A Healer’s Geste

coffee is art

With the first trimester technically over (I am 15 weeks today), the past two weeks I have re-entered the land of coffee. I did it with trepidation at first. At the women’s retreat (11 weeks), one sip made me feel ill to my stomach — not gaggy, just tummy ache. But on the way home that weekend, Mom stopped at the new Ritzville Starbucks. It was a cold, very wet car trip and a hot beverage is just what would hit the spot. I don’t like super-sweet drinks, tea has not appealed to me this pregnancy at all, so I went out on a limb and got a small decaf pumpkin spice latte. It was absolutely delicious. Later that week I confirmed that brewed coffee gave me problems, but a latte was excellent. I tried brewed coffee with more milk. I varied the amount of syrup I added. Nope. It was something about the coffee. I waited another week and a half. I tried my French press again. It was absolutely disgusting. I tried again the next day, trying to be more careful in my method. Disgusting.

Coffee? Disgusting? This is heart-wrenching!

The next day was playgroup. Allie usually brews a half-caff pot for playgroup. I poured a cup, added a little flavored creamer, and with trepidation tried a sip. It tasted exactly as it should. It wasn’t great coffee, but it tasted like the drip coffee that it was. No revulsion, no disgusting aftertaste, no stomach ache.

Something was wrong with my beans or my preparation methods.

French press coffee is persnickity. It is a fickle mistress. It demands perfection in you or it will give back most ungraciously. You want to make sure the pot is washed out and doesn’t have oily residue from previous pots; you must put fresh, cold water on to heat; you must carefully grind your beans to the proper texture; you want to make sure some air circulates around your beans before leaving it to steep; you must not let the hot water sit in the ground beans for either too short or too long a time. It requires attention and devotion. Some one or the other step might be missed and yet you will have decent coffee. But if you get them all just so, the taste of that coffee is pure bliss.

Keeping this in mind, I set about another attempt. Fearing my beans had picked up some foulness in their 3 months neglect in the freezer, I was determined to prepare it just right so that no other option would be left if it was still revolting. I put on the water with the lid off so I could watch it. I mixed my caff and decaf beans. I quickly ground them, pulsating the blade and giving a shake and a twist so that the whole beans would go down to the blades and the ground coffee wouldn’t turn fine. Dumping the coarsely ground beans into the clean pot, I watched the water carefully. You want to catch it just before it goes into a simmer. You want to see bubbles forming, and maybe one or two tiny ones breaking the surface, but never let it get to a real simmer. Instead of stirring my grounds in the water to expose them to air, I pour in the water in a circular pattern around the pot, varying between dumping and gently pouring so that the water itself accomplishes the stirring. After adding the lid, I set the timer for 5 minutes and I did not leave the room while it steeped. As soon as the timer went off, I gently pushed the press down to capture the grounds at the bottom of the pot. Almost nervous at this point, I poured some first into milk for the boys (yes, both boys now get milk-coffee) to silence their pleas, then poured a cup for myself. I tried it first without any additives to make sure it wasn’t some wrong proportion of flavor or milk. It was very good. What a relief! I added a touch of Jaeger’s whole milk and it was a beautiful morning.

This morning again I attempted the just-right coffee and have gotten pretty close. I have half-and-half now, though, and it gives just the perfect texture to a strongly brewed coffee.