By Anthony Sastre
There is nothing like the aroma of a fresh shot of espresso streaming from my espresso maker in the morning. I watch with anticipation as the creamy, frothy, brown beauty fills my shot glass, eagerly awaiting the syrup mixture of the day, this morning it was blueberry and raspberry to bring out the fruity notes in the Ethiopian Yigarchaffe I just purchased. I love coffee, I love coffee as much as I love books. I grew up watching my father and his siblings drink the brown liquid and solve the world matters over a pot of Folgers. I would sit back and watch them and knew that at every home of the elders in our family was a pot of coffee brewing. They loved coffee and in their day, the stuff on the grocery store shelves was the best. They lived and discussed politics, economics, and culture in the times before Starbucks and a coffee shop on ever corner. What am I to do now that I am the grown up sitting at the table solving world peace over a vanilla latte? A trip to the coffee aisle at my Target, Schnucks, Dierbergs, or even Whole Foods Market can leave my head spinning. There are all the varieties of fresh, exotic, organic, or flavorful coffee. Which one should win the right to swirl in my favorite cup and saucer collection?
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Coffee should be stored in glass airtight containers in a cool, dark place, and protected from sharp swings in humidity and temperature. The fridge and freezer are out! Freezing gives one the satisfaction of having done something decisive, at the coffee’s expense. Would you freeze wine? For coffee, the temperature swings attract condensation, and destroy the delicate balance of the oils. The beans suck in food smells like they were first cousins to baking soda, and end up tasting like old ice. In and out of the freezer enough times, and you might as well be drinking dandelion coffee.
The ideal recommendation is to buy half a dozen 8 ounce Ball wide mouthed Jelly Jars (with mason bands and gasket lids), filling the coffee beans at the time of purchase. (The truly obsessed might consider the 4 ounce jars.) A pound of beans will fill most or all of them, expending on the roast. Seal tightly, and label/date the lids using peel-off labels (two cut up address labels will do the dozen; label then cut). Don’t overfill, and keep the gaskets clean, or you won’t get a good seal. Store them in a cool, dark place, and open one at a time as needed. This system minimizes the total exposure to oxygen and humidity.
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Espresso is an approach to extracting flavor from coffee beans. The basic principles are to extract only the best part, using water which is not quite boiling and under a lot of pressure. The “best part” and “not quite boiling” bits are critical to making good coffee by any means, while “a lot of pressure” is a neat trick to manage at the same time. Machines that can do this all at once were only invented in this century. Most low-end home espresso machines settle for “some” pressure, and cheat on the “not quite boiling” part as well. The result is strong but bitter, acidic coffee, nothing like a true espresso.
There are two categories of home machines that pull this off, using respectively a hand-operated lever or a serious electric pump. A lever machine is like a guitar, only better: You will sound pretty good on your first day of practice, and the entry level instrument sounds great in the hands of a musician. A pump machine is like a boom box: You are in the audience, and you get what you paid for.
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