A long time ago I read a joke about coffee in the Reader’s Digest and it stuck in my head. An old cowboy and an a young cowboy are sitting at a campfire in Texas, and the old cowboy is making coffee. The young cowboy says, you know you make the best coffee, what is your secret. The old cowboy says it is easy, just put the the pot on the fire and just keep throwing coffee in. The young cowboy says but how do you know when to stop. The old cowboy says, well, you just throw a horseshoe in the pot and if it floats then your all set!
For decades now, I was searching for a good way to make a really strong cup of coffee with absolutely no luck. I threw out more coffee makers than anyone I know till I bought the one you see in the picture above (you can buy it on Amazon for $35) and I am now on my second such coffee maker. Actually to call it a coffee maker is not fair, it is an espresso maker and apparently it builds a pressure of 3.5 bar. Now, I know that you can buy more fancy coffee makers on Amazon for $300 which will build a pressure of 20 bar, but my friends have those and honestly, after all the hype the coffee is not all that great. You see coffee is more than the pressure you steam it at, it is also the fine grind and what else you add to to the coffee.
In India, we use a coffee maker like the one in the picture above. It is a drip coffee maker, there is no steam involved. And to be clear, I quite enjoy the taste of the coffee made in that one, it is just rather inconvenient to use. The secret to drip coffee is that you have to compress the coffee powder as much as you can using the press and use as hot steaming water as you can generate. Indian coffee is very fine ground so a drip coffee maker will produce very fine coffee indeed, because it is simply a question of surface area.
But you can get an even better cup of coffee by using fine ground Indian coffee powder in the 3.5 bar coffee make above and that is what I do and I have to say, I would rather drink this coffee than any Starbucks coffee. Now, if you are from India , you want the coffee to taste bitter and that’s where the chicory comes in. In small amounts, chicory powder will make your coffee bitter and you may enjoy it more. If you add too much chicory, then two things happen, first you will note the lack of caffeine and secondly you will sense a root taste in the coffee which is objectionable. I use the chicory in the picture below (you can get it on Amazon) and practically speaking a ratio of 5:1 of coffee to chicory is about as much as you can really stand.
And now you come to the milk. Given that the milk we buy at the store is pasteurized, most people just steam the milk straight out of the fridge and that is a total mistake. I boil the milk in the same carafe (see in the picture above and you can buy it at IKEA) and you can do that in the microwave and boiling the milk causes the fat globules in the milk to break down, so when you steam the milk after boiling it, the fat disperses and gives coffee the rich taste that is pleasing to the palate. The reason to use an IKEA jug for steaming is that these jugs are straight sided, so the milk can steam up quite a ways before it starts to splash.
So, I hope you will try my method of making coffee above and remember to use fine ground Indian coffee (you can buy it at the Indian store) and remember to pour the milk into the cup first and then the coffee and you will not be disappointed in the taste!