How to brew a good cup of coffee

Video link. Simple steps for brewing a right proper cup o' joe. It's really the "handsorting" step that trips up the less sophisticated coffee drinkers, but then, failure to prime one's coffee filters is also a common mistake. (via Kyle Glanville)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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gumbowing

Haw haw haw!
I personally only drink coffee made from beans that have passed through the digestive systems of giant pandas.
Anonymous

@1:52 a real barista would’nt dare make coffee with a filter and a Chemex
ESPRESSO!!! The body needs caffeine not murky water
Doran

It’s always April First somewhere in the Universe.
Chocodile

This is definitely the way to brew coffee, but their pour is a bit off. I have found that squatting naked over the cup and streaming the hot brew down my genitals and off of my taint creates an aerating shower that gracefully fills the cup and enhances the flavor tenfold. If you truly are serious about coffee, this is the only way to pour it.
wfletch

If I spent that much time making coffee I sure as hell wouldn’t spill any of it…
machinelf

Well played, Xeni.
swag

Damn. You people will believe anything.

And that’s precisely what this video producer exploited.
Rukasu

After having Finca Mauritania made in a Clover today, this gave me the lolz
Anonymous

Those pretentious jackoffs don’t know anything ’bout brewing up a decent cup of java…
jerwin

Every step is wrong. It starts with the sorting of the beans into the good stuff (green beans, charred beans) and the boring stuff (properly roasted coffee).

http://boingboing.net/2009/08/18/chemex-coffee-brewin.html

is apparently how it’s really done.
Decay

I was totally going to leave a furious bee-spitting comment about coffee wankery but then realised it -might- be a joke :P

Now tea-making, THAT’s a serious business.
Anonymous

Obviously a fake. Everybody knows that coffee dissolves instantly if you put hot water on it.
Anonymous

I have a coffee fiend friend like that. Seriously. The mold would strike him as an interesting idea.
VICTOR JIMENEZ

Wow, thats an insane (retarded) amount of work and time for just a pair of coffee cups (and one poured into the table).
I have to agree with other commenters: This is a joke, right?
…It was AprilÂ´s fool day past December 28th in Spain (DÃa de los Inocentes).
MattF

If you don’t use silver cables tipped with gold and sealed with yttrium-platinum amalgam, then it’s all a waste of time.
Pete Hoffman

Ya know, I’ve always said life is too short for Folgers myself…but even as a true-blue coffee snob I don’t think I could take up a method as elaborate as this, forget the fact that every step here is hilariously wrong (hand picking out the under-roasted beans and calling em the “good stuff” was my favorite, although the mold part made me “wtf” out loud). Of course, I understand the point..making fun of us coffee snobs.

For what it’s worth, my snobbery method doesn’t involve anything more than a French Press, a burr grinder, a kettle and the timer on my microwave. Oh and of course…some decent beans.
Anonymous

The real joke is that they’re going to all this effort to make FILTERED coffee. It goes:
Instant coffee < boiled shit < filter coffee < espresso.
Anonymous

#23 The problem for most of us with home growing is that controlling Oxygen and CO2 levels really isn’t sufficient. After all, coffee grows at altitude. What you really need is a decent hypobaric chamber where one can lower the amtospheric to replicate that at altitude.
Anonymous

Haha!
Love it!
Just give me my $35 Black & Decker burr grinder, $20 WalMart press and a bag of nice Arabica beans.
Mmmmmm.
A nice cup o’ Joe.
Equalizer

Folgers Crystals. You put them in your kitchen cabinet and forget about them.
styrofoam

the mock outrage is pretty funny, but the actual outrage here… astounds me. You people need to ease up on your “I saw it on the internet so it must be true” quotient. Holy crap.

I’ve got a couple friends that need help transferring large sums of money, if anybody’s interested.
BdgBill

How to make great coffee at home:

1) Buy an Aeropress
2) Buy any burr grinder.
3) Buy decent whole bean coffee roasted in the town you live in.

Equipment cost is under $100.00. I have owned several very expensive coffee and espresso machines. I have never made better coffee than what I’m making now with this setup.
Anonymous

Or you could just run to Dunkin’ Donuts
El_Cid

If you’re not using Denon’s AK-DL1 premium audiophile Cat5 cable to hook up your digital thermometer, you might as well throw all this out and just drink boiled dirt.
Red Leatherman

Basically the same process I use but first I drink copious amounts of Kopi Luwak, after a 3.5 second flow purge I take the following sample of urine to use in place of the h2o.
If your planning on sharing a cup then I suggest each person supply their own Kopi Luwak urine for a more personal experience.
Anonymous

he failed to use the highest heat setting on the stove.
it’s very important to do this so that the teflon seasons the grind.
Anonymous

well … this certainly was a decent video …

to those who want to make a decent (i.e. strong and decent) cup of coffee, here are a few tips (assuming that you are cheap/have not time like me so are fine with the crap your coffee machine spews out)

You will need
coffee machine.
some pre-ground coffee(i use Folgers classical roast).
water.
electrical outlet

Steps.
a) Make sure coffee machine is plugged in
b) Bring Folgers near coffee machine
(Note this assumes hat you use ~3 tbsp of folgers / 500 mg of water)
c) Pour ~500mg of water where the water is supposed to go 1/2 a tbsp of coffee where the cofffe is supposed to go
d) Turn on the coffee machine and do whatever you do normally
e) Once it is done, pour the “coffee” that the machine gave you (should have a SLIGHT yellowish colour) into a cup (to avoid the stupid machines that start pouring once the water is hot enough.)
f) add the desired ammount of coffee to the place where coffee is supposed to go (i guess you can clean it up frist, but i’m too lazy)
g) Pour the “coffee” back into the machine and then turn it on again.
h) Grab all the wussy stuff you drink with your coffee (coffee should only be taken BLACK with no SUGAR)
i) once the coffee is done, pretend you arent a wuss and add your stuff.
j) Enjoy.

* Extra step for bonus points, keep a thermosfull of coffee on you at all times in order to throw it at the faces of people who ask for decaf at any coffee store you go to(cause lets face it, you might think your coffee is good, but we both know its not, so why dont you just spend the extra $1.79 for a good cup of Starbucks coffee huh??) .. anyway .. back on topic. Decaf drinkers deserve to be stranded on an island surrounded by extremely caffeinated coffee.
lego7

I’m looking forward to the Guide for Properly Taking a Nap.
Gryffinator63

I’m gonna go feed coffee beans to my ferrets now, thank you very much.
dangermandownunder

This is the stupidest method for making coffee ever.

Try a good coffee (preground Illy in a can is tops), use a decent espresso maker, warm the cup first, and you are done in oh, about 5 minutes. Good crema, nice taste, no fuss.
- SamSam
  
  If that’s what you really believe, dangermandownunder, then you are simply missing out on so much. Really, try this method for six months and then report back. Try and tell us that the coffee wasn’t 300% better.
semiotix

I’m seeing a lot of people asking, “is this a joke?” Yeah, it’s a joke all right. Where to start.

* Nice grinding pestle. What was that, plastic? Try ivory. Yeah, it’s illegal, blah blah blah. Coffee isn’t for pussies. If you’re serious, you’ll know how to get one.
* One of those hand-sorters was a woman. I mean, COME ON. Why would you even bother at that point?
* I’m going to let the whole bleached filter thing go, because sometimes it’s hard to find unbleached filters. But if you don’t want your coffee to reek of bleach, you have to put the color back in those filters. I find brown RIT dye works well.

One other thing. People keep talking about their local roasters, suggesting they don’t have the time or the skills to roast their own beans. That’s fine. What’s not fine is buying your beans from a roaster. That’s like buying your clothes from a laundromat. You should have the phone number of at least one peasant child in Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Guatemala, and deal directly with that child. (You’ll probably have to buy them the phones, of course.)
Anonymous

What’s with the mold on the coffee, seriously?
Anonymous

serious?
Dan Mac

Cute, You totally got me until the Mold..
- MrJM
  
  I was hooked till the mold even after reading Dan Mac’s comment.
nixiebunny

And I thought I was bad, having bought a Zojirushi for my lovely wife.
ROSSINDETROIT

The mold part made me snort Monkey Picked Tea out my nose.
Ted8305

So this is how Howard Hughes made his coffee.
- AirPillo
  
  I’m pretty sure Hughes would insist the barista be shaven and autoclaved for an hour prior to preparing the coffee.
David Carroll

I would really like to see some double blind taste tests to see if any of these elaborate steps actually make any noticeable difference.
- Anonymous
  
  I bet a dollar you would notice the mold.
Clifton

This video is so awesome that I had a dream about it last night even though I didn’t watch it.

I still don’t know if this video is OK, but I highly recommend the animated video about how to brew a cup of coffee in my dream, although you have to skip past some ads at the beginning.
Pip_R_Lagenta

Too soon for this year’s April First, but maybe it is just late for last year’s April First. I will think about it while I drink my Sanka.
- freshacconci
  
  Do they still make Sanka?
Anonymous

Is it really necessary to pour all that coffee on the table? I wonder how that helps the flavor.
Jason Rizos

I talked to my local roaster about this process.
He said that he won’t allow me to purchase his beans any longer.
What a dilettante!
Astin

What people aren’t realizing is that spilling the coffee IS an important step. You see, they’ll leave that spilled gourmet java on the table, until the water evaporates and leaves just the pure coffee essence bonded to the surface. The next time they make coffee, they’ll hand sort the beans on this same table, transferring the essence of the previous brew to the new beans.

I though it was obvious.

Great video. I’m glad they pointed out the need to double-filter the boiling water for quality.

Now if only they’d do a video to tell people why the french press is so wrong (can’t season the filter properly).
getjustin

I the 3 minutes of that video I went through the following stages:

1) This presorting thing is a bit odd, but okay.
2) An hour to prime? Okay weird.
3) Wash the filter? WTF?
4) What fucking hipster has this much time to make coffee?
5) Wait 18 days? Okay it’s a joke.
6) Know it’s making fun of total coffee snobbery.
7) This is now humorous.

Sadly though, there are people whose coffee making routine differs little from this. All you need is a $3 pour over brewer (a plastic Chemex for a tenth of the price you can travel with) a fresh grine from a cheap grinder and boiling water. Simple and delicious.
- Anonymous
  
  Not so fast Proclaimy Proclaimerson. You miss out on a ton of flavor from a blade grinder. Also, the $3 Melitta pour-over, while a fine brewing devise, is not a Chemex equivalent. Chemex has special filters that would clog up in the plastic one’s smaller hole, whereas “regular” paper filters would rip at the seem given the Chemex’s larger opening. Oh, absolutely give a paper filter a rinse (with hot water not coffee) unless you enjoy a papery flavor component.
- hapax.legomina
  
  PRECISELY. I started seeing chemex pots and was just settling in for an enjoyable 3-4 minutes then it just started getting weird. They timed the weirdness progression just right for the largest impact. Well done, imho.
Anonymous

that’s hilarious, thank you!!!
splatocaster

It’s nice to see someone taking coffee seriously for a change. Perhaps they should do another one on making your own kopi luwak?
- Xeni Jardin
  
  splatocaster for the win. hahahhahahahah.
Enormo

What hacks. I bet those beans weren’t even shat out by a civit.
Anonymous

mmmm, mold, my favorite

but then after 20 days of waiting for the cofee to be done, i’d drink the drippings of a unwashed sweatsock.
http://twitter.com/farcepest Farce Pest

This must be a recipe from the Anarchist’s Cookbook…
cyberscythe

A thoroughly comprehensive guide would start with raw coffee beans, which are then planted in the soil. Fake the birth of a baby, so that you can take a maternity leave to grow your perfect cup of coffee.
Hugh

With respect to previous posters, I’m not even going to try and guess if this is

a) poking fun at coffee-snobs
b) deadly serious
c) ha-ha only serious

There’s just no percentage in estimating the limits of geekery in the niche-iated Northern world.

But for anyone looking for a more… accessible guide to a good cup of coffee, I’ve found the Coffee Geek guide to press-pot coffee to yeild nice results

http://coffeegeek.com/guides/presspot
defiant1961

pretty interesting piece, until i watch this guy pour coffee for his friends. after waiting more than two weeks for a cup of coffee, he spill half of it on the table.
- coaxial
  
  “after waiting more than two weeks for a cup of coffee, he spill half of it on the table.”
  
  That’s called “seasoning”
Anonymous

No wonder you friggin’ hippies don’t have jobs… you’re too busy making coffee.
Anonymous

Man, I buy my coffee from the gas station and that sh*t is delicious
SamSam

Wait. Guys. I’m wondering if perhaps this video may be a joke.*

*Some of the commentors here are hilarious.
Anonymous

I like his friends reactions, “Meh, not bad.”
Vengefultacos

Amateurs. If you want to get serious, grow your own in those hydroponic setups that pot growers use, along with custom sensor system that perfectly controls growth medium acidity and nutrients, plus a special HVAC system to manage humidity and oxygen levels. You can get a good cup or two for just the cost of electricity to run lights and heaters/air conditioners 24×7 for a year. Only way to go, really.

Then you get a laser system that can roast each bean individually, to take into account the differences from bean to bean.
styrofoam

I liked the measuring of the distance from spout to kettle to determine the amount of water you should use- and then half scoops of coffee. Any scoop will work.

Up until then I was really worried.
KurtMac

I’ll have to try this, I just hope my boss doesn’t mind me being late for work in the morning by 3 to 18 days.
Daemon

This is for the coffee equivalent of audiophiles.

That that however you wish.
alowishus

Total rubbish. A true coffee lover, such as myself, will only drink Kopi Luwak from their hand-reared Asian palm civet.
Anonymous

OK, mister smarty-pants video maker, I guess I didn’t pick up on the fact that this was “satire”. Darn you kids and your dry little senses of humor. Why can’t you just abuse dwarfs and invite a succession of mishaps with bikes, skateboards and farm animals like those nice, undereducated kids on Jackass? Is it really necessary to suck in your elders?
lewis stoole

mmmmmmmm. tastes like coffee. and you say it only took you 18 days to make. your mother must be proud.
Anonymous

Christmas! This IS a parody, right?
Anonymous

hahahahahahaha! yeah at least pretend to enjoy that boring moldy whatever it is! nice video though…
Anonymous

Oh please.

Like wine snobs who get fooled when someone hands them $3 Charles Shaw with a fake label on it, I bet these coffee nerds would be fooled if we handed them Dunkin Donuts beans put inside some snobby roasters bags.
Anonymous

and another thing making it ridiculous is using tapwater. Hah!
Bouillion Cube

It is irrelevant whether this is truth or satire. Coffee making is like religion. No matter how absurd the satire of religion is, there will always be someone somewhere with wackier actual religion. Same with coffee. “Sort through the dung of an arboreal weasel.” Can’t make that stuff up.
Anonymous

…And in two years, you have a baby elephant….
Anonymous

I think the spilling it on the table is an inside joke about the pouring techniques in some tea ceremonies, where sloppy pouring is prescribed.
Anonymous

You guys realize this is almost certainly a joke, right? Or at least uninformed?

- Re-roasting the beans: There go the aromatics and oils you were trying to preserve in the first place. Hence why they are enjoying a “nice smell”, that smell is the destruction of the oils that make good coffee what it is.

- Tap water: All those steps and they use tap water? For reals?

- “Aging” the grinds: To take a page from Alton Brown’s book, “Mold is not good eats”. Also, you roasted your coffee fresh and kept it whole bean until the last minute specifically to avoid what they are doing in this step (ie: the loss of oils and aromatics to the air).

If you truly want a good cup of coffee, start here: http://www.thecoffeefaq.com/
Doug Nelson

Only *rinse* the pot between the boring stuff and the good stuff? And serve the coffee in conventional mugs? How do they expect us to take them seriously?
Kyle Glanville

I would like to confirm that this video is in fact a joke.

Well done Ben!
ninicraftone

The real chemex method is even funnier due to the non satirical nature of its analness.

http://www.transcendcoffee.com/chemexguide/
Anonymous

If you used a large electric coffee urn instead of a Chemex, I bet these are the same basic steps taken to prepare the stuff served at funeral homes, PTA meetings, and jury selection.
calvert4096

I’m going to have to go with Hugh on this one. Is this some sort of coffee snob’s manifestation of Poe’s Law? I was pretty credulous at least until the mold part, being decidedly inexpert at coffee brewing.
- Xeni Jardin
  
  It is absolutely dead-serious. If you’re not brewing your coffee any other way, you are a pansy and a dilletante and possibly also a communist.
Anonymous

lmao! that was great!
Anonymous

now that’s some funny stuff
Anonymous

Aeropress?
Gak! That has to be the putziest thing ever invented.
Lester

Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s just coffee.
Anonymous

What a waste of coffee. No wonder America consumes most of the world’s resources.
Anonymous

Caffeine is the classic shaman drug. No, wait…that’s tobacco. To do either most effectively requires an enema though. Passion is what separates AC/DC lovers from jazz lovers. Oops, did I just make fun of jazz?
Anonymous

Weasel shit coffee: http://most-expensive.net/coffee-in-world
Anonymous

This is a joke. Satire about the coffee culture. Those repeat this demo are abot to enjoy the medical crisis that coffee mold has waiting for them.

Enjoy
SB-129

Mmm! Coffee flavour Jenkem!
unklstuart

I was really hoping the last person would do a Danny Thomas and spit the coffee across the table.
Anonymous

The person pouring the beans into the grinder has weird marks on the backs of their hands, possibly bruises. The first coffee taster has an obvious bruise around his eye, and the next two coffee tasters seem to have red blotches on their faces. Is this some sort of coffee-drinking/fight club?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  The first…oh, never mind.
Lester

I should have had my first cup before reading. Now, ahhh, where were we? Ah yes, it must be a joke and I’ve been had. Good on you.
Binaryloop

One place I worked had a bunch of coffee nerds that just took it to the Nth degree. There was (literally) a 30 step list posted near the machine for how to brew the ‘perfect’ batch. One day a woman from marketing used the nerd’s precious machine to brew some flavored chocolate mint coffee. It nearly started a war.
Anonymous

Although the mold spores and AC/DC background music lent an air of credibility to the video, the conspicuous absence of multiple digital scales and Cirqua calibrated water are obvious proof that this lesson is a farce perpetrated by barbarians.
Anonymous

MOLD DUST? WTF?
Anonymous

This is highly pansy dilletantic communistic of me, but as (also) a mycologist i caution these folks, or people that think they’re not just pulling a joke, that acidophilic molds (the sort that would grow on coffee grounds) do produce some interesting toxins that a hot water extraction can concentrate. That is, i sure as hell wouldn’t drink a hot water mold extract!
–
hug-n-kisses dr buzzkill
cam

lol, great video on brewing coffee video guy!