How to Make Drip Coffee
Take a French dripper, or French coffee-pot. Wash it in hot water. It must be perfectly pure and clean. Put in it two or three tablespoonfuls of Java and Mocha mixed. Pour over it a quarter of a cupful of tepid water, just to soak the coffee. Let it stand a few moments, then pour on it a cupful of boiling water, and let it drip five minutes more. Then add another cupful of hot water. Test the coffee. If it is too weak, pour the whole thing over the top again. If it is too strong, add more hot water. Rinse your cups in hot water before using them.
New Orleans takes its coffee seriously, and this is the city’s method: a slow drip, never boiled, dark and aromatic.
- “French dripper” = a drip potA two-chamber pot (a biggin) in which hot water filters down through the grounds by gravity — the direct ancestor of the modern pour-over cone.
- Java and MochaTwo classic origins — Java from Indonesia and Mocha from Yemen — whose blend is the original “Mocha-Java.” Any good medium-to-dark roast stands in.
- The initial soakWetting the grounds with a little tepid water first is blooming: it lets fresh coffee release trapped gas so the water can extract evenly.
- ProportionsTwo to three tablespoons of grounds for the whole pot — about two cups — brewed dark and strong the way New Orleans likes it, often cut with hot milk as café au lait.
- Never let it boilDripping rather than boiling keeps the coffee from turning bitter and harsh — still the rule today.
The pairing of Java and Mocha is one of the oldest named coffee blends in the world: Mocha was the Yemeni port that first shipped coffee to Europe, and Java the Dutch-colonized island whose beans later flooded the market, so “Mocha-Java” came to stand for the good stuff. New Orleans, a great coffee port, built a whole culture on the slow drip pot — and on stretching precious beans with roasted chicory, a habit often traced to Civil War shortage that Creole cooks kept ever after for its bittersweet flavor.
From page 49 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
