Coffee
Melitta 10-cup Pour Over
AeroPress
Coffee is an essential part of my day, and in resent weeks, I’ve taken it a bit more seriously. This all began when Kristin’s coffee maker died. She began looking for a new coffee maker and I suggested my Cuisinart model. It has 2000 four and five star reviews on Amazon, but Kristin, being more thorough than me, also noticed it had 500 one star reviews. So she read those and was disturbed to find that they all said things like “this was a great coffee maker until it caught fire.”
My husband is a firefighter. If you tell me something in my house is prone to catching fire, it’s not going to be in my house for very long. Out went the Cuisinart and thus began my journey to better, safer coffee.
As it turns out, people have strong opinions about coffee. Many people suggested a Keurig, but I quickly realized that wasn’t a good option for me for a variety of reasons. The first is that I drink six, five ounce cups of coffee every morning one right after the other. The second is that I’ve been grinding my own beans for a long time, so I’m used to paying a premium for coffee, but I’m not used to paying double what I pay now for freshly roasted beans just to have prepackaged ground coffee in those little plastic cups. They are too expensive and they produce a lot of landfill waste. As for the reusable Keurig cups, that’s a better option, but grinding beans and filling one of those six times every morning doesn’t sound very convenient.
I looked at French presses, but I don’t like the sludge factor. I like a clean, bright cup of coffee and the French press produces a murky, thick cup of coffee. I know a lot of people who love them, but I don’t.
I considered another drip coffee maker, one that didn’t catch fire, but after doing so much coffee research, I realized that most drip coffee makers don’t get the water hot enough for a really great cup of coffee. Since I was getting high quality, locally roasted beans from places like Beanetics in Annandale and Catoctin Coffee at the Leesburg Farmer’s Market, it seemed like a good time to up my coffee making game.
After much reading about coffee and watching many YouTube videos on how to make coffee, I settled on the Melitta pour over pictured above. It produces a clean, bright cup of coffee just like I like. Using the Melitta, I often drink coffee black now rather than adding cream.
Colin, however, prefers the AeroPress pictured above. He is a big fan of chicory blended coffee and prefers his coffee with a lot of milk, so the espresso-like concentrate that the AeroPress creates is perfect for his morning routine.
Kristin settled on a beautiful Chemex like the one pictured below. Like the Melitta, it produces a clean, bright cup of coffee, but it’s also super pretty.
Whatever your coffee preferences, I encourage you to try some of the methods I’ve mentioned. I was surprised by the difference and I don’t think I have a particularly sensitive sense of taste. There is a lot of wonderful coffee out there to be enjoyed. I want to try it all.
Chemex 6-cup
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