Percolator?

[Will Ketchum]

When I was a mess duty in the Marines I had to make the coffee.  Now I didn't drink coffee in those days but I remembered my Grandma making it on the farm.  The mess hall had these 2 huge urns that must have been 20 gallons each.  I would heat the water in the urn and when it got hot enough I would fill the basket with grounds put in a handful of salt and a couple of eggs I got from the mess Sergeant. Then I would draw hot water from the spigot and pour it through the grounds.  I would do this until it started to look right.  Since I didn't drink coffee I had to have a taster to tell me when it was ready.  At first it would be some private but after a couple of days the head messman decided he wanted to be the official tester.  Now when I first started making the coffee they told me to just make one pot in the morning.  After the first week they had me make both.  I always wondered what was so good about that coffee but after I left there to return to me company I was told that it was the best coffee ever served there.  Heck I wouldn't know since I never drank the stuff .

Will Ketchum

[TMMonroe]

The Mrs. and I drink so much coffee that we are fairly hard on automatic coffee makers. It got to a point where we were buying a new one every couple of months. Mr. Coffee must have our photos hanging next to diMaggio's!

Anyhoo, I got sick of constantly replacing these things and, being the laudator temporis acti that I am, I bought a camp percolator at gander mountain and we used that many times a day for a year and a half. Once you get the hang of it, it's not bad coffee. We would usually remove the basket after boiling and throw a bit of cold water on top of the coffee. the grounds would go to the bottom...mostly. The key to drinking coffee the old school way is to never drain your cup! I always wondered why in the movies they always threw that last mouthful on the campfire. It was the one with all the grounds in it.

And the smell of fresh percolated coffee is indeed unforgettable. βρομα θεον!

[Daniel Nighteyes]

If you work at it a while, you can learn to make pretty decent coffee in a camp percolator.

When my (non-CAS) circle of friends goes camping, I'm typically the camp cook.  Since I'm almost always up by sunrise, I generally have the coffee ready by the time the next hardy soul pokes his or her head out of the tent.  Everyone says my coffee is the greatest.  Of course, everything seems to taste better in the outdoors.

My trick is to bring it to a boil and then turn the heat w-a-y down so that the coffee perks slowly.  When its ready, I remove the brew basket and pump.

I've been meaning to try French Press coffee, but just haven't gotten around to it.

[Delmonico]

If you bring your water to just a boile, wait a couple minutes to let it cool below boiling and add coarse ground coffee, let it steep a few minutes and then tap the side, you get good coffee pretty much ground free. 

That's what I do and I've served a few hundred gallons of it to folks who often can't believe it's camp coffee.

[WaddWatsonEllis]

I can remember my uncles, one generation off the ranch in Texas, would break their eggs to fry them and then put the egg shells in the percolator.

When I asked why, they told me the calcium in the egg shells neutralizes the acid and makes the coffee more palatable ... not their words, obviously.

But they looked at me like anyone should know that and I was quite the bozo for not knowing it ....

Then there was 'cowboy coffee' ... they told me that when they were on the range and ran out of coffee, they would take the wild wheat and char the seeds found at the end of the stalks. Then they would crush it with a gun but and boil it up with a little blackstrap molasses (if they had it ). Nowadays we just call it Perko, and pay extra to get that decaf drink...

[Dr. Bob]

+1 on Del's method!  Without the boiling, there is less acid and it still gets strong enough to suit most everyone.

[Delmonico]

If it ain't strong enough just add more coffee.  The acid is why we all got rid of our perculators 30 some years ago when the cheap drip machines came on the market.  Mr. Coffee was a hit and drip machines don't boil.

[Chase]

For what it's worth, one thing that I learned when I managed hotels is that the ideal brew of coffee resulted from water being
at a temperature of 165-170 degrees farenheit.  At this temperature, the best flavors from the coffee could be extracted.  Once
the water extracted these oils, one should promptly remove the coffee grounds so as to avoid the "bitters" from contaminating the coffee.
I personally like coffee from percolators and once the hot water rises through the "tube", I think the temp drops sufficiently.
I have personally taken the temps from a few of the drip type coffeemakers and the water temp is much lower (usually by twenty plus degrees)
Hey, coffee, like firearms are subject to uh, a person's taste?

[Delmonico]

Hey, coffee, like firearms are subject to uh, a person's taste?

Yeah but you have to remember, some folks have bad taste in everything.

Welcome to the forum.

[Icebox Bob]

There ain't no such thing as coffee that is too strong! 







Just people that are too weak.......

[Buffalow Red]

i prefer the perked coffie with salt & hickory wood smoke for flavor

[Roscoe Coles]

I saw an interesting history of coffee a while back and from what that said, and a little checking on the web, we should be very careful about saying that the percolator was an early invention.  True, one was patented quite early but the first percolators were not offerd widely until about 1890.  These used cloth filters which had to be washed and were not popular because they were a mess.  The paper filter came out about 1912 which, along with the development of plug-in pots, made the percolator widely popular.  They were easy to use and clean up and the electric pots didn't require a heat source.  I don't know if the big industrial urns achieved popularity sooner. 

The earliest, and still the best, pots specially designed to make coffee were vacuum pots (which you can still buy in up scale shops) and something very much like the modern French press.  The Percolator, which I grew up on, recycles the boiled coffee through the grounds over and over again, insuring that it comes out as bitter as possible, pretty much making the worst coffee in the world!

Many of the modern coffee brands that we know go back into the 19th century, Maxwell house dates from 1892, and Yuban (Yule Tide Banquet) coffee was a Christmas blend made by Arbuckles in 1905

Having said that, the most common coffee on the American frontier, after the Civil war seems to have been Arbuckles.  Coffee will go stale quite rapidly after roasting but Arbuckles developed a system of coating the beans with an egg and sugar mixture after the roast.  This slowed down the aging process, and probably made it a bit sweet right out of the bag.  The beans were packed in 1 pound airtight containers (along with a peppermint stick) to keep the flavor. 

One thing to be aware of, even when the brand is period, the taste is not.  During the 20th century coffee wars (when coffee companies were competing for the largest share of the American Market), American coffee companies changed the formula of almost all American coffees, phasing out the high quality, high cost Arabica beans in favor of low cost, low quality alternatives, primarily Robusta.   A major factor in this change was the American penchant for the percolator, which made such bad coffee that using high quality beans was a waste.  Over time, the American taste for coffee adapted so many of us think the terrible coffee we grew up on was what Coffee should taste like.  The Starbuck revolution seems to have changed all that, but its nice to know that during the 19th century you could actually get a good cup of Joe.   

As for the percolator?  I'd avoid it, and not just because its not really period, I just won't drink that stuff any more.

[Daniel Nighteyes]

i prefer the perked coffie with salt & hickory wood smoke for flavor

I'll take any hardwood smoke in mine, thanx!

[Mogorilla]

Del's method will probably result in the best coffe you will get on the trail.   Also, do not scrimp on the coffee, while being thrift may be period correct, it will result in a bitter brew.  Too much water to too little coffee will result in an over-extracted bitter brew as it will still pull tannins out.   I remember watching a movie called "Sweet Land" takes place in  1917 Minnesota and the chaos caused from a Swede marrying a German girl.   Anyway, he brags to the preacher about her coffee being so good.  Later the preacher berates her extravagant german nature for having coffee too black.  Cracked me up!    No boiling water with grounds and plenty of grounds for the water.  My reccomendation would be to set your grinder at the coursest setting.  It is all the same technique as a french press, course grounds, hot water, tasty coffee.