Coffee

Coffee to get through the day

Years ago, I did an ocean passage from the USA to the Caribbean and the conditions were rough and I hadn’t achieved my current “sea legs”, so I subsisted on granola bars and water for about 4 days. I developed a nasty persistent headache, akin to a migraine, which I couldn’t explain. But when the weather calmed down and I brewed my first cup of coffee the headache went away and I realized that I was, indeed, addicted to caffeine!

Brewing Aboard

One of the great pleasures while sailing is waking up and having that first pungent cup of coffee. Since it is often difficult to find good coffee and roasted beans get stale very quickly, particularly in the tropics, I opted for a Nespresso coffee machine. The pods are filled with an inert gas, so they last for a very long time. And after turning on the machine it heats up quickly and within 2 minutes, I get a tasty cup of coffee and can choose which type of coffee to start the day with from my selection of pods.

But those pods are not cheap and not available everywhere, so I changed my delivery method for caffeine to brewing freshly ground beans. The Aeropress Coffee Maker has become my go-to coffee brewing method aboard, closely followed by a French Press – and I also use my Bialetti (Moka Pot) frequently.

Roasting Green Beans

During the Corona lockdowns of 2021 I developed a number of new skills, including my own sourdough starter culture (named “Phred” from old Doonesbury comics) and roasting my own coffee. While a cast-iron skillet will roast coffee, other devices do a much better job.

I bought a cheap popcorn-maker and rewired it with temperature sensors and programmed an Arduino microprocessor to hook up to Artisan software to create unique roast profiles, but that is too unwieldy, and I now use a BEEM coffee roaster. It is almost like a popcorn popper roaster but has a few extra features and makes a good roast that is pretty close to a true roast profile.

Green beans are a lot cheaper than roasted coffee and allow a lot of experimentation. I always sort my coffee manually before roasting to remove the quakers and other defective beans.

Once roasted, I once again manually sort them and remove those which don’t look right or are too light, giving a nice uniform coloration to the batch.

Preparation Methods

There are a surprising number of ways of ways to brew coffee. From high-pressure espresso machines to slow drip coffee where you can wait 24 hours or more to get your cuppa made. All of them are combinations of combining the ground coffee (of different granularity) with water (of different temperatures) for various amounts of time and filtered through various materials to produce something drinkable.

I use a Chemex, an Aeropress, a French Press, a Moka Pot or a Melitta filter depending upon what kind of a coffee I want. When in town, I’ll usually get an espresso-based drink (doppio or Latté) since I can’t make that at home. All of the coffees taste good, but different. Each has a place and time where it is best consumed and having a choice of preparation and taste styles is wonderful.