Hayter article for June 14, 2020
“Coffee Talk”
A time or two I’ve made fun of people who drink cold-brew or iced-coffee. I mean, what’s the point? When coffee gets cold, you warm it up, you don’t make it colder. Only the Siberian Yakuts drink cold coffee, but that’s because they have to. The whole concept goes against everything that’s American. So we can just add it to the list.
I tell you that to tell you this, I’ve been drinking cold coffee.“What happened to me?” -- Pretend you asked. I found that I seldom finished a cup of coffee. It would be 71 degrees in the house, but drinking hot coffee made me sweat like a bad dog. (Only bad dogs sweat. Look it up.) That’s when I put my cup of leftover hot-brewed coffee in the fridge. The next morning, I took a sip of the cold coffee and, son of a gun, I didn’t care for it. -- “Is this what people are going gaga over?” I asked myself. (Not audibly. I seldom do that anymore.)
That’s when I set about researching the cold coffee phenomena. I learned so much. Here, let me test you. -- What is the difference between cold-brew and iced-coffee? -- Whoa, half of you know your coffee. Yes, iced-coffee is brewed hot and you chunk ice in it or stick it in the fridge. Cold-brew is when you throw ground coffee into a pitcher, jar, or cup of water and steep it in the fridge or just leave it on the counter overnight. That way it never meets the heat. Without the heat, it’s going to be smoother tasting, which some people prefer.
I see I just lost several of you who don’t drink coffee. ,lop0 Tell you what, skip down to the part where I start talking about aluminum foil. I’ll get back to you in a minute. -- Okay, that leaves only you, Shelby. So, hang with me here. When heat is introduced to the coffee bean or ground coffee beans, it makes coffee taste bitter. “Bitter” is a flavor natural to coffee. But, you don’t want too much bitter. If your brewing temp is over 205 degrees your coffee is going to be really bitter, good only for lumberjacks. I’d tell you how heat makes coffee bitter, but the explanation involves chemistry. What do you think, Shelby? Right, let’s forget it.
Regular brewed coffee has a great aroma, even for people who don’t like coffee. Cold-brew is absent of aroma. That’s because it takes heat to make the coffee grounds give off that wonderful coffee smell. It has to do with chemistry. The advantage of cold brew is that it is much smoother, less bitter, and less acidic. And, it doesn’t make you sweat as much. Of course, good dogs can drink all they want and still not sweat. I’ve already established that.
The only significant difference between cold-brew coffee grounds and hot-brew coffee is that cold-brew has coarser grounds. Scientifically speaking, a canister of large-ground coffee beans should cost less than an equal-sized canister of fine ground, because it takes more beans to turn coffee into a powder. The finer the ground, the stronger the cup of coffee, because of, uh, chemistry. If customers think that cold-brew coffee has special beans with expensive additives to make it brew without heat, they’re willing to pay more for it. If something is more expensive, it’s likely a better product. It’s an economic acumen. (Shelby, I’m confident I won’t use that word again for the rest of the year.)
Which brings us to aluminum. YouTube is ripe with “life” hack videos. A life hack is “an efficient method for doing or managing a day-to-day task or activity.” You’ll see an example of one in my kitchen. Follow me. -- Okay, look at these bananas. Yes, that’s aluminum foil wrapped around the stems. It’s a hack. The foil is supposed to slow the rotting of your bananas. I’ll let you know if it works. -- Sure, grab a banana. I’ll finish the experiment another time.
I learned about aluminum while researching cold brew coffee. Each time Google sends me to a place, the margins of the site are full of interesting photos. Each represents a place where you can find fascinating stuff. It might be movie star impersonators, or a combination of the greatest catches in NFL football, or a picture of someone with aluminum foil wrapped around the tips of each finger. I had already seen the impersonators and football catches, so I went with the foil. Three percent of the earth’s crust has aluminum in it. The crust is 18 miles deep, so some of the aluminum is hard to get to. It’s not much of a problem with Reynolds because they’re spending money to have people make aluminum hacks and put them on YouTube.
I got to see 30 hacks for aluminum foil. None of them involved foil on fingertips. That was just to draw me to the site. I did see stuff about putting foil behind your router to boost your connection. I haven’t tried that yet. We’re low on foil, but now the bananas are gone I can use banana foil for my router experiment.
I ended up going all over the place to find the hidden mystery of coffee bean grounds. That’s when all of the hacks started popping up. Speaking of which, if you have a sore throat eat marshmallows. That’s my favorite. I can’t wait until I get sick.
Do you see how researching something on the internet can increase your intelligence a lot. Hey, look it up on the Internet if you don’t believe me. Tell you what. When we finish reading the paper, let’s all go to Google and key in“Siberian Yakuts” and see where we end up. We’ll meet back and compare notes over coffee. The kind lumberjacks drink.
end
hayter.mark@gmail.com
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