Want More Flavor? Cool Your Cup Down

Let me begin by telling you that I normally like my liquids piping hot. Soup’s gotta be steaming  hot. Leftovers’ gotta be steaming hot – nuke it for 3 minutes. For the longest time – my cup of coffee had to piping hot. I typically take comfort in the warmth the hot cup of coffee can give to my hands, especially when it is 10F with a 10 mph wind blowing at the bus stop.

Then I read a post by Rich at Aldo Coffee (dated Dec 09, 2008). He was raving over his cup of Guatemala Itzamna from Intelligentsia. I bought the same beans from his shop and was wrestling with why my cup of Itzamna was not “a complex, bold brew of fruits and spices.” What was more pronounced to me was the dry tannin taste you normally find in teas.

Then my cup of Itzamna cooled down. Oh no! My coffee is cooling down! But when I tasted it, guess what? It was “a complex bold brew of fruits and spices.” Now I’m not talking lukewarm. It just cooled down to perfect hot chocolate temperature. Just warm enough to keep your insides warm, but cool enough to chug if you wanted to.

I know I’m probably speaking heresy for many coffee drinkers. But it actually worked!

Bigger Scoup – More Coffee

Bigger scoup - more coffee

Yesterday I posted about using more coffee for my morning cup. This morning I realized that the scoup I had been using for the Intelligentia beans was smaller than the scoup I normally used.

The scoup on the right is a 1/8 cup scoup. I normally use two scoups for my four cup French press. Two of the left scoup was just too little coffee for me.

So from now on I am standardized! 1/4 cup of beans, ground and placed into my 4 cup French press.

Bridging the Gap – double the beans in a French press

This morning I decided to double the amount of beans I normally use in my French press. Will this be “stronger”? I’m using a direct trade Itzamna, Guatemala from Intelligentsia that I bought from Aldo Coffee. It was definitely “stronger”. But I also noticed that the flavor was also “stronger”. The one taste that stuck out a little too much was the dryness similar to the dryness of the tannins in tea. That would hit with each sip and stayed in my mouth for a long time – maybe even hours after drinking the coffee.

I think I like this method of tasting the coffee: make a cup  of coffee in a French Press using twice the amount of beans.

Does that mean that I liked the dryness lasting in my mouth for hours? Not really, but I like the attack of the tastebuds. This provides me a way to try many types of beans.