Chekhov's Mistress
“It’s kaleidoscopic”
I have a rich but limited sphere of things that get me excited: Coffee is one of them. Coffee speaks to my purist heart as I think about a bean’s life from mountain to cup, the right roast, perfect grind, accurate water temperature. Every cup (or pot) may be different. Process is everything…except! the right tools. Usually we think of equipment only in terms of expensive espresso makers (mine, a Francis Francis model causes me much anxiety) leaving most people content to make their coffee in a drip or Melitta, or if you think of yourself as an aficionado, a French Press (I use a Chemex and I recommend you do too).
Enter the siphon coffee bar, a machine the New York Times says cost $20,000 (all-in, I don’t think the machine itself) and is powered by the precisely controlled heat of halogen lights; the only one like it in the whole U.S. of A. Okay, so I’m not going to go out and buy one of these and by the sounds of the article you have to earn the right to own one anyway. But besides the siphon’s beauty (see photo above or slideshow at the Times), what I love is the process:
“The goal is to create a deep whirlpool in no more than four turns without touching the glass. Posture is important. So is timing: siphon coffee has a brewing cycle of 45 to 90 seconds.
‘The whirlpool, it messes with your mind,’ said Mr. Freeman, the owner of the Blue Bottle. ‘There’s no way to rush it.’
Mr. Freeman said he practiced stirring plain water for months to develop muscle memory before he brewed his first cup of siphon coffee. Even now he starts every day with a five-minute warm-up. The evidence of good technique is in the sediment: the grounds should form a tight dome dotted with small bubbles, the sign of proper extraction.”
This is the sort of thing – as absurd as it might sound to some – that forces you to slow down and pay attention to details – every little detail:
“‘It’s kaleidoscopic,’ Mr. Freeman said. ‘It’s forcing you to pay attention to every sip, because the next one is going to be different. I feel like when we serve it we’ll have to ask people to just pour it in their cup and smell it for the first minute or so.’”
The gastronomic version of a poem, wouldn’t you say?
comments
I knew when I read that article this morning that you’d weigh in.
Want to go halfsies on one of those bad boys?
– Matthew Tiffany (01/24 at 10:18 PM)
Great idea - if we start our stirring practice now we may be ready in 5 or so years.
– Bud Parr (01/25 at 10:46 AM)
Looks amazing but does it make great coffee? It reminds me of a Cona, (http://www.sweetmarias.com/prod.brewers.vacuum.shtml) which I love using for the process but the end result I can live without.
– Debra (01/28 at 04:11 AM)
Well the process without results isn’t worth doing (or at least not unless there’s a glimmer of hope). Can’t say about the siphon, but it sounds like by all the effort the guy puts into it it might.
– Bud Parr (01/28 at 10:40 AM)
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