Coffee
Every day the various news sources come up with a new medical report telling us that 38 cups of coffee a day will cure cancer, smallpox and make you live forever. It used to be that they would say that the only countries that had revolutions were the ones where coffee was drunk. It is probably coffee, alcohol and a perverted view of Christianity that have made the USA the madhouse that it is today.
Coffee is one of the hardest habits to break, including television.
I began drinking coffee when I was in high school. I have made coffee with Columbian Premo, Jamaican Blue Mountain, Brazilian primo, and ended up roasting my own 100% Kona Excelso (a 100 pound bagful of beautiful green beans all of the same size).
I do not drink coffee any more and have not been drinking it for more than fifteen years. I used to drink coffee to cope with the anxiety caused by drinking coffee. My end game with coffee was drinking one cup a day. I did this for years. One cup a day finally nearly killed me from stomach upset. I do not recommend ever even experimenting. The stuff gives you extra strength now only to rob you of strength in the future.
Caffeine is highest in the lighter roasts, not the darker roasts as is commonly believed.
Still, I drank coffee. This is how I made coffee to produce a tasty strong cup that was my one cup a day:
After roasting the beans:
Grind the coffee to a fine powder. I used an electric coffee grinder keeping it grinding for 16 seconds. This is not the best way. The best way is to use a hand grinder at the finest setting. The difference is that the machine ground coffee is of irregular granularity whereas the hand-ground coffee is uniform. The uniform granularity produces a reliable coffee strength whereas with an irregular granularity strength and taste can vary. I didn't notice much of a difference.
The rest is as simple as instant coffee:
Put one or two measures of coffee into a pot with a little more water than will fill the cup.
Bring to a boil.
Pass through a cotton or paper filter held in a filter holder.
Variations in strength should be handled by:
Bringing the coffee to a boil up to a limit of three times, or adding more coffee.
