Taking the grind out of coffee making…

Over three Christmases ago, our Lisa bought me a coffee maker. When I opened the box, all I found was two plastic tubes. I said to myself: “This is going to end up in the graveyard of useless and unwanted Christmas presents alongside the shower radio and the USB cup warmer among other things.”

I decided to read the instructions and give the strange thing a try. Ground coffee went into one of the tubes followed by boiling water. When the second tube was pushed inside the first one, the resulting coffee turned out to be as good as one brewed in a proper coffee machine.
I was and still am really pleased with the contraption. So, for the last three years, I have made myself one delicious coffee every day using ready ground beans and promising to buy a grinder.

And guess what came with my Father’s Day card yesterday? Yes, a proper electric grinder and a bag of coffee beans. I am in heaven.

This takes me back to my younger days when, although I wasn’t allowed strong coffee, I couldn’t help falling in love with the fragrant aroma of freshly brewed coffee which my mother made in a copper long-handled pot called cezve in Turkish. The practice hails from the days when North Africa and most of the Mediterranean were under the Ottoman empire.

My mother usually sent me to buy a couple of kilograms of coffee beans from the local grocery shop. I then took them to the town mill where they were ground for the equivalent of a few pennies. The shop was situated in a derelict old barn that housed a noisy charcoal roaster and a couple of ancient grinders operated by frayed belts. One of the grinders was used for coffee and the other for various other grain such as wheat. Coffee beans and diverse dried pulses were toasted in the roaster before grinding. On entering the place, the aroma of freshly roasted and ground coffee never failed to invade the senses.

Nowadays, every time I make myself a coffee in the Aeropress, I feel like a fraud. The process is a breeze compared to the old ways. The tubes take seconds to clean up and a lot less space than a traditional coffee machine. The end result is an aromatic coffee in the short time it takes to boil the kettle.