Making the Perfect Pot of Coffee

This week my folks sent me some freshly roasted coffee from their favorite coffee roaster in Altoona, Iowa (where they live).  The roaster, The Coffee Barn, is run by a great guy, Carl.  When I was roasting, he and I would trade ideas and thoughts periodically.  Now that I'm not roasting, I drink his coffee whenever I have the opportunity.  The coffee is a Dominican Gold that he roasted on Feb. 8, 2010, so it is still within the sweet spot of prime flavor (the bag of Yirgacheffe is pictured below, because the Gold bag of the Dominican didn't photograph as well).

This morning, I decided to do his coffee right and busted out the French Press...  instead of dealing with trying to clean out the drip pot which requires running vinegar through it, checking temperatures, and trying to track down the paper filters. (We use a reusable filter on a regular basis, but the flavor can be a bit off with it.)  I ground the coffee just before adding it to the press. Our regular coffee grinder died a few months back and it is killing me to use the little whirligig model because its so inconsistent, but it works for daily coffee and until I round up the $359 for my Rocky Rancilio (or settle on $140 for a Capresso Infinity) it will have to do.  My wife had received an electric tea kettle for a gift and I used it to boil the water then transferred it to press (the slight loss in temperature from boiling to cool pot makes it perfect for extracting flavor from coffee!), added four rounded scoops of ground beans, stir, and let it set about 6-7 minutes.

It came out perfect.  If you haven't tried the French Press method, I urge you to try it.  It makes a world of difference (and as an added bonus clean up is dramatically easier).