Cowboy Coffee Jul 22, 09 11:07 am  By: Slade I get up pretty early in the morning, and like many folks I can't function properly till I have my morning coffee. But until recently, making my coffee was an annoying chore that kind of put me in a bad mood. I started drinking coffee when I was 13 or so and I went deer hunting with my uncle. In those days, deer hunting was sort of a social event. We hunted with dogs, and about 40-50 people equipped with CB radios and pickup trucks were involved. Everyone met just before daylight at a big farmhouse, and had coffee made in an old stovetop percolator. They needed the coffee because Junior, the old man who lived in the farmhouse and handled the dogs, would not wake up without it. That was my introduction to coffee, and from there I evolved into an adult who likes a cup of good coffee in the morning. However, it hasn't been easy. I am from Louisiana, and coffee here is different that most other places you go, so in all my travels, getting good coffee has always been an issue. It's a little easier nowadays, since there is a coffee shop on every corner that makes halfway decent coffee, but it hasn't always been that way. My sister goes to Starbucks every morning, but I am too lazy and too poor to do that, and I have been drinking coffee since before Starbucks existed so I have always made my own. Like most people, I have used an automatic drip coffeemaker most of my adult life, although I am old enough to consider it a newfangled device. There are an endless variety of automatic coffeemakers available today, and most of them are pretty crappy. They look sleek, but operate poorly and produce a mediocre, watery coffee. I do not drink a lot of coffee, but some people drink half a gallon a day, and I believe that automatic drip coffeemakers are to blame for that - they make coffee that just doesn't satisfy. So, last week when my most recent one kicked the bucket, I pulled the plug for good and went old school. In south Louisiana, good, rich creole coffee was traditionally made in a stovetop pot called a Biggin that required you to boil the water separately and pour it through the ground coffee a little at a time. It is time consuming to make. When I was a kid, on camping trips, my dad would make "cowboy coffee", which is about as good, but made in a less sophisticated way - you pour boiling water into a pot with with the coffee grounds, and steep it for 4 minutes or so, then separate the grounds the best you can. It is messy and hard to separate the grounds, but the coffee is rich and strong. So when I eighty-sixed my newfangled drip coffeemaker, I went to an old device called a French press. It's pretty common in Louisiana, and in Europe and even the far east, but not so in other places. It makes coffee like my dads cowboy coffee, but it makes it easy to separate the grounds. When you are through steeping, you just press them down and out of the way. Eureka! Making coffee with a French press is only slightly more difficult than using Mr. Coffee, but makes coffee that is 100 time better. Plus you can throw the whole thing in the diswasher. Don't try that with your $100+ drip machine. Plus it is cheap. Plus, it will make you oh, so happy. Coffee is a wonderful thing, but like other wonderful life enhancers like narcotics and tobacco, it will kill you in the end (albeit much slower than narcotics...), so why not have the good stuff on your way out? Don't kill yourself with sorry coffee. return to blog

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