hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0080.txt

Episode: 80
Title: HPR0080: Coffee
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0080/hpr0080.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:08:07

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This is Class 2 and I'm going to be talking about coffee.
Coffee is one of my favorite beverages and it's also a very classic beverage that accompanies computer hacking and coding and late-night artwork and things like that.
It's always better if you've got a good cup of coffee close at hand.
There are different stages of coffee making and you can jump in at any stage.
Obviously the most typical one that we're used to is you go out to the store, you buy the coffee off the shelf and bring it home and you make it in whatever fashion you wish to make it.
So right then you've already missed out on the roasting so you can certainly roast your own beans.
There are a little bit hard to find. I've not found them in stores at all in any city that I've lived.
But what you can do is find them online and the advantage of buying them unroasted in their raw form is that you're not losing any of the essence of the coffee bean.
Because once it's been roasted the oils of the bean start to leak out of the bean and so you're kind of losing the purity of the coffee out of that way.
Most of us aren't ever going to notice that because we're so acclimated to the taste of coffee that has been sitting around even in vacuum packed containers.
I guess a purist would say that you'd need to roast it yourself to get the most flavor out of it.
So if you do that you're going to get some really good coffee as long as you know what you're doing roasting them.
And it's just a matter of practice. So what you'll do is you'll buy the beans.
Lots of different varieties of coffee. You're going to see different ones advertised. There's Kona Coffee from Hawaii.
Blue Mountain from Jamaica. I like Sawtooth Mountain which is I buy it in Southern California. I don't know where it's from but it's very good.
Lots of different kinds. You want to make sure if you're buying the raw coffee beans you're probably getting a pure...
You're getting just that kind of coffee that you are looking for.
Not so much if you're getting it in a container even if it's on ground. Although usually if it's on ground you're actually usually getting it.
But sometimes you'll see in containers you'll see it being advertised in big print as Kona or something.
And then once you get it home and you look at the fine print and you realize it was a blend of some cheaper coffees along with the nicer coffee.
So if you're getting the raw stuff you're usually... you can usually rest assured that you're actually getting what you think you're buying which is nice.
So you take the beans home or you get them delivered whenever and you'll want to roast them some way.
Now there are professional roasters out there but from what I've seen of these roasters they're very large, unwieldy. I think they're meant primarily for large batches of beans.
Not really something that you'd have in your apartment. Maybe if you have a large house and you're really dedicated you would have one of these.
Typically the ones I've seen at least are very... they're pretty hefty pieces of machinery.
Second to this would be perhaps a skillet and a gas stove. You probably need gas because you're going to need to get this really, really hot.
You take your skillet and you put it on the gas stove, heat it up to about 500 degrees and if you want to be precise you can get an oven thermometer and throw that in the skillet and see what happens.
Eventually you'll reach a very, very high heat. Like I say especially on a gas stove you can reach that kind of heat. I don't know if you can do that on an electric stove at all.
So you've got your skillet. You throw some beans in there. Not too much. You just kind of want to cover the surface of the skillet and you want to keep the beans moving. You don't want to scald or scorch rather the one side of the beans.
What you want to do is you get them evenly heated up. They're going to start smoking first of all. If you've got a very sensitive fire alarm anywhere near your kitchen you want to have your exhaust fan on.
But you'll want to keep them moving and they're going to start smoking and you'll start to hear them kind of pop and crack a little bit.
What's happening is that the moisture from the bean is evaporating and at the same time of course the bean is getting very, very hot and it's cooking.
So you'll keep them moving and eventually they'll, at first the smoke, the fragrance is going to be fairly, it'll be kind of fresh like what you'd expect out of a green berry or a green bean.
But what you'll eventually get to is a more cooked smell.
At that point the beans will start to get darker and they'll start to take on the appearance, the more traditional appearance of what you're used to of a coffee bean.
Now, once you start seeing them look traditionally like a bean you'll want to take them off of the fire eventually.
When you want to do that is up to you whether you want the traditional dark roast or a lighter roast or whatever you want.
And you kind of have to play it by sight, you just kind of have to get a feel for it. You also have to know what you like.
You also have to keep in mind that coffee beans or anything that you're cooking.
You might take them off the fire but there's still a lot of residual heat so they're going to essentially continue to cook.
Some people will try to blanch the coffee beans by pouring water over them to try to stop them from cooking after they're off the fire.
But you don't really want to do that because if you do that you're basically making coffee before you are making coffee.
You want to save the water for when you want to drink it. You don't want to use water to cease it from cooking.
So the idea would be to take it off of the fire a little bit before you really want to take it off the fire and let it residual cook perhaps in a colander or some kind of bowl preferably a colander so that there's a good air flow.
And kind of shake it a couple of times not too rigorously but you just want to make sure that they're kind of evenly distributing heat.
And once you feel that they've gotten off most of the heat you can place it into whatever container you're going to put it into.
Probably you're not going to grind them all and make them right now because you would want to do that every time you make a cup of coffee.
So you're probably hopefully cooking more than you'll need immediately.
There's a big debate over whether you should store your beans, your roasted beans in a refrigerator or a freezer or not.
I've heard that you should not because once you take it out of the freezer then it starts to I guess there's condensation and that causes the oils to leak and then you're losing purity of the coffee.
I still put mine in the freezer but a lot of people will put it just in a cool dark place and that's fine whatever you think is best for your coffee workflow.
So you store the beans and then they are ready to be ground.
Now grinding coffee is very much related to how you intend to make the coffee.
So you'll see that supermarket if you've bought the whole beans you'll see a coffee grinder somewhere usually so that you can grind it before you go home which kind of defeats the purpose of buying the whole beans.
So it's better if you're going to do the whole you're not going to roast it yourself you're going to buy it from the supermarket but as a whole bean first of all make sure it's vacuum packed.
Most whole beans will be vacuum packed and second of all do not grind them at the store if at all possible.
It would be better just to buy your own coffee grinder and these are very inexpensive they don't need to be fancy.
You can find them they'll also be sometimes referred to as spice grinders but usually they're just coffee grinders and it's just a simple little grinding device that you'll place in beans into usually enough for a cup or two of coffee and you grind the beans.
There are very very fine grinds which will be good for a more delicate flavor and there are rougher or harsher grinds which are going to be a little bit more rustic robust flavor.
Now depending on how you're going to cook them this is how you're going to want to grind them so the different ways to make a cup of coffee would be with a traditional drip maker coffee maker like a Mr. Coffee or whatever you buy it any department store.
These are crude machines that give you no control over the heat of the water or really you know anything and usually the intention is to make like eight cups of coffee at a time which encourages you to keep the pot on the hot plate of the coffee maker which evaporates water and ends up making the final cup of coffee that you pour out of that taste terrible.
It's just a really crude way to make a cup of coffee but you know that's what we a lot of us have and so it's fairly common.
If you have to use one of these I would advise not making too many cups of coffee at once unless you know that people are going to drink it right away.
Just because you can make eight cups of coffee at a time does not mean you should make two or four whatever you think you're going to be able to drink right away and then for your next couple of cups you know start a new batch.
So drip coffee makers you have a lot of flexibility their paper filters usually so you can use a fine grind or a rough grind it doesn't really or anywhere in between it doesn't matter because the grinds aren't going to get through that piece of paper probably.
You're not going to end up with grinds in your coffee so you want to throw in your coffee grinds and water and usually I think the the the rule of thumb is like a tablespoon every six ounces of water.
I think anyone who's made any amount of cup of coffee just kind of knows how much coffee to put in so that's not doesn't seem that big of a deal obviously you have to kind of you have to know your coffee.
I mean if it's a strong strong coffee maybe you're going to want to go last week coffee maybe a little bit more so you know that's just something that you'll get to hang up.
Pop it in there put the water in and it takes the water up to whatever however close to boiling it thinks it should go and then it drips through the filter and you've got a cup of coffee.
Similar to this is a manual drip which are it's basically a funnel and you place a paper filter in this funnel.
Place the funnel on top of your mug put the grinds in the the filter and pour you heat your water up separately.
So now you've got control over the heat of your water so if you know you need a boiling cup you can have boiling boiling water.
If you know you don't need it quite boiling and the heat of the water is going to affect the way that the cream reacts if you're going to put cream in the coffee so that is something to be aware of.
So you have a little bit more control over the water temperature with a manual drip which is nice and the advantage to a manual drip again is that you can go anywhere from fine fine grind to very coarse grind.
If coarse grind doesn't really matter it's a paper filter chances of grinds getting through that are very slim.
So that's that's what I've been using lately and they're kind of nice as well.
I've seen them by the name by the brand name Malita M-E-L-L-I-T-A maybe and they're really small as like I say it's like a plastic funnel basically and some paper filters and that's all you need.
So you don't have to put up with the big coffee maker you know and it also kind of forces you to make just enough for you to drink at that moment so that you're not leaving your coffee on a hot plate that is then making your coffee stale and gross.
So that's manual drip that's nice.
Something similar to that are the so-called French presses. I've also seen them called Australian presses basically any exotic location name press.
So if you see these these are a pitcher usually a glass pitcher with a wire mesh and a handle.
So the idea is to put the coffee grinds in the the coffee grounds in the pitcher pour the water in again you have control over the heat of the water yourself.
Pour the water in and then let it brew for a little while and then you press the wire mesh down there by forcing the grinds to the bottom of the pitcher.
This is quite nice. It's a nice method I use it for a while but they tend to always break on me. I think the heat and the pressure just gets to be too much for glass pitchers so that's been kind of a disadvantage.
Another disadvantage is that the wire mesh has openings obviously for the water to get through but it has to be a certain size you know so you're really kind of restricted in the kind of grind that you can pour in there.
If you put something too thin it's just going to get right through the wire mesh and you're going to end up with a lot of coffee grounds in your cup.
So you're kind of you're restricted to a course or grind and take that for what it's worth.
The other option of course is an espresso maker and if you've never had an espresso maker you should definitely get one. These are great.
They're not that large and they're not that expensive. Consumer kitchen brands sell them you know black and decker that kind of company they sell these things so you can get them for good prices.
The idea behind espresso is pressure. You place the water in the tank, you screw the cap on really solid it'll be a heavy duty cap because it's going to generate a lot of pressure
and it's going to make sure that the cap isn't blowing off and steam burning your face and you'll have an espresso filter that latches on again very securely because there's a lot of pressure and as an extension off of that there'll be a nozzle for steam for your milk, for steaming milk, foaming it.
So what you do here is you have a metal filter for the espresso and the espresso again it's not a paper filter it's a metal filter so it has holes in it.
So two fine of a grind will be a problem because it'll get through those little holes but usually the holes are small enough such that you can get a fairly fine grind all the way up to.
I don't think you want to go up to too much of a coarse grind but somewhere in between you could definitely go and it'll be fine.
Again the amount of coffee just depends on how strong of an espresso you want and how strong of a coffee roast you have placed in.
So the water will boil and begin to steam and it will start to push out through the espresso beans.
It's a beautiful way to make a cup of coffee and it's very very very flexible because once you have the espresso you can do anything with it.
You don't have to drink it as an espresso obviously you can make it into a cappuccino, you can add water to it, somehow water to it, make it into a cafe Americano, you can make it into a latte, you can do whatever you want to.
So you'll see the espresso is starting to pour into the pot.
At that point you can turn your attention to steaming the milk if you want the steamed milk.
You'll want to use whole milk or half and half. I usually go for half and half simply because you need the amount of cream to really foam.
If it's something like 2% milk or skim milk there's not really enough milk there to make a proper foam.
So if you're going for foam use either whole or half and half. I go for half and half.
So you'll have half and half in a little picture and you'll want to make sure that the steam nozzle is submerged into the milk first.
You do not want to start the steam nozzle going and then try to put it into the milk.
The steam will blow the milk everywhere so you want to make sure that it is submerged first that's very important.
Then you turn the steam on and do it slowly. You don't want to just blast it right away.
The steam is really pressurized and it will completely, it will blow milk everywhere if you're not careful.
So you just want to turn it on slowly, get a feel for how it's steaming.
You want to start at the bottom of the picture typically and move it up and down toward the top of the milk.
You want to make sure that you're kind of moving it around because you don't want it to just steam one area of the milk.
Because literally you can end up with milk that's really, really hot in places and then cold in other places if you do it sloppy.
So you want to just kind of get it all around the milk and then for the foam you're going to concentrate on the very top of the milk.
And that's the trick. You don't want to obviously get the steam nozzle out of the milk or it will go everywhere but you want to get it right up at the top so that it's really steaming the milk and that that steamed milk has a place to kind of settle which is at the top.
But it's something that you can get used to and it takes some practice but it will work out and you will kind of get the feel for it.
So at this point at the end of it all you will have one picture of foamed milk, one pot of espresso.
And you can go anywhere with that like I say. If you want espresso, down the shot and make your next cup.
You want some cappuccino, pour the espresso into a cup, pour the milk in and you've got a cappuccino.
You want latte, pour the coffee in, pour some hot water in and then pour the milk in. You've got a latte.
You want a cappuccino. Those are simple, you have espresso, you pour that into a mug and then you take some boiling water and pour that in.
So now you've got what essentially will sort of taste like what came out of a coffee drip, a traditional drip.
But it will have that kind of richness and strength of an espresso. It's really, really good.
So you've got a lot of choices there. You've got a lot of control over the grind. You've got a lot of flexibility within espresso.
It's a little bit like compiling a custom kernel. You can really kind of decide what goes into it, how it's going to be for you.
You definitely have to do it. If you haven't done it, you should really try a couple of times to make your own, your own espresso or cappuccino.
Other forms of making coffee include those little instant, they're like tea bags, but they're coffee bags.
So they're in a filter and they're closed. So you can kind of dip them into hot water and kind of create a cup of coffee.
In my experience, it hasn't really tasted that great, but it's good and a pinch and it's certainly better than the final sort of coffee that we should at least acknowledge.
Instant coffee stay away from it. It's not coffee.
Now, after you've made your coffee, whatever kind of coffee you've made, you may want to add cream to it.
So obviously, if you've done this steamed milk thing, you're kind of good to go.
But when you're adding cream to coffee, you want to make sure that you're adding cream to coffee, not coffee to cream.
You add coffee to cream, you're risking scalding the cream in a natural way.
And depending on the heat of the coffee, you may even be risking damaging the cream if you're adding the cream to the coffee.
So what you'll want to do, if you know that you've boiled the water to a true boiling point, and you've just put it into the mug, either wait for it to cool a little bit before adding the cream, or keep stirring it while you're adding the cream.
Because otherwise, the cream will form a skin on top and it will be kind of not pleasant.
So you want to make sure that you are aware of the heat factor before you just go dumping the cream in.
And remember that presentation is everything.
If you're entertaining a lady for the evening, and you guys decide to have a cup of coffee, and you're like, oh, let's not go to a coffee store, I will make you a cup of coffee myself.
You want to impress her, right?
So you're not going to just go in and make a cup of coffee and bring it out in the same mug that you use when you're coding.
You want to make it look good. You want to impress this person. So you should think about garnish.
The coffee, if you've made it correctly, is going to taste good anyway, but that's not really enough to sell the cup of coffee.
You need to put some kind of additional touch on it.
And whether it's after you've made a cappuccino, you want to drizzle just a little bit of espresso on the top just to kind of give that nice little, like a Debian Linux logo in the foam to milk.
You could do that. That could be a good conversation starter.
Or you could also sprinkle some chocolate on the top.
The best way to do this is just to get a really, really fine cheese grater. So this isn't the kind of cheese grater that you find people using for pizza and things like that.
This is the cheese grater that you're going to be using for a hard cheese, like Parmesan or something like that.
You want really, really fine, finely graded slots in the grater.
And you can just take like a special dark, like a piece of special dark chocolate.
You can just grate that right over the top of the foam, sprinkle some chocolate onto it. That'll impress her to no end.
Or if you don't have any special dark, you can even use like Bakers Chocolate or a chocolate chip. It doesn't matter.
It's just a nice little touch and it adds a little tiny bit of flavor. Not too much flavor. It's really for looks. It's for presentation.
If you're in a pinch, you can also do a little bit of cinnamon. Make sure that she likes cinnamon first. But that's always good.
It's just something on the top to add to the presentation. Or you can take a strawberry, cut it, cut a split down the center of the strawberry and kind of hang that off the side.
Whatever it takes to make it look like a real work of art rather than just a functional cup of coffee.
So those are the different ways to make coffee. Those are the different factors that you should think about.
Few people know that the Western world knows coffee, you know, as what we kind of think of when we think of coffee.
There's a whole other world of coffee in the Far East called Turkish Coffee or Greek Coffee. This is great stuff if you can find it.
If you go up to a story of Queen's, if you're in the New York area, I'm sure there are other places that this is where I know to get it.
You can go to any Greek market and buy some coffee. This is very powdery coffee. I mean beyond a fine grind. This is literally like powder.
And to prepare this properly, you take a saucepan rather than a skillet. You'll take a saucepan.
You'll put, I don't remember, like maybe two or three tablespoons of this powdered coffee and just put a lot of sugar in it.
That's the way I was taught to make it. I don't know if everyone does it that way or not, but you put a lot of sugar into it.
And pour some water in there and boil it. And eventually it'll kind of, it'll start to boil and do really strange things.
And right when it starts to boil, you'll want to take it and you'll want to pour it into a cup.
You'll need to let it settle because the coffee grinds, if you've been picturing this, we've just poured water in with the coffee.
You know, so you need to let all that powdered coffee settle to the bottom. And then you down it, you just, you drink it.
You can sip it, you can, whatever you want to do. It's really, really good coffee. The bottom will be mud, just a lot of powder.
But it's a great way to have some really, really good coffee. If you haven't had that, you should definitely try it.
Astoria Queens or probably any, like I say, Turkish or Greek and possibly Arabic. That's kind of the name for that kind of coffee.
And yeah, if you haven't had that, you should definitely try it.
Not necessarily something you're going to want to hit on the ladies because you're trying to impress them.
You're trying to, you know, keep them comfortable unless they're really adventurous. You don't want to probably bring that out on the first date.
That would be more of like a, you know, third or fourth date kind of coffee.
So, but it's definitely good, definitely good for the late nights hacking sessions. So go for that.
So coffee making, yeah, it's fun. It's cool. You have to just kind of get into it. Don't be afraid of it.
It's exciting, a little bit dangerous, but you can get into it and become a real master of coffee preparation.
It's an ancient art from the monasteries of the Capuchin monks. This is a time-honored tradition. So get into it and enjoy some serious coffee.
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