Double Shot: Interlude II

This week, we want to talk about the coffee we’re making at home. First, the beans. There are so many places around the city that roast their own unique beans. Our favorites close to campus are Heretic, Cà Phê, and Gladstone Coffee (formerly Broken Robot). Of these, Heretic is the only one with decaf and their decaf is exceptional. They book time on a shared community roaster, so scheduling difficulties mean they don’t always have enough beans to sell bags. They estimate their beans will return sometime this month. Cà Phê is the only one that we’ve seen that offers whole bean robusta coffee anywhere nearby. We get their House Blend, the coffee they use in their cà phê sữa, which is a blend of 50/50 arabica and robusta. Their beans are our favorite for making Vietnamese coffee and moka pot. Gladstone Coffee’s beans were roasted to a custom recipe by the brother of Heather, the current owner. He has since retired from roasting, and Heather is making arrangements to obtain the recipe, and roast more herself. Their roast makes a lovely bold pour-over. 

When it comes to actually prepping the coffee we have several methods. We’re going to gloss over our espresso (I, Ishani, prefer to discuss other coffee prep methods because they’re more accessible and more interesting) and get to the less intense methods. Our dailiest drivers are pour-overs, moka pot, and french-press. We use a standard Melita coffee cone and a Hario V60 for our pour-overs, a Groche moka pot, and a metal french-press. We also do our best to use freshly ground beans when possible and always weigh our coffee to keep track of the ratio of water to coffee (usually hovers around a 14 or 16 grams water to 1 gram coffee). 

That’s all for this week, see you soon for a re-review of Paradox :)