Tango Yankee
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** this is the type Pyrex pot that my grandparents always used.
That's what my parents used!
** this is the type Pyrex pot that my grandparents always used.
I've been using a percolator for about seven years. I went through a couple of vintage models and finally bought a new one.
I still use the same old peculator that's been around here for years and years. One thing I do is to "recycle" the coffee. I will make a pot (same as the directions previously mentioned in other posts), and when we are through drinking coffee for the day just put it in the refrigerator pot and all (after it's cooled, of course). Next morning just add some more water and start perking away. When the coffee begins to get a little weak, just add a little extra coffee in the basket. I can stretch a pound of coffee a long way like this.
Hi
My parents' percolator glass knob finally broke after roughly 50 years and I purchased them a replacement at Cabela's outdoor gear. Mom's been using it for more than 10 years now. My Dad's Mother had a weird looking vacuum coffee maker that had a carafe on the bottom and a boiler chamber of some sort on the top.
Later
That sounds like a Silex, the granddaddy of drip coffee makers. They were the Next Big Thing c. 1938.
I don't drink coffee much, but if people insist on it, I have a "Dripolator," which is an aluminum pot with a coffee basket in it, topped by a chamber into which you pour boiling water. Let the water seep thru the basket into the bottom chamber, and there's your coffee. It's either that or Instant Sanka.
The Silex is a really fine coffee maker. In blind tests it compares with the vaunted French Press.
The Percolator, however, does a pretty good job of disguising cheap Robusta coffee.
Those round glass pots with the funnel that went in the top were the standard diner and cafe coffee maker for years. You fill the pot with cold water, put the funnel on top with the coffee in it and put it on the heat. When the water gets hot most of it is forced up into the funnel by steam pressure. Let the steam boil for a few minutes, take it off the heat (or turn the heater down) and the coffee goes into the pot.
I used to have a 3 pot model in my kitchen, worked good but took too much time and effort not to mention it took up a lot of room.
By the way.... when I make a pot of coffee I pour myself a fresh cup and put the rest in a thermos right away. I have fresh hot coffee all day and it never goes stale like it does if you leave it on the coffee maker.
Those vacuum pots have been around for quite some time. (Anyone happen to know just how far back they go?) I had an all-glass one at one time. I found that it made a better fashion statement than a pot of coffee. And, like you, I found it too much work.
Putting the coffee directly into the thermos after you brew it is the right way to go. Coffee left on a heat source gets to tasting "off" in pretty short order.
vitanola;1571932 ... A simple Drip-O-Lator as described by miss Maine can also make absolutely perfect coffee when managed properly said:I recall reading some decades ago that the right water temperature for drip coffee is just below boiling, so somewhere between, say, 205 degrees Fahrenheit and 210. How reliable that information is, I couldn't say, but I ran with it back when the most used item in my kitchen (next to the bottle opener) was a Melitta filter holder over a thrift-store glass carafe. Put the water on the boil, remove it from the heat for a few seconds and pour it over the ground coffee. Close enough for me.
The dewy-eyed bride, who is my junior by more than a couple of years, came of coffee-drinking age after the arabica-cation of this coffee-drinking nation. So it's espresso-based drinks for her, which gets quite costly if you make a habit of buying it prepared commercially. (The key to Starbucks' success: sell higher-quality, and higher-priced, variations on an addictive product.) That $500 ($400 on sale) espresso machine I presented to her more than five years ago has paid for itself many times over.
I've considered getting one of those lever-action manual espresso machines. The older ones in particular have a steam-punk sort of appeal to them, but I've heard that they're temperamental and require a fairly high level of maintenance, so that idea got nixed.
As to robusta ... I understand that some Italian espresso roasters are incorporating robusta in their blends for its flavor. Me, I don't know enough to comment on that either way, but I imagine that robusta might have some favorable characteristics that arabica doesn't.
Vacuum pots are still available, but they are far from ubiquitous in the home kitchens of America. But from what I gather from old photos and what I recall from my earliest years, it seems that their heyday must have been fairly short-lived. As you inform me, they didn't really catch on until the 1930s, and by the time I was a kid old enough to pay attention to such things, the percolator was a much more common sight.
... Robusta coffee, as I mentioned above contains much more caffeine than Arabica. It also better bears boiling. The traditional pre-War American blends, which were generally 50-50 or 60/40 Robusta/Arabica produce some really fine coffee even when brewed carelessly. The post-war mass market blends, not so much!
DO NOT ALLOW SMALL CHILDREN TO PLAY AROUND THE MACHINE WHEN IN OPERATION. DO NOT LEAVE SMALL CHILDREN UNSUPERVISED WHEN MACHINE IS OPERATING -- if you have to take a phone call while the machine is running and children are present, unplug the power first.
Tip for using an old human-powered lawn mower ...
SHARPEN THE BLADES first
... it'll make the job a whole heckuva lot easier.