I'm so glad to say that I'm back to coffee!! I had more coffee on this trip than I've had all year and didn't have a problem with the acid. For the longest time, I have always associated coffee with acid reflux. As a chronic GERD sufferer, I know how awful it feels to drink acidic coffee. I actually implemented a ban on coffee for 2 years... I don't know how I lasted especially since that was my last year of college.... but I survived. Even though I've gotten better control of my GERD, I still am quite weary of the acidic foods... coffee and chocolate .. sadly are included in my list of "iffy" foods. Typically I do the aeropress... and I still think that is one of the most amazing coffee makers in the market.. it's just so simple and tastes great! I find that my coffee is not as acidic using the Aeropress.. which is probably why it's my go to device. People (even non coffee drinkers!) have told me that I make great coffee, and well, I attribute it to that aeropress. The grounds my mom buys for me isn't fancy, we get it at a Vietnamese coffee shop in Oakland Chinatown... but it's better than any coffee that I've gone out to buy.. by the pound in SF... ( 4 barrel is actually pretty good.. but too darn pricey!) Very rarely do I venture out to buy coffee at the shops... I don't know, I figured.. I can use that 2-4 dollars somewhere else (I paid almost 5 bucks for a latte on the trip!)...and I feel like my coffee tastes better. I'm all for saving money, and going back to my apartment and making my coffee takes just as much time as going to the local Starbucks, since both are within 1 block of my school.
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I do love my sugar :) I like it more for the texture..
rather than the taste.. |
Cold brewed. I've researched a lot about cold brewed a few months back when I was on my coffee exploration. I don't like coffee makers, the coffee just doesn't have any taste when I make it with a standard drip coffee maker (plus I broke my carafe a few months back so that's that.. haha)... so I looked at other alternatives, happily settling on the Aeropress. Well, cold brewed did come up, its potential selling point to me was the "lower acid" claim, but I just thought that it involved too much time, also the devices were around 40 bucks.. some ranging well over 200!!... It looked like a cool science experiment, but I decided... it just wasn't for me. On my trip, I asked for iced coffee a lot... and I would see them go to their fridge and pull out a jug and pour it into my cup of ice and half water... I thought... wait.. I thought I was paying for fresh coffee.. not coffee that has been made days ago... but it was really good coffee... so much better than icing brewed coffee... I was a fan. I got home and looked it up seeing so many articles on the wonders of cold brewing and read that it could be made using things I already had in my kitchen. I also opened up my new issue of Bon Appetit magazine.. and low and behold... a section devoted to cold brewed coffee! It was like a sign or something...
The idea was simple, almost too simple... but like with many things that taste good, you have to have time... around a day's worth... well I have the time, and I don't have a need for coffee these days... but hey, it's fun to experiment, and it seems like a no fail recipe.... and off I went... poured 1.5 cups of room temperature water over my 1/3 cups of coffee grounds that I placed in a tupperware, stirred, covered, and let sit for around 20 hours, I strained it through a coffee filter lined sieve, only once, since I didn't see any coffee grounds in the concentrate, and served it over ice, sugar in the raw, and a good amount of half and half... tastes even better than Starbucks.... and I'm sure it costs a whole lot less...it's not so acidic, and somehow I feel like there's more caffeine! I'm sold on cold brewed... at least for now.. since it's still summer.. :)
My Cold Brew Method for 2 cups,
1. Place 1/3 cup of finely ground coffee into a large container or jar, I used a tupperware container. Pour 1.5 cups of water over the grounds, and stir until grounds are wet. Replace the lid onto the container, and let sit at room temperature for 20 hours.
2. Place a coffee filter in a sieve, and strain the coffee, this might take some time, but be gentle, the more you stir the cloudier it can get. Place in a glass container with a lid, and refrigerate it until use.
Iced coffee- fill a cup with ice, add the coffee concentrate, sugar and half and half, I don't like to dilute it, but you can if the coffee is too strong... I prefer to dilute with half and half .. but that's just me :)
Apparently this concentrate can lasts for 2-3 weeks in the fridge. The recipe made so little, I don't think it can last that long. I will try to make coffee ice cream with this one day since the flavor is amazing, found a recipe that had coffee concentrate, cream, and condensed milk as the only ingredients.. this will go perfectly with my goal to reproduce the cardamon chocolate ice cream sandwich cookies recipe I found in the June issue of Bon Appetit ( plus I should make it down to Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous one day to try out their supposedly amazing ice cream!)
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