Brewing Coffee Manually

Better coffee. One cup at a time.

Page 12 of 29

Eggs in Coffee – How to Make Norwegian Egg Coffee

Looking for a new variable to add to your coffee brewing? Putting eggs in coffee might seem a little bit strange but it is a hearty tradition rooted in American Midwest church basements.

When I did research for my post on cowboy coffee, something that I came across quite a few times was the concept of putting eggshells in coffee while it brews. There is apparently something in the chemical makeup of an eggshell that binds with the ground coffee and makes it sink to the bottom.

If you are interested in clarifying your cowboy coffee a bit, I recommend giving the eggshell method a try. Start with my cowboy coffee recipe and simply add one or two crushed eggshell.

Recipes for Norwegian egg coffee take this concept in a different direction and include a whole egg minus the shell.

As I was reading about Norwegian egg coffee, I came across claims of the proteins in an egg binding with some of the astringent and bitter compounds contained in coffee and essentially removing them.

I was curious.

Even though I know that a great coffee, brewed properly should not be astringent or bitter (or at least the bitterness should be balanced with the sweet and acidic flavors), the thought of throwing an entire egg into the mix was too interesting to pass up.

Conventional wisdom says that adding an egg to your coffee would not be an improvement but as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The only thing to do was to get a few eggs and try it out.

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What is an Affogato? (and How to make one at home)

Before I took a month break to work on my kitchen renovation project (wow that was a quick month) I wrote about the benefits of drinking coffee black and why you should give it a try. Ironically, I would now like to travel to the complete opposite side of the spectrum talk about the virtues of the Affogato; which is essentially adding lots of cream and sugar to your coffee (in the form of ice cream).

What is an Affogato?

Affogato is a simple dessert that can be easily assembled and served with a few minutes of prep (in the form of making some coffee). The two ingredients, ice cream and coffee, can be kept on hand and used to easily deploy the coffee communities (and arguably a much larger scope) most perfect dessert at a moment’s notice.

Affogato is the Italian word for drowned. The imagery being that a scoop of ice cream is drowned in coffee to make an unforgettable dessert drink. Traditionally an Affogato is made by pulling a double shot of espresso over a scoop of gelato but you will find there is a fair amount of deviations from this standard.

In an affogato, the sweet and creamy ice cream is cut by the acidity and bitterness of the coffee creating a perfect pairing. It is delicious (how could it not be) and quite simply, if you are not adding coffee to your ice cream, you are doing it wrong.

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Time for a Coffee Blog Break

Last April (in the flurry of the hectic beginnings of spring) I published my first “Coffee Break” post. This year my breaking point came a month earlier and the load is a lot heavier. With baby number three on the way (due in July) and a complete kitchen remodel on my plate, I need to take a step back.

I plan to continue posting (I have several posts that are nearly completed and just need to be edited) but I need to give myself permission to make the posting schedule a little erratic. I also want to spend some time writing on some subjects other than coffee (gasp) and rework some of the pages and material I currently have on the blog.

The original idea of the first “Coffee Break” post was to supply a few short updates joined into one post and inform my readers that I may be MIA at times. This post will follow relatively the same format.

Good coffee is worth the extra dough

The subject of buying good coffee is important enough to be made into a manifesto type article but for now, I think these few words will do.

I’ve been having more conversations with people about coffee and I’ve noticed a trend. When people ask me where I get my coffee from, I have a tendency to tack on a statement about how the coffee is a little on the expensive side but really good. Sometimes I feel a little awkward about how much I spend on coffee.

Last week I got two really great coffees in and as I was enjoying a morning cup with my wife, I had somewhat of a revelation. Good coffee is worth it. I look forward to that 8 ounce cup of delicious and interesting coffee (some of the finest available) and compared to most of the other finer things in life, great coffee is a bargain.

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