My Best Cup of Coffee Ever!

I just brewed and drank my best cup of coffee, ever, and it was all due to a mistake.

I forgot to put the regular amount of water in my Hamilton Beach BrewStation Pro coffeemaker yesterday when I finished drinking the morning's brew of coffee and emptying and cleaning the maker. My normal procedure is to immediately refill it with water that comes up to a level just above the "4 cup" marking on the side of its removable tank. I pour the water into the well in the bottom of the maker and let it sit until the next morning, when I use it to brew that morning's coffee.

So this coffeemaker starts with the water in a well in its bottom part which when heated rises to make fresh coffee. It drops back down and passes through the grounds which are carried in a basket in the top unit of the maker, which is a removable reservoir or tank. The basket, which holds the filter with the unbrewed ground coffee in it, has holes in its bottom. When the heated water passes through the grounds/filter/basket/holes, it is held in the removable reservoir. To draw a cup of coffee, you press the cup against a bar on the front of the maker, just at its beltline. Coffee flows out of the reservoir into the cup.

The actual amount of water I normally put in is about 18 fl. oz., enough to produce a good two 8-oz. mugs full of brewed coffee, with a little left in the tank for good measure, and with some of the water getting held in the grounds after brewing.

With that amount of water going into the brewing process I ordinarily use anywhere from 4 to 6 1-tbsp. scoops of coffee beans in my Hamilton Beach grinder. It's set to grind the beans fairly coarsely for drip brewing. The coffeemaker itself is set to produce 1-4 cups of coffee at its Flavor-Plus setting.

Well, today I intended to make my coffee in that accustomed way, but when I looked in the cupboard to decide which beans to use, I settled on using up the last of some Breakfast Blend non-decaf beans I have from a local café. There were exactly 6 heaping 1-tbsp. scoops of beans left in the canister, so I decided just to use them all.

So I scooped them all into the propeller-style grinder and had it do its thing. But before brewing the coffee I decided I'd better top up the water in the maker to keep it from being too strong. I took the removable reservoir and put, oh, about 6-8 fl. oz. of water in it and added it to the well in the maker. I hit the brew button, went about getting breakfast ready, and came back to the coffeemaker to pull a mug of coffee out of it.

I expected the coffee to flow freely and generously, since it was the first mug of 2-plus, possibly 3, in the maker ... I assumed. But the flow of brewed coffee immediately started to stutter and gurgle, the behavior it manifests when the last little bit of coffee is trying to make its way into my waiting mug.

Indeed, after the 8-oz. mug had only about 6 oz. of coffee in it, the flow from the maker petered out completely. Huh? I thought. (One doesn't handle such unexpected situations quickly or well when one has yet to have his or her first cup of coffee in the morning ... and it didn't help that I had yet to have my A.M. pee and the "emergency" convinced my bladder to start yelping "gotta-go-gotta-go-gotta-go-right now.")

After a quick trip to the bathroom, I considered my options, and it hit me that the whole debacle was due to my having forgotten to put water in the maker the previous day ... so the 6 oz. of coffee I got out of the maker was the entirety of the 6-8 oz. of fluid I had just put in the maker!

So there I was with a mug partially filled with improperly brewed coffee that would surely be (a) too strong and/or (b) underextracted. I thought I'd just dump it and start over, but then the thrifty Scot in started howling, "Never throw out anything that might be useful." Hence I determined to drink it up rather than toss it down the drain.

So I added enough 2% milk to it to top up the mug — I had already dumped 1 packet of aspartame sweetener in it before dispensing the coffee from the maker — and I prepared to grimace when I sampled the concoction.

Putting off the inevitable, I set the mug down next to my cereal and orange juice and began to consume breakfast/read the morning paper. It was several minutes before I lifted the mug abstractedly to my lips for the first time, and by then I had stopped thinking about the screw-up in brewing it. As a matter of fact, I wasn't thinking about the coffee at all, but about what I was reading in the paper.

Accordingly, the coffee was about 2/3 gone when I suddenly woke up — thank you, caffeine — and bethought myself, "Hey, this is a great cup of coffee!"

A few more sips, and I was chortling, "Whoa, this isn't just a great cup of coffee, it may be the best cup I've ever had!"

Then, a sip or two later, it was, "Yes! The very best cup ever!"

What explains this, I wondered?

I went back over in my head the twisted and contorted coffeemaking process that produced this marvelous elixir. I came to the conclusion that the beans/grounds must have been, not grossly underextracted, but slightly, marginally so. By passing too little water through them while they were in the basket in large enough numbers to offset the paucity of hot water and deliver enough coffee extract into the water to keep the brew from being weak, I had inadvertently made coffee that was in perfect balance.

If that was so, it must have been due to the fact that the accustomed passage of the last portion of hot water through the ground beans will extract substances that just throw the coffee out of balance, without making it more flavorful overall.

Passing "too little" hot water through the grounds makes better coffee — though less of it — than passing the "regular amount" of water and getting more coffee for the buck.

Clearly, all this is contingent upon having all the other variables "just right" as well. For instance, I have no idea whether it would "scale up" to using 12 scoops of beans instead of 6 and 16 oz. of water instead of 8. Nor do I know whether it would work with any other coffeemaker ... the Hamilton Beach is known for its heating the water to the magic 195°-205° F. that makes the best coffee. Water at the boiling point, 212°, is too hot, while many coffeemakers heat the water to a temperature below 195°, which is too low.

I don't know if this particular "accidental" combination of parameters would carry over to an ordinary drip maker which dispenses water into a carafe, or to a "fancy" non-drip maker.

I don't even know if it will carry over to beans other than the Breakfast Blend I was using today, which I sheepishly admit had been lying around (though stored rather carefully) for a good long time.

At any rate, I just thought I'd mention my unexpected adventure in fine coffee appreciation here on my blog, so other coffee addicts might figure out ways to adapt it to their own coffee brewing habits. Enjoy!