The Next Coffee Master is You!

Today we are going to understand another coffee appliance- French Press.




The reason why French Press will become popular is not only it is sold by Starbucks, but also it is really easy to handle. As a result, many smart businessmen have invented some easy-carrying French Press which also can keep warm. It’s very convenient when you go on a travel. If you want some hot coffee, the only thing you have to do is to borrow hot water and you can enjoy your coffee.

Let’s learn how to use French Press and try it by yourself!




First, put some hot water in the glass and the most appropriate temperature is 85 to 90. After that, put in your coffee powder and stir it to well mix with water.





Second procedure is to wait. However, when do I know my coffee is well extracted? You have two ways to choice: first is to wait for about 2 to 3 minutes (if you wait for too long, then the coffee may be to bitter to drink), and the second is to observe the powder. If the powder of the surface is dry, it means you have to stir it again and do the next step.







The next step is to push the stick to percolate our coffee. Guess what! Our coffee is finished! Look, the steps are really easy. The most beautiful thing French Press can give you is that even you are a tenderfoot, you can make wonderful coffee. Unlike the syphon and percolator, everyone can enjoy the nice fragrance and good tasted coffee.






If you don't like the feel in your mouth which has small coffee powder, you can percolate before you drink. In average, French Press is the easiest one to handle because the flavor won't change a lot such as syphon and percoalator. You don't need to be a skilled or experienced coffee maker, but you can be a coffee master by using French Press!

A Waltz With Chocolate and Coffee

What’s Mocha? Mocha Coffee means chocolate coffee which comes from Latte Coffee. Nowadays, when we mention “Mocha”, it can be black coffee whose beans are chocolate brown from Yemen or iced Floral Formula Coffee with chocolate.



For example, the most common way to make Mocha Coffee is one third of Café Espresso and two thirds of foamed milk and definitely will add some chocolate which usually appears in thick liquid. Moreover, you can put some cotton candies or cream to decorate and these little materials can make the flavor of coffee become more attractive and thick.

Also, some places will change black chocolate into white chocolate. White chocolate also can place milk because of the color. By the way, there is another interesting creation which adds both black and white chocolate. The coffee is just look like “zebra”, so it has a funny name, Tuxedo Mocha.

Actually, I like to drink Mocha, too. Because it has added some chocolate, the flavor is richer and even much sweeter. Ever time when I tired of the flavor of Latte Coffee, I will make one by myself or order one. Mocha is very common and it’s also suitable for those who are afraid of too heavy coffee flavor. Next time when you go to a coffee shop, order one and try.

When Espresso Crashes on Creations- Floral Formula Coffee

What is Floral Formula Coffee? Actually, espresso which is thicker coffee adds many different drinks such as wine, milk, tea, cream, or other special seasonings. The reason why Floral Formula Coffee so popular is because the different ideas are added into coffee. You can create your own coffee by putting special seasonings. There is no bounder within it, and the only thing we have to do is to have the experimental spirit. Let me show you some classical Floral Formula Coffee below which has been popular for hundreds of years.





The first one is Irish Coffee (愛爾蘭咖啡). There is a novel taking about the love story behind Irish Coffee, and if you are interesting in it, google “Irish Coffee.” The first step is to add some whisky and sugar in specific glass and heat it. After sugar melts, add in hot coffee and put some cream on the top of the cup. The feature is Irish Coffee has obvious wine flavor and usually gentlemen like it very much.



The second one is Royal Coffee (皇家咖啡). It is said that Napoleon’s favorite coffee is Royal Coffee. The way of doing it is first use Blue Mountain Coffee or Blue Mountain Blend as espresso and put some sugar on a small spoon. Second, sprinkle some brandy on the sugar and fire. It also has the feature of obvious wine flavor but it has more vision enjoy.

The Most Luxurious Enjoy- Blue Mountain Coffee

I believe many of you have heard about “Blue Mountain Coffee” and even tasted it. However, do you know what you drink is not pure Blue Mountain Coffee?

Actually, the world famous Blue Mountain Coffee is from Jamaica’s Blue Mountain and it is also name by the place it comes from. The reason why the mountain has such a beautiful name was that an England soldier was astonished by the mountain covered by blue sunshine.



Many people are fascinated by the unique flavor of Blue Mountain Coffee. One of the important elements is about the location and climate. Blue Mountain has fertile volcanic soil, the air is fresh without pollution, and it has a lot of rain. Moreover, clouds offer shadows for coffee trees which can make the flavor and fragrance be more outstanding. Seriously, only the coffee beans from the height over 1800m can be called “Blue Mountain Coffee” or others are just “Jamaica High Mountain Coffee.”

It is said that pure Blue Mountain Coffee mixes sour, bitter, sweet, and other flavors together perfectly to another extremely alluring and elegant fragrance. It is a superb high level that other kinds of coffee are so far behind to catch up. Also, Blue Mountain Coffee is usually tasted in black coffee, and it conforms to modern health concept because of its low caffeine.

In fact, Blue Mountain Coffee is very expensive because it is rare. What we taste everyday usually are Blue Mountain Blend or Blue Mountain Style which are created to imitate the flavor of pure Blue Mountain Coffee. Although I introduce you this one terrific coffee, I haven’t had a cup of pure Blue Mountain Coffee yet and it is hard to be found in Taiwan, actually.

Sweet Memory

Every time when I go to Starbucks, I will order Caramel Macchiato. (焦糖瑪奇朵) Caramel means scorched sugar which is put on Macchiato meaning mark in Italian. How beautiful the name is, and so does it taste.





However, it is different from its name, the origin is very simple. It is said that a coffee maker always forgot the coffee was made for whom and one day he decided use caramel to make a mark on it. Surprisingly, it became a popular coffee nowadays.

The way to make Caramel Macchiato is also simple. First, add some syrup into the bottom of the glass. You can chose to any flavor of syrup you like such as hazelnut or vanilla, and it’s up to you to add how much. Second, add three forth milk in it and other one forth foamed milk. After that, put espresso in it and mark with caramel. See, it is easy to make a cup of Caramel Macchiato.

In fact, someone said that the coffee is invented for those who are afraid of drinking espresso. As a result, they use a little milk, foamed milk, and caramel to make espresso much easier to drink.

Actually, I like Caramel Macchiato very much because espresso has more percentage in it. When you taste the bitter of espresso and the sweet of caramel, they combine together softly and make you think of some memories. It will be a kind of enjoy for me drinking a cup of Caramel Macchiato and reading a novel in Starbucks whole afternoon.


It has different flavors in both hot and cold!

Milk Fascinates with Coffee

Today, I’m going to introduce you a popular drink- Latte Coffee.





First, Latte Coffee (拿鐵咖啡) is one of coffees with milk and it is different from Café au lait (咖啡歐蕾).
Actually, Latte is Italian which means milk. Maybe someday you will have a chance to visit Italy and also want to take a break at open-air café, and then you order a cup of Latte from the waiter. The waiter probably will give you a cup of hot milk instead of Latte Coffee you want. Well, you can’t argue with him and the only you can do is to blame yourself why you forget to add the word “Coffee” after Latte. As a result, Latte just means Milk in Italy.

However, you may ask me what is Lait? In fact, Lait is French. The difference between Latte coffee and Café au lait is the quantity of milk. In common says, Latte Coffee is milk in coffee whose coffee quantity is higher. For example, when you drink strawberry milk, actually you drink milk but the flavor is strawberry.

On the contrary, Café au lait is coffee in milk. Take condensed milk and strawberry for example, coffee is condensed milk and lait is strawberry. When you eat the desert, you eat strawberry but the flavor is condensed milk.

Now, you can differ Latte Coffee from Café au lait. Also, have you ever thought about why the titles don’t have milk in it but actually both of them adding milk? Well, it is just about the names which are so local that hard to attract customers.

Below I will offer you a recipe for doing a cup of Latte Coffee easily.
First, the percentage of milk, foamed milk, and coffee is 2:2:1.
You can use espresso as base and add milk after that. If you want to drink Café au lait then you don’t need to add famed milk. An easy but good taste Latte Coffee is finish!

When Coffee Meets Music

Because of the 90th birthday of NCHU, Coffee Club and Stringed Music Club had held an activity to celebrate it and let more people knew both of clubs. I’m one of coffee club members and I thought the event of the night was interesting and meaningful.

We had prepared it for about a month and all of us were looking forward to it because it was a way for us to show how and what we learned in the club and we can earn some money by the way.







We sold hot coffee such as Blue Mountain and Mocha and flavor coffer like Iced Mocha, Latte, Autumn snow, and Emerald Forest. Although it was really tired of holding an event, it’s fun to prepare for it with many friends. We can make friends here, learned some skills of selling during the process, and urged ourselves to improve our skill of making coffee.







Many people will feel relax when listening to the wonderful music with coffee fragrance, and it will be better if you had one to enjoy. If you won’t been bothered by the caffeine, a cup of hand-made hot coffee can be with you all night through.
Although it was a little bit cold that night, many people especially students liked to order flavor coffee which is sweeter and prettier than hot ones. However, many adults would order black coffee.







We also met out professors here. It seemed that they enjoyed the atmosphere here with our coffee. If you missed the event, don’t worry, we will have another activity in December. Give yourself a chance to relax with my favorite coffee and music, you will find the amazing when they meet each other.

Crush on Percolator!!!

Today I’m going to introduce you another appliance to make coffee- Percolator. It’s not so common comparing to Syphon because of complication, but it is an interesting tool.

Preparation:
A cooper teapot (on the right side)
A filter (the white one)
A little pot (under the filter)
A whiskey glass (in front of the cooper teapot*1)
A thermograph
A piece of filter paper
Coffee powder (*2)
Hot water

First, we have to make sure our applications are put at right place. Put the filter paper on the filter and wet it with hot water. It is an important step because hot water can wash some chemical material of the filter paper that it won’t affect the flavor of coffee. Also, it won’t be over extracted if we use the wet filter paper.

Second, put coffee powder in the filter, and remember to shake it slightly to make the powder flat. At this time, ready to add water! However, before we add water in, we have to make sure the temperature of the water. The best water to make coffee is at 85 degrees and that’s the reason why the big coffee chin store uses 85 as part of the sign name.

Third, the key point of tasty coffee is water, we add water small to large. Initially, put water in the middle of powder and make circles from inside to outside. Furthermore, make about 15 circles in the first, 10 in the second, 9 in the third, 8 in the last, but it is just an approximate number.

This is finished one and I recommend that sway it softly to make it well mixed because the upper coffer is thicker. It’s easy to make coffee by percolator but it’s hard to make it good taste because there are too many factors will affect the flavor. Anyway, I like it much more than Syphon because it is more challenge.

*1 Actually, I do not mention it in the context but we sure have to use it when we make coffee. The whiskey glass is used to let the filter put on because when the coffee is enough we can’t let it continuously extract on the little pot. As a result, we can put it on the whiskey glass. The reason why not to let it extract when we don’t add water is that the coffee flavor is not so good at that time.

*2 Today’s coffee beans: Panama Finca Lerida Washed SHB
This one has chocolate, flower, grease fragrance in dry powder. When you drink it you can taste light lemon sour, sweet tea, chocolate.

Actually, there are many different ways to use percolator. Here is another way to make coffee by percolator, if you are interesting in it you can ask me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq--Ln1NLpY

Syphon is Coming!

This is how Syphon looks like and other tools we need.

Today I’m going to introduce you a kind of coffee appliance: Syphon which is very common to make coffee and has many names in Taiwan like “賽風”or ”虹吸式咖啡機.” The first time I knew syphon and had the chance to use it was when I joined coffee club in freshman year. Actually, syphon is fascinating to me because I will get different flavors every time when I use it to make coffee and the most important is that it’s really easy to handle as long as keep an eye on the steps.

Before we begin to make our own flavor coffee, we have to prepare a syphon, a little pot, a stirrer, a heater, and wipers including wet and dry. The coffee beans I used today are Yirgacheffee from Ethiopia which has obvious light lemon sour and flower fragrance.

First, put water in lower spherical glass to tab two and boil. Here is a vital tip that before heating water, we have to make sure the spherical glass is dry; if it’s not, use the wiper to dry it or the glass will burst because of the wet surface heated.

Second, when the water boiled which will be drawn to upper glass, put coffee powder in and stir it. Initially, we have to use stirrer to mix water and coffee forward and backward, and then make circles around the rim of glass. Don’t forget to draw a line to let coffee powder calm down which may be over extracted. Next, after doing the movements at forty seconds, one minute and ten seconds, one minute and forty seconds, we can turn off the heater. If you want to drink thicker coffer, I suggest to doing this step four or five times.

Third, use wet wiper to wipe the spherical glass to make it cool and the coffee will drop. Be careful to wipe it from the top of the lower glass to the bottom or the glass will crack because of the dramatic temperature difference.

With easy steps, we have already made our coffee. You will have surprises about the tastes every time when you use syphon. Now, what are you waiting for? Go to make your own flavor coffee!