A treat today! This is a guest post from my beautiful (and talented!) wife.
In the spirit of celebrating the coffee scene in and around Moscow, I have to note the presence of a widespread phenomenon we have all experienced at one time or another: Home Brewing. Like the backwoods whiskey stills running during the Prohibition, we have all encountered the pain and pleasure of attempting to create gourmet coffee in our own kitchens to varying degrees of success.
My husband, the keeper of this hallowed site and a self-proclaimed coffee snob would never have attempted to make coffee at home if he’d had his way. Unfortunately our budget denies him the pleasure of indulging in daily Cubano Con Leches from Bucer’s so for a while we went gung-ho on the home espresso shop.
Our first dabbling in espresso-making began the first year of our marriage when my parents gave us a three-in-one espresso machine for Christmas. At first he was thrilled with it, adjusting pull-times and fiddling with the steam-wand. But as it produced less-than-satisfactory results he began to shun it. It sat forlornly on the top of our refrigerator waiting for me to pull it down on the odd day that I needed a caffeine fix and fill the drip side with Folger’s Breakfast Blend, a guilty pleasure I generally partook in when Hubby wasn’t home to criticize my not-so-fresh pre-ground lowest-of-the-low caffeinated goodness. After a while I discovered Folger’s Singles, a tea-bag full of grounds that produced the same burst of quick caffeine without the leftover pot of coffee which I somehow could never bring myself to throw away until it actually had swirls of mold growing on the surface in some sort of bizarre petri-dish effect.
The three-in-one espresso maker was then retired to our storage shed and we moved on to the next phase of our attempts to create “good” coffee at home. You’ve probably guessed it because you probably have one sitting in the back of your coffee cupboard also: The French Press. This handy device combines boiling water with coffee grounds, sits for a minute or two then you strain out the grounds and presto! a cup of coffee exactly like the coffee I get when using my scorned Folger’s Singles. You can guess how long this device lasted. Even with a mini grinder to ensure the ingredients were as freshly ground as beans from the little chute at WinCo can be, it still lacked the verve that a precisely pulled shot from the $13,650 machine at Bucer’s possessed.
Still determined to conquer the $4 Latte, I next bought Hubby an Italian stovetop espresso maker called a Brikka. For $60, the price of fifteen Lattes, I proudly unveiled it for his birthday and enjoyed his look of incredulity. Like a kid with a new toy, he experimented with beans and fineness of grind. For $20 more he bought an Aerolatte milk foamer and some brand-name syrup. At last he made what he deemed a passable cup of coffee. I tried it and secretly preferred my Folger’s Singles, but hey, he was happy.
I’d have to conclude the in the years since then, we have reached a coffee compromise. He sneaks in a trip to Bucer’s whenever he has some spare cash so I can’t trace it in Quicken. When his funds run dry, he reluctantly pulls out the Brikka. I brew myself a cup of Folger’s and foam the milk with his Areolatte. The cupboard holds a pile of the French Press, the Italian Brikka, the little grinder, the several bottles of syrup, crusted shut, the measuring cup, the plastic sleeve of coffee-shop style cups and lids, the shaker of cocoa, the whole nutmeg with small grinder…. oh, and my box of Folger’s Singles. I should sell all the stuff on ebay and give him the proceeds to go to Bucer’s!
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Filed under: Guest Posts, Home Brew on November 9th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
