On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:14:09 +0000, Lazarus Cooke
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:



Espresso is a modern invention (20th century) and the type of machine
Lazarus probably uses has only been around about 60 years,

This is right, and should have been mentioned before. (mea culpa)

so it's not
like the Italians have some long, ancient history to draw upon.

As you may have seen, my argument is that they care about taste more
than most other people

But
we're talking about personal taste here, so you and Lazarus can both be
correct.

Agreed, and this is important.

So, though I prefer italian coffee, I make my (Italian) girlfriend's
coffee as well as I can every morning when I get up early enough (she,
of course, prefers filter coffee).

(In my view it should be De gustibus disputandum est - with a strong
gerundive of obligation).

We haven't talked about where it all began, with Ethiopia, and probably
the nearest thing to 'early' coffee, that we're likely to deal with,
which might be the way of making coffee known as Turkish coffee, which
I like and enjoy and drink anywhere from the Balkans through Greece,
Turkey, the Levant, to North Africa, but which is quite different from
what we've been discussing.

I'm not sure, but isn't coffee made in a briki the forerunner of
espresso? IMO, there is a (varying) difference between hot water
methods (espresso, briki, etc.) and cold-water methods (ala the
aforementioned "extract"), even when the same coffee is used. I have
heard, but can't confirm, that the reason much Greek/Turkish coffee is
so heavily-sweetened is to counterbalance the bitterness of "hot
process" boiling.

IAC, back to the chicory - the chicory used in European "mellowing" is
much less than the amount used in Creole chicory coffee IME. Have you
ever had Creole-style coffee? I mean the final product - the beverage -
rather than meaning being in possession of the coffee and chicory
itself. If not and you can obtain either the preblended coffee (or you
can use a very dark roast coffee of average quality and roasted chicory
in about 60-40 ratio), simply use about 5 heaping tablespoons (I have no
idea of the weight in grams or ounces of weight) of the blend and brew
with 4 smallish cups of water (about 5-6 fl. oz. each - 750ml total). As
to the extract, it's about 3 pounds (US) of the blend to about two
quarts/liters of coolish (not chilled) water slowly dripped into the
grounds, allowed to stand, and collected below. A cafetiere cannot used
as it's a settling method, not a press method.

TC,
R

TC,
R

L