Making Coffee In a Percolator

I set out to make a simple video today about uh making coffee in a percolator , inspired by a friend who came by and wanted to know how to make coffee in the percolator .

We're just hanging out and I said , hey , you want some coffee ?

And I said , yeah , I've been wanting to see how your percolator works anyway .

You know , it occurs to me not everyone knows how that works and , and in the course of deciding how I was going to make the video , I started to think why I should throw in there , why I do it .

And the obvious reason is uh electricity , you know , by perking coffee on a fire .

Um I don't just plug in a coffee pot and walk away and burn up literally what is a day's worth of electricity for this house just to keep coffee hot , you know , at my leisure .

And it's , uh , we don't pay for those luxuries here and it keeps our life very affordable and it's around a philosophy of living that I actually picked it up in the islands .

I'm a surprisingly well traveled denizen of the , of the ghetto and it's the aloha spirit the way of Aloha , basically .

I mean , I don't adhere to anybody's principles or whatever but the idea of having enough respect for your home before you take off your shoes , enjoying the very acts of being alive , sourcing the materials for your meal , making the meal , enjoying the meal , these kinds of things .

And we've gotten very distant from that kind of life in the US .

You know , it's like our very lives get in the way of , uh , our work .

Um , and our work is basically there to enable us to be consumers to enjoy the luxuries of things like plugging in a coffee pot and burning up enough electricity to run a place like this for a day just to have coffee at your convenience .

And , uh , anyway , I just wanted to touch on that idea , um , about why we do things the way we do .

And with that in mind , let's go make some coffee .

I guess the place to start is just to look at the pieces .

This is the pot , there's nothing special about it except they generally have two holes right here .

And I expect this top one is to allow , uh , steam to escape above the water level while the coffee is making .

Uh , we've got the basket .

Think we're all pretty familiar with that .

This piece here is the one that really makes the magic happen .

Even if your pot is electric , you have this piece and what it does is enables uh natural convection to make your coffee .

Um What happens when this is dropped into the pot , you apply heat to the bottom .

And uh convection uh demands that uh this pot water is going to go up through this tube and spill out over your grounds .

And this water is going to try to equalize in temperature and it is going to go from the hottest part of the water up to the coolest part of the water and , you know , heat rises anyway .

So it's uh it's science and I'm an artist .

So anyway , let's make a pot .

Yeah , I like to use filtered water because just because some government lab says it's safe to drink doesn't necessarily mean it is .

So my only regret is I don't have a filter good enough to get out the fluoride .

So I like to fill this up just between the two holes in that spout .

And what that does is bring the water level up to just about the bottom of the basket .

And even if the water is coming into the basket about an eighth of an inch , I don't mind that at all .

I'm gonna go to the effort to make a pot of coffee .

I want as much coffee as I can get .

All right , the coffee itself , I'm not a coffee snob , but I spent a lot of time studying coffee .

I got real interested in uh sourcing green beans and uh roasting and grinding and I tell you what that is the way to get coffee the best coffee .

Uh It's not always real convenient for us to uh bring in £40 of green beans .

Uh So right now we're drinking coffee out of a can and there's just no comparison .

So I'm of the understanding that a uh coffee scoop is two tablespoons approximately and for a pot this size , which I think is a 10 cup .

I use five of these scoops .

So it's 10 tablespoons of coffee .

And it's always better to err on the side of uh , too much coffee versus too little .

I hate we coffee .

So anyway , the idea that coffee might be boiled is because it's pork is absolutely wrong .

Now , it will be boiled if you don't keep an eye on it .

So , uh , and you'll get that burnt taste and I don't care for that .

I like to drink my coffee black .

So I always set the timer .

I'll show you how I uh make fire and coffee and then we'll drink some , set the timer for nine minutes on my stove .

That's how long I find it takes to make coffee .

That'll leave me about a minute to stand around and uh , watch it finish up so that I know it's not gonna get burnt and boil all over the stove and make a mess and leave me a pot of , you know , less than perfect coffee to drink .

Hello .

I'm just going to sit here and watch this thing finish up cup in hand , but we're going to see happen .

His coffee is going to start bubbling through here and you'll be able to actually see it and the trick is to turn it off before it comes out of the spout .

Now , what I'll typically do is just keep an eye on the spout and to get it absolutely the way I like it .

I see it on its way coming up to boil over and I stop it right there .

It's just before it starts to boil .

And to me that is a perfect perked pot just like Mommy Schmack .

If you made it this far through this video , I want to say thank you .

I want to ask you to click the subscribe button in the upper right hand corner of the video and uh , you might ask yourself , why is this better ?

Well , for when you get better coffee .

And , uh , you might also be thinking that it's just gonna cool off , sit there and get cold .

Well , that is gonna happen .

But I get to drink some really fantastic coffee for about 45 minutes to an hour .

And I can always just , uh , take the basket out of that , reheat it on the propane or put it in the microwave because we're not cave in here .