Need advice for no-drip coffee maker

wdsheffer

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Sep 3, 2009
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I hope someone can help me out. I want to get a small coffee maker for personal use at work. I've also been wanting to give no-drip coffee a try.

Here are my considerations.

1) I'm on an Air Force base near Afghanistan and don't have ready access to supermarkets or neighborhood roasters.
2) There is no kitchenette here. I can microwave water to heat it up or I can heat some on the burner of a drip maker.
3) The only sink is in the latrine, so no garbage disposal.
4) There is a grinder here, but it's a blade grinder, and I'd rather not have to pony up for a burr grinder.
5) I have plenty of access to pre-ground coffee, and it's also cheaper to order pre-ground in quantity from the States.
6) If I get something electric, I've got both 110v and 220v outlets.

So the question is this. Is there a no-drip coffee maker that will work well with the pre-ground coffee that I have ready access to? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks for giving it some thought.
 

wdsheffer

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shadow745 said:
What exactly do you mean by "no-drip"? You mean you want something other than drip, as in something that is extracted with pressure? For your situation something like the AeroPress might work great.

http://aerobie.com/Products/aeropress_story.htm

Give that a look and let us know what you think. Later!
Thanks for the link.

All I mean by no-drip is that I wanted to try something other than a drip percolator.

As it turns out, someone here had been sent a Bodum French press as a gift, and he doesn't use it. So he's letting me use it. Haven't tried it, yet.

I'd still like to know if there's a good option to use with regular ground coffee, because it's so much more available.
 

santacruz

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I agree your solution should be fix by Aeropress coffee maker. :wink:

21353ed.jpg

url edited out. Please see rules 2 & 3 regarding urls: viewtopic.php?t=6 Nice pic!
 

coffee_percolators

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Aug 20, 2009
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I would go with the previous advise of a coffee press as it would be the best bet in a situation you are in. And thanks for explaining your definition of No-Drip, well it was quite self explanatory though. :) If you want to choose from a variety of Coffee Presses, you may go to Coffee-percolators.com. I see some Bodum Coffee Presses over there too. Maybe you want to take a look at them and see if you have one of them. :) Tell us if it served the purpose.
 

wdsheffer

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Okay, so I went with the Clever Coffee Dripper. It's inexpensive and, having now used it once, it appears to be the simplest cleanup and least messy option I could possibly hope for. Thanks for the input everyone.

I know the flavors can be fine-tuned based on factors like the coffee to water ratio, steeping time, water temperature, and what not. And considering that all I had available to test it was a mostly empty bag of preground Starbucks of undetermined age, it's not surprising that it was not great, but its bitterness got me to thinking about how to systematically go about developing the right cup for myself. Can someone provide some basic guidance regarding how to affect the flavor by adjusting some of these variables? I can guess that if it's too weak I can use more coffee or add steeping time, but what else will I affect with each of those choices? What does water temp. affect? How do you affect bitterness? Can you "burn" coffee with this type of method?

My equipment includes: an electric tea-kettle that will boil the water pretty quickly, the Clever Coffee Dripper, brown #4 filters from Filtropa, a 10 gram (29.6cc) scoop, and half-liter (16.9oz) bottles of water. This first time around, I dumped a whole bottle into the kettle, didn't bring the water to a complete rolling boil, but it was starting to bubble a bit. I used two scoops (~20g) of coffee grounds, added the almost-boiling water, almost completely filling the cone, and let it steep for 5 minutes. That procedure will be my starting point from which to make further adjustments. I'm afraid I won't be roasting my own beans or even grinding preroasted whole beans, for now, so I'll have to play with preground coffee. I'm expecting some dark-roast from Community Coffee any day now, so that's what I'll be playing with.

Thanks again,
Wes
 
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