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Filtered Coffee
The French coffee biggin furnishes the easiest means for filtering coffee. It consists of two cylindrical tin vessels, one fitting into the other; the bottom of the upper one is a fine strainer, another coarser strainer is placed on this with a rod running upwards from its center; the finely ground coffee is put in, and then another strainer is slipped on the rod, over the coffee, the boiling water is poured on the upper sieve and falls in a shower upon the coffee, filtering through it to the coarse strainer at the bottom, which prevents the coffee from filling up the holes of the finer strainer below it. The coffee thus made is clear and pure.
The National Coffee-pot is so widely known as not to need description here, but the "gude wife" can improvise one equally as desirable and much simpler. Make a sack of fine flannel , or canton flannel, as long as the coffee-pot is deep, and a little larger than the top; stich up the side seam to within an inch and a half of the top, bend a piece of small but rather stiff wire in a circle and slip it through a hem made around the top of the sack, bringing the ends together at the opening left at the top of the side seam. Having put the coffee in the sack, lower it into the coffee-pot witn the ends of the wire next the handle, spread the ends of the wire apart slightly, and push it down over the top of the pot. The top of the sack will then be turned down a little over the outside of the pot, a part of it covering the "nose,” and keeping in all the aroma, the elasticity of the wire causing it to close tight around the pot, , holding the sack close to its sides. Instead of a wire (which must be removed to wash the sack after using), a tape may be used by tying the ends after turning the top of sack down. When the sack, with the coffee in it is in its place, pour the boiling water over the coffee, close the lid tightly, and let simmer (not boil) fifteen minutes to half an hour. In pouring for the table raise the sack off the nose but not out of the pot. This makes good coffee without eggs or any thing else to settle it.
This is less a formula than a set of brewing methods: a French drip pot, a commercial percolator-style pot, and a homemade cloth filter that is the direct ancestor of the coffee sock still used in Central America and Southeast Asia.
- Ignore the fifteen-to-thirty minute simmerThis is the one instruction to overrule. Coffee held on heat for that long turns bitter and flat as aromatics boil off and chlorogenic acids break down. Pour the boiling water through, then serve within a few minutes; keep the pot warm off the burner if you must hold it.
- Water temperature"Boiling water" poured from a kettle will have fallen somewhat off the boil by the time it reaches the grounds, into the 195-205F range usually recommended for brewing. Water at a full rolling boil straight onto the bed tends toward harsher, more bitter extraction.
- No ratio is givenThe original assumes you know your own pot. A workable starting point is 2 level tablespoons of grounds per 6 oz cup of water; the flannel bag holds its shape best when not packed more than two-thirds full.
- The bigginA two-part tin drip pot, upper chamber over lower, with stacked strainers. Any modern pour-over cone or Chemex reproduces the same principle: water showered evenly over a bed of grounds, gravity doing the rest.
- "Canton flannel"A cotton cloth napped on one side, close to what is now sold as flannelette. Use undyed cotton or a purpose-made cloth coffee filter, and boil the new cloth once before its first use to remove sizing.
- Caring for the clothCloth filters go rancid quickly from trapped coffee oils. Rinse in hot water with no soap after each use, and store the bag submerged in water in the refrigerator or dried completely flat. Discard when it smells sour.
- Grind"Finely ground" for cloth and drip means fine table salt, not espresso powder. Too fine and the cloth clogs; too coarse and the brew is thin because there is no pressure to compensate.
- "Without eggs or any thing else to settle it"A pointed remark. A common alternative in American cookbooks of the period was coffee boiled loose in the pot and then cleared with a beaten egg, shell included, or with cold water and fish skin.
The "biggin" is traditionally traced to George Biggin, an Englishman of the late eighteenth century credited with popularising the two-chamber drip pot, though the attribution is not firmly documented; the design described here is the French drip type associated with Jean-Baptiste de Belloy's pot of around 1800. What the passage documents is a transition: coffee boiled grounds and all, then clarified with egg, is common in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, which is why the author closes by advertising that this method needs no such crutch. The homemade flannel sack is the frugal answer to the branded tinware of the era, and the same principle survives in the Costa Rican chorreador bag and the Southeast Asian coffee sock. That the book calls the reader "gude wife" suggests a household expected to improvise rather than buy.