More on My Best Cup of Coffee Ever!

In My Best Cup of Coffee Ever! I talked about how I accidentally used only about 6-8 fl. oz. of water for 4-6 1-tbsp. scoops of freshly ground-at-home coffee beans in my Hamilton Beach BrewStation Pro coffeemaker (image at left) and got a mug of coffee that was to die for.

I have since confirmed that this method of brewing a single mug of coffee reliably produces an elixir like no other I've had.

It is so good a way to make coffee that in order to obtain my usual two mugs of morning coffee I use is twice(!) rather than scale it up. If I scale up by doubling the amount of beans and amount of water, I'm afraid the doubling of the brew time will impair my results.

To repeat: I haven't tried scaling it up because my theory is, the high quality of the coffee comes from halving the time during which the hot water is in contact with the ground coffee.

When I cut the volume of water in half for the amount of coffee beans I grind and use, the water passes through the coffeemaker in half the time. Because the amount of beans going into the ground coffee is double the usual amount for that volume of water, the coffee comes out wonderfully strong, not weak — this surprised me. But the extraction of flavor elements is terminated (according to my theory) before undesirable bitterness intrudes. That is, the second half of the usual-length brewing cycle must extract flavors that take the coffee "out of balance" flavor-wise and make it both too bitter and too prone to exhibit "off flavors."

I've tried this method with several different coffee-bean blends and ad hoc bean-mixtures I've made at home, and it works for all of them. This brewing method, in fact, seems to show up the differences in the coffee beans to perfection ... without overwhelming them with extra bitterness or off flavors that tend to be alike from one coffee to the next and camouflage the "identity" of the coffee.

The coffee I get using this method has just enough bitterness ... not too much. However, I personally find it too strong to drink without adding a dollop of 2% milk (others may prefer some other dairy product, to taste). I also add a packet of Equal-equivalent aspartame sweetener to each milk-enhanced mug. The 8 fl. oz. of water I put in the maker produces 6-7 fl. oz. of coffee in the mug, most of the rest being trapped by the grounds. When the coffee in the maker stops flowing, my semi-full coffee mug has enough room left over for the milk which, I find, along with the sweetener turns the coffee into a heavenly concoction.

For those who don't want to add milk, using perhaps 10 fl. oz. (or a super-full mug) of water per 5-6 tbsp. of beans would make sense. The grounds would trap just enough water so that the resulting mug of black coffee would be full but not super-full.

The lessons here seem to be that drip coffee (at least if it is going to be sweetened and cut heavily with dairy) ought to be brewed (a) with up to double the beans per amount of water than the coffeemaker manufacturer recommends, or, equivalently, with (b) about half the recommended amount of water per tablespoon/scoop of beans. The resulting brew will tend to have less bitterness and off flavors, owing to the "halved time per bean" extraction that results when the beans are doubled or the water is halved.