Perfect Coffees.com :: Perfect_CoffeesCom_Newsletter-newsletter9

Perfect Coffees.Com Newsletter Issue #9

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Oct. 1, 2004

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In This Issue
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=> Coffee Tips
=> Feature Article
=> Recipe Of The Month
=> Coffee Trivia
=> Our Sister Web Site
=> Contact Us
=> Subscribe/Unsubscribe information

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Coffee Tips
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Here are some tips for grinding your coffee at home.

Keeping the grinder clean is extremely important. You never want anything but fresh beans to be ground.

Don't grind flavored beans because they will leave flavor residue in your grinder that is almost impossible to get out.

Grind your beans just prior to brewing for the freshest coffee flavor.

To achieve a more consistent grind gently shake the apparatus while grinding.

Burr grinders allow you to pre-select the proper grind but with blade grinders timing is critical.

Course Grind – for electric percolators grind for 5-10 seconds.

Medium Grind – for electric drip or French press 10-15 seconds.

Fine Grind – for espresso machines grind approximately 30 seconds

It's best to experiment with your equipment, grinding time, and different coffee blends to achieve the results that please your tastes.

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Feature Article
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Restaurant Quality Coffee At Home

Have you ever wondered how restaurants get their coffee to taste so good?

First of all, restaurants are in the business of pampering you so they devote much more time to the perfection of a good cup of coffee. Sometimes I'll remember a restaurant just because of their excellent coffee.

So what are their secrets and how can you duplicate this recipe at home? It may surprise you to find out that the French Press brewing method could be the secret in achieving that restaurant quality taste.

Most fine restaurants use a press pot, also known as the French Press, which produces an extremely rich cup of coffee.

Press pot coffee is coffee steeped for 3-4 minutes between 195 to 205 degrees F. It produces a thicker and much richer taste than an auto-drip machine can produce.

A disadvantage of the French Press, is it may leave trace amounts of coffee sediment. But the rich taste more than makes up for the small amount of sediment at the bottom of your cup.

So first, start off with a quality medium roast coffee, which is what most restaurants use. I can give you a couple of good recommendations.

Seattle's Best Breakfast Blend, Starbucks Breakfast Blend or Starbucks Sulawesi Coffee is 3 excellent choices. These are full-bodied coffees yet very smooth tasting. They are some of our best sellers at Perfect Coffees.com and work well for French Press brewing.

You want to grind the coffee slightly larger than you would for drip coffee. Too fine of a grind will produce a bitter cup of coffee. If your grind is too coarse, the coffee will taste weak. A quality grinder is the best thing you can do to improve the taste of French press coffee.

Remove the plunger from the press pot and put 1 rounded tablespoon of coarse ground coffee per each 6oz. of water into the pot. You can adjust this to your own taste.

Coffee is 99% water so use clean filtered or bottled water free from chlorine and other minerals that affect the taste of coffee.

Boil the water and remove it from the heat for five minutes before you pour it. This will give you the 195 to 205 degree water that is ideal to brew with. Now pour the 195 to 205 degree water over the ground coffee.
Stir the coffee to get total saturation of the grounds then place the plunger on top of the pot and let the coffee steep for 3 to 4 minutes.

Depress the plunger slowly to push the grounds to the bottom of the pot.

Serve all the coffee in the pot after the 3 to 4 minutes of steeping. Otherwise the coffee will keep getting stronger.

If you have any left, you can always transfer it to a clean, preheated air pot or a stainless steel Thermos. This will keep the coffee hot about an hour without hurting the flavor.

The French press brewing method definitely takes more time but gives us the result we are looking for. Restaurant quality coffee in the comfort of your own home.

Written By Gary Gresham
Webmaster Perfect Coffees.com

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Recipe Of
The Month
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Blackberry Bars

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup sour cream
1 egg, beaten
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup fresh blackberries
powdered sugar, sifted

Instructions.

Preheat oven to 350°.

Combine flour and brown sugar.
Cut in butter with pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal.
Press 1 1/3 cups of mixture in bottom of an ungreased 8-inch square pan.
Combine remaining crumb mixture, sour cream, egg, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and vanilla; blend well.
Stir in blackberries.
Spoon over crust, spreading evenly.
Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Cool.
Cut into 3 x 2 1/2-inch bars.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar
Yield: one dozen bars.

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Coffee Trivia
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Finland holds the per-capita title, with each person man woman and child consuming more than 22 pounds of coffee a year This means, that a family of four will make about 15 cups a day.

Caffeine content is nearly identical in all shades of roasts of coffee. In fact, it is slightly less in a very dark roast.

A cup of tea contains roughly one-quarter the caffeine in a cup of coffee.

Coffee berries do not ripen uniformly. The same branch may display ripe red berries, unripe green berries and overripe black berries. Conscientious pickers select only the ripe berries.

Coffee has been in use since about 900 A.D. It was first used as a stimulant, a wine, and as a medicine.

Johann Sebastian Bach was so taken by the romance of the beverage, he wrote his "Coffee Cantata" and in it hailed coffee as "the most precious of blisses...."

Irish cream and Hazelnut are the most popular whole bean coffee flavorings.

Coffee is generally roasted between 400F and 425F. The longer it is roasted, the darker the roast. Roasting time is usually from ten to twenty minutes.

Caffeine does contribute to a coffee's flavor. Caffeine content decreases as the darkness of the roast increases.

We can recognize over 3,000 smells and can continue to notice the aroma of an espresso up to ten minutes after we have finished drinking it.

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Our Sister Web Site
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Thanks to all of you who are doing your online shopping at our new sister web site at: 1stopshoppingonline.com If you are looking for convenient online Christmas shopping we offer you a nice variety of stores to browse and shop. As always, we appreciate your business.

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Contact Us
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If you have comments or questions about our web sites or coffee newsletter we would love to hear from you. Your opinion is more than just important. To us it is everything.

Our contact email is Comments@perfectcoffees.com

Thanks for reading and subscribing to our newsletter.

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Webmaster: Gary Gresham

Website: Perfect Coffees.Com

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