Tuesday's Tips - Coffee

Bialletti Moka Express

Kent and I are both big coffee drinkers.  In fact, I started drinking a coffee/milk/sugar mixture as a small child with my father on Sunday mornings.  When Kent and I first got married, we had a standard drip coffee maker.  It took up a lot of counter space and didn't produce the best tasting coffee.  So we soon got a Bialetti Moka Express stovetop coffee maker.  I love using it to make lattes.  I got an inexpensive milk frother, but it takes a lot of time since you need to heat up the milk in a kettle before frothing it.



French Press Mug

For a regular cup of coffee, we've found that a french press works best.  Kent had been talking about getting one for a while, so his sister gave him a french press coffee mug for Christmas last year.  It's great because you can make a cup of coffee in it and then store extra grinds underneath the mug to make two more cups of coffee in the mug later in the day.  Since then, we've also gotten a 10 cup french press to replace our drip coffee maker.  We use it all the time!  



French Press



We like to buy whole bean coffee from O'Henry's and World Market (or Dunkin' Donuts original blend from the grocery store) and grind it there since we don't have a grinder at home.  I bought an inexpensive blade grinder in college, but it couldn't grind the beans into a uniform size and eventually broke.  For more even grinding, burr grinders are definitely better, though more expensive.