This is my breakfast each morning, well rather, my start up concoction.
Of course, I’ve been bucking the trend and have been drinking my brew straight — no sugar.
And I’ve actually started to appreciate the coffee flavor much more. Of course the interesting thing, I grind my own beans and have tried every type of concoction out there: french roast; summatra, costa rican blends; african blends; ethoipian, etc. And many of these roasts are really good and can only be appreciated if you drink it straight up.
But the real irony is that you can pay $10-$15 dollars a pound for these exotic brews. Of course, I’ve brought the Pilon gourmet cafeteria blend whole bean bags and the same with the Bustello which you can get for about $8 a bag whole bean and let me tell you, it tastes as good as the $15 Summatra.
Of course you can be a real fanatic like my friend who buys raw beans from distributors and roasts them and blends them in his house and makes his own perfect roasts. I have to admit, my friend’s stuff is superior to the market stuff, but he cannot produce enough for my consumption habits.
FYI: to get a perfect shot your brew should measure exactly one shot and should have a nice crema to it from the brewing process which also entails making sure your beans are ground just right and that your machine has just enough pressure to give you that perfect shot.
Have a great Monday infidels and I think I’m going to have another double.
6 thoughts on “Double Shot Straight Up”
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I too roast and grind my beans, but after discovering the whole bean Pilon and Bustello bags, I hardly ever roast beans anymore. The trick to the perfect shot is to have good grinder that can finely and uniformly grind the beans and a decent espresso machine that is capable of producing the right temperature and pressure.
The drinking straight with no sugar thing, well that’s fine for standard (non-Cuban) espresso, but I feel that Cuban coffee MUST have sugar in it!
At the expense of sounding crude or uncouth, I prefer using the stove top stainless steel brewer to make espresso and not the electric machines. I also like the sugar part, it is what I use to make “espumita” the old fashioned way. With the stove top “cafeteras” the grind must be fine, but cannot be too fine.
Problem I have with the stove top cafetera, is that it is a real art and not anyone can make a perfect cafe that way. I’ve had some brews that tasted like swill.
The cafeterias all use the Italian machines and you can’t go wrong with them.
Cuban coffee… Ummm, I can just smell the wonderful aroma.
“Coffee must be as strong as love, as black as ink and as hot as the devil.” Blanche De Baralt (1931)
Cuban Translation… Coffee must be dark as night, sweet as love and hot as hell.”
I love Cuban coffee! I remember how it was made the old-fashioned way (and the best way IMHO). Maybe because it brings back those wonderful memories of my grandmother making Cuban coffee every morning.
http://www.havanabay.com/buchito.htm
Agreed Mike, each stovetop “cafetera” is different, and each brewer is different as well, and that’s the trick with the stovetops.
You’re right that it is a 90% sure shot with the electric machines, but you can brew swill on one of those too, I’ve had the unfortune of tasting one or two.
I agree that you can best appreciate the individual tastes of the different coffee beans by drinking it without the sugar, but there is nothing like a well brewed café with old fashioned “espumita” 😉
if you’re getting swill on a high end electric it’s probably user error or someone has not set the pressure or grind just right or they haven’t decalcified their machine. I’m a coffee nut, so I make sure everything is perfect. Of course I bought a very high end machine cause I wanted to get cafeteria quality coffee.
I usually have it with all the sugar for the afternoon shot. In the mornings, it’s straight no chaser.
😀