“You Are How You Caffeinate”

Hang onto your hat, Frugal Scholar! 😀 Yesterday evening while perusing the Times, I was reminded of Frugal’s recent post on small recurring costs, in which she remarks with amazement on the recent coffee pod phenomenon. This increasingly popular method for preparing a cup of coffee—just one!—entails making room for a coffeemaker the size of an infant stegosaurus and feeding it expensively prepared, vacuum-sealed single-serving “K-cups” of coffee grounds. “Do these have any redeeming features?” wonders she.

Hilariously, there are caffeine delivery systems that make the coffee pod look like the soul of common sense. Almost. NYT writer Frank Bruni’s column on the subject is one of the funniest damn things I’ve ever read. Shamed by foodie friends over his reliance on his trusty Mr. Coffee (to which he had recourse after a Chemex spat in his eye), Bruni goes in search of a tonier, less bourgeois method of brewing an acceptable cup of java. Working against him: a burning desire not to have to work very hard over his morning eye-opener.

Along the way, he discovers things that look like something from a chemistry lab (well—the Chemex looks a bit that way, but these contraptions are straight from Isaac Newton’s alchemy lab). He learns that hot water may not be dumped unceremoniously over one’s freshly ground, shade-grown, fair-traded coffee beans, but must be drizzled lovingly through the grounds, only after one has released their “bloom” with a delicate pre-pouring through a carefully rinsed and placed filter.

He also learns that the French press, my preferred way to generate a decent cup, is teetering on the edge of obsolescence! Heaven help us.

All I want for Christmas is a lifetime supply of French press carafes. They can reside in the closet with my stashes of incandescent lightbulbs and dishwasher tabs that still wash dishes. A French press produces something akin to cowboy coffee: strong, thick, bracing, and richly flavored. It does not turn the brew to battery acid by holding the coffee over a hot plate for hours. Nor does it have to: believe me, coffee made this way will not sit around long enough to get cold.

After what must have been days of journalistic research, Bruni arrives at a conclusion that surely will warm the cockles of Frugal’s heart: “For me personally, was the pleasure of a higher grade of coffee worth the price? In this instance, couldn’t I depart from the orthodoxy (nay, tyranny) of the artisanal? . . . The current generation of automatic drip machines preserves the [Mr. Coffee] tradition while improving, I’m told, on the product. Gastronomic guilt be damned, I just may put one on my Christmas list.”

Get it here, without having to take out a loan!