Trick to Speed Up Perked Coffee

As many of you probably know, I've been making my morning coffee in a French Press of late. I have a stock of American coffee, which brews great in it. The French Press doesn't give you a really hot cup of coffee, which doesn't bother me all that much, since I don't drink or eat anything super hot. But I really think, there should be thermal or even electric French Presses to provide nice hot coffee, especially for those of us who make a double or triple batch to get our inner motors functioning in the morning.

My old fashioned classic stove top percolator makes a really steamy cup/mug of coffee and can even be covered to keep hot or just leave it on the stove over a low maintenance heat. But the downside for me now is that I'm using an old electric hotplate type of stove which takes ages to heat up and bring the water to a boil.

So, today I decided to try a trick. I turned on the stove and also boiled up water in my electric kettle. While it was boiling, I put the body of the percolator on the stove with a bit of water. In the meantime I put the Turkish Coffee into the percolator, so it would be ready to quickly be assembled. Once I had boiling water,  I poured it into the percolator, assembled all the parts and left it to perk. When the absolutely delicious and invigorating coffee aroma reached the den, I returned to the kitchen and poured myself some coffee. Then I left what remained for mug-full #2  on the stove to keep warm. Electric stoves stay hot for quite a while.

I sure enjoyed my coffee this morning.

Coffee Experiment: A Success!!

For the past year or so, I've been adding frozen coffee to my Shabbat morning coffee, to cool it quickly and add better flavor. The frozen is left over from perked coffee I sometimes make. And Shabbat I can't perk fresh coffee. It just wasn't really working the way I had wanted. The frozen coffee was too black and didn't melt quickly enough. I ended up crunching it with my teeth. Then I got this idea to freeze the coffee mixed with milk and froze two cups like that last week.  The experiment was a success. The frozen milky coffee melted more quickly and easily integrated into the instant.

So I must do this again!

I perk my coffee with Israeli Elite Turkish coffee.

Israeli Columbian Turkish Coffee

Yes, that's the coffee I'm drinking right now. There are three countries mentioned in the name of this Elite coffee. "Israeli" is because it is produced by the Israeli Elite company, and the label is obviously Hebrew. The basic type or grind or whatever is known as "Turkish," and "Colombian" beans are the main ingredient.

Many coffee mavins consider Columbian to the the best or strongest flavor, which is fine by me. I've even found instant coffee when made with Colombian beans to have flavor.

Please don't mind the messy kitchen.
Here's my giant mug of Israeli Columbian Turkish Coffee with sugar and milk.

Perked in my classic gas top percolator with some sugar and milk, it sure does taste great.

More in My Coffee Saga

Here's this morning's facebook "update status:"

Last of my American coffee stock.  I'm not even sure where I was when I bought it, but I do remember that I was with my sister in some store and saw a whole bunch of coffee on sale.  This one is the least successful davka.  Archer Farms Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée.  It's a light roast, so not really strong enough.  When that's gone, I'll have to start perking my Elite Turkish again.

It doesn't have anything approaching the zing my homemade vanilla coffee, which is Elite Turkish well perked with a dash of good vanilla extract.  It's my fault in a way for picking a "light roast."  I should have stayed far away from it.  It has the coffee flavor of an ordinary instant coffee.  My previous Archer Farms was good coffee.

Kashrut is OU.  When I was pulling sale price coffee out of the bin in the store I can't remember*, there were many OU coffees.  I looked for the hechsher, kosher certification first and the name and strength of the coffee second. I remember being wary about the "light roast," but the vanilla in the label intrigued me.  Years ago I had bought a vanilla-flavored coffee from a different brand and loved it.  Lesson learned.

*As I was checking out more about Archer Farms I discovered that it's a house brand of Target, so I must have bought the coffee there.  My sister and I did go there to get my grandkids all sorts of arts and crafts supplies.