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I’ve got this personality quirk where I key in on one subject or thing and obsess about it to a point beyond
what most normal people would.  The latest craze of mine has been coffee… not just any coffee, but
great coffee.  I’ve been big into Starbucks for a while now, even though they have yet to bless the coal region with their presence.  Being limited to one good coffee a month when I would find my way to
Starbucks in Reading or Harrisburg was beginning to get old, so I started looking into making it myself.

So, I did what I always do, I asked the internet.  I wanted to make great coffee or maybe even espresso, but I didn’t want to spend a ton of money doing it.  I found out fast that coffee geeks take the obsession to a level that I can barely comprehend.  There are so many gadgets, so many terms to learn, so many things to discover.  The first thing you learn when you delve into their community is that the automatic drip maker that you have on your counter is just about the worst thing for making good coffee.  In fact, there are ways much simpler, better, and cheaper than that contraption.

The second thing you learn is that the coffee grinder is more important than the coffee maker.  Yes, this means no more Folgers in the can.  You need fresh, quality, whole bean coffee.  The coffee geeks say that you should drop upwards of $150 (or more!) on a high end burr grinder like a Solis Maestro.  Apparently they give you a really consistent grind which is very important.  They insist that you avoid the $20 blade grinders like they sell in the supermarket.  I couldn’t bring myself to spend that much money to make myself one cup a day, but I didn’t want to ignore their advice completely, so I spent $30 on a Cuisinart Burr Grinder from Sam’s Club.

Still with me?  Well, now that you’ve got the grinder, you need some beans to grind.  Wait!  I know what you’re thinking… don’t even bother with those Starbucks beans.  If you do a little reading at coffeereview.com, you’ll see that you can get better beans for less from somewhere else.  I picked up a 3 pound bag of Member’s Mark (read:  Sam’s Club brand) Marques de Paiva French Roast for $12.  It scored an impressive 88 points on coffeereview.com, which is as good as or better than any Starbucks beans… and Starbucks charges you $10 to $15 for a 1 pound bag!

OK, we’re almost there… we just need something to brew the coffee.  Well, there’s a ton of options here, too.  Moka pots, vac pots, expensive espresso machines… the list goes on and on.  I started out with the classic French Press, a $20 glass pitcher that will make coffee better than your $100 auto drip machine.  My biggest problem with the french press is that no matter what you do, you get some of the coffee grinds in your cup (the coffee geeks call these “fines”).  This pretty much ruins the bottom third of the cup and you’re usually forced to dump it.  Don’t get me wrong though, the other two-thirds are pure bliss.

Of course, I couldn’t settle for that though.  A little more searching led me to the Aerobie Aeropress.  You may remember those Aerobie frisbees from your childhood… well this little coffee gadget is by the same inventor, Alan Adler.  The thing that sold me on this product was the 60+ page thread on coffeegeek.com about the Aeropress, which is basically a Q&A session with Alan himself.  He answered every question and was really into the discussion and that grabbed my interest.

The best way to describe this thing is a “coffee syringe”… when you brew with it, you’re literally injecting concentrated coffee right into your cup.  The best part about it, aside from its $25 price tag, is that it takes only 30 seconds to brew.  This is not an exaggeration.  Also, you get a cup with almost no fines at all, which makes it much more drinkable than french press coffee.  They say you can store the concentrated coffee in the fridge and just add hot water to make your coffee even faster. 

I’m very happy with my coffee setup right now.  I can say with confidence that I can make a cup of coffee that rivals your $2 venti from Starbucks, and I can make it in only a couple of minutes with $50 worth of equipment.  I don’t think I have it in me to go for that $150 grinder or that $200 espresso machine right now, but I think I get more satisfaction out of making great coffee with little more than hot water and a plastic tube, anyway.

So yeah, I guess you could say I’m a full fledged coffee snob now…