and our fresh-brewed drip, you mocha-slurping, mouth-breathing philistines.   My 12-year-old basset hound with a putrefying gum disorder has a more refined palate than you.”

Any company with this much contempt for coffee drinkers and coffee itself cannot be entrusted with this doomsday machine of coffee machines.  Put another way, Starbucks killed the electric car.

Look, even if you don’t care that much about a “perfect” cup, “good” coffee still means building a rig.  It’s $100 for a decent automatic grinder, $20 for an instant-read thermometer, $40 for a decent French press, plus coffee…  You’re looking at a $150 investment, min.  This is not a beverage of the people.

At the moment these realizations coalesced in my mind, I was decimated.  I just wanted a perfect cup of coffee, man.  Instead, now, you’ll find me tossing and turning about a sweat-drenched bed, an aforementioned “slug” from “that wonderful mug” dancing a jig in my head.  “You’ll never have me, Ross Brackett,” it ridicules in perfect four-part harmony, “plus I make your pee smell weird.”  Damn you, Manhattan Transfer, and your vivid coffee-related imagery. And damn you coffee, for keeping me up at night.  Damn you both to hell.

Sometimes you have to know when to put an obsession like this on hold…

…and replace it with an

even more profound obsession.

Enter black tea.

Organic “Assam” variety from the bulk section of the Co-op. Other good places to buy it in Bellingham include Wonderland Teas and Spice Hut

Tea rundown:

• Delicious
• No grinding
• No need for a thermometer -  it’s ideally brewed with just-boiled water
• No need to obsess about endless varieties – just buy the best loose Assam you can find, and it’s still cheap as hell
• Particles are large enough that there’s no need for an ultra-fine strainer
• Tasty at any temperature
• You can water it down and it still tastes good
• You can drink it all day, and it doesn’t make your sweat/urine/poop/saliva reek of stale coffee

But most importantly, the perfect

cup of tea can actually be

accomplished. For cheap. In your own home.
How, you ask? How can I brew the perfect cup of tea in my own home, you ask?

OK, you probably didn’t ask and you may not even care.  But you’ve made it this far, dammit, and, uh, hey, I *promise* there’s a present for you at the end if you make it all the way through.  A shiny present!  Keep reading.

The procedure:

1. Mise en place (?)

You will need (pictured left to right, back to front):

• Measuring cup
• Kettle
• Decanting vessel.  Any  glass or porcelain container or jar will do the job
• Black tea
• Ramekin or a little cup to hold tea
• Brewing vessel – a teapot is easiest, but a mason jar or any other vessel made of glass or porcelain works great. Don’t use plastic.
• Tea cozy (a towel or a knit hat does the same thing)
• One teaspoon measuring spoon
• Tea strainer
• Timer, stop watch, or clock

2. Measure the brewing vessel,

measure the tea

Fill your brewing vessel with water and then pour it one cup at a time into a measuring cup to determine how much it holds.  Write this number down.  Now to figure out how much tea to use.  Fortunately, the ratio is actually codified in the English language.

1 teaspoon

to

1 cup of water

I know, right?  By volume, that’s roughly a 50:1 water to tea ratio, and this seems to work great.  Be sure to measure the tea before you boil the water so there’s no futzing around when the kettle is hot.

3. We are making tea now

First, pour out any water already in the kettle.  The Internet has repeatedly informed me that previously-boiled water is less oxygenated and is thus less tasty.  Sounds like BS to me, but what do I know… (if you are reading this and know better please debunk this myth for me)

Fill the kettle…

And light it.  Soon you will hear the sweet sound of…

WATER BOILING!!!  EMERGENCY ALERT, lol.   I had a picture of our kettle boiling, but this is better. Strangely, the creators of this popular internet video have the same formica as us.

4. Go Time

OK WE HAVE ESTABLISHED THE SOUND OF THE WHISTLE IS DEAFENING I WILL TALK LOUD.  TURN BURNER TO LOW!!!

Phew.  OK, the water is still boiling but the whistle isn’t blowing as loud and it’s time to to proceed to the next step.  Tea purists speak of “bringing the pot to the kettle” instead of the other way around and that’s what we’re going to do here.  The idea is to get the teapot hot and keep it there until the brewing is done.  You want the water to go directly from the flame to the teapot.  Keep the kettle on the flame when you’re not using it.  Before you even touch the tea, we need to get the teapot hot.  Pour a bit of the boiling water in there.

Swirl it around a little so as to coat the insides of the pot, and then pour it out into the sink (yes, it’s not pictured, Sherlock, use your imagination). Now the pot is primed for actual brewing.

Go quick, now!  Pour the pre-measured tea in the pot.  Please note that the tea goes straight in the pot.  Use of tea bags or tea balls restricts saturation and makes the tea less good.  We’ll strain it later.

Pour water quickly over tea leaves.  Remember, water over the tea, not the other way around.

Keep hurrying.  Put the teapot lid on, and then wrap the teapot in the tea cozy (or towel, or whatever).  The point of the tea cozy is not to keep dust out of the pot, but rather to keep the water as hot as possible without actually crossing over to boiling.

Now, grasp the the teapot through the cozy and shimmy it a little, just a slight jiggly swiveling,  to make sure the leaves get a little swirled around inside of the pot. This also increases the extraction.

Now set the timer.  I use the built-in timer in our microwave, but you can buy a fancy tea timer or use a stopwatch or whatever.

Set the timer for 3 minutes.  Now, we want to brew the tea for a little longer, about 3 minutes and 30 seconds, but we’ll set it to 3 minutes as you probably already blew 10 seconds pouring the water and getting the lid on and shimmying the teapot, and it buys you a little time to run back to the kitchen once the buzzer goes off, plus the tea strainer always wanders away at the crucial moment.  You just want to buy yourself a little time, OK?

“BEEP!” says the microwave.

Don’t panic. You’re cool. Get the tea strainer and ready it over the decanting vessel.

Take the lid off the teapot if it has one.  Otherwise it will fall off and almost break scaring the hell out of you.

Pour through the strainer into your decanter.

And… now the decanter is full of black tea as good as it can be made.

Let it cool down a little before you pour it.

Maybe clean up after yourself while you’re waiting.

That way when you call out to your friends:

TEA’S READY, FRIENDS.

And they come into the kitchen

And they try it

They’ll be all

You did it

YOU DID IT.

Oh, and I almost forgot:

More on tea:
http://www.rsc.org/pdf/pressoffice/2003/tea.pdf
http://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm