Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

You can get much stronger coffee by using less water and more coffee, but I find that it tastes harsh. Running coffee through a second time would probably taste terrible, though it would have the advantage of damaging the Mr. Coffee.

Chris Genovese asks similar questions about hotel tap water. We feel for you, Brad.

It's all hopeless. American coffee is only good for lemmas.

I sympathize deeply. Maybe you could look into a travel kit (don't get your hopes up; there are only four reviews and two of them are negative).

The only solution to the hotel coffee issue is to bring your own esspresso maker. These can be made quite small if you are prepared to make some case mods.

I have an esspresso maker built into one of those aluminium attache cases that photographers use. If you choose to do this I would strongly recomend that you use transparent perspex for the trim details so the function is obvious. Otherwise it can take a while to explain to airport security staff.

If you work on it you should be able to fit the espresso maker into the top half of the case, leaving the bottom half free for other travelling essentials. So far I have added a cable router with WiFi, radio scanner and charging bays for the various battery powered devices I carry.

No.
Espresso makers use steam to brew. Steam can be much hotter than regular percolator/coffee machines that get their water at most up to 100 degree C. Higher temps (and pressure) mean more coffee essence is extracted from the finely ground beans into your expertly prepared cup.

Unfortunately, the awful decision you have to make is that terrible Mr. Coffee coffee is better than no coffee at all. I've resigned myself to that state many, many times.

A simple solution for short trips, if you can deal with coffee rather than espresso:

1. Grind coffee beans at home before you leave.
2. Put ground coffee in a zip-lock baggie. Put that baggie inside a second baggie.
3. Pack the ground coffee, along with enough basket filters (hotel room coffee pots never take cone filters) and sweeteners (if you use them) to get you through the trip.

Guaranteed to make better coffee in your hotel room coffee pot than the stuff that comes with the room or what you can get in the lobby.

And kudos to Jonathan Goldberg for the variation on a theme of Paul Erdos!

Convention center coffee is even worse than hotel coffee. I think the rule is that the more people who are going to drink it the worse the coffee is supposed to be.

Locus,

Are you sure? I once had a long and ultimately fruitless discussion with a physical chemist about espresso-making. I understand that the temperature in the boiler may be over 100C (there were some equations involved) but what happens whe you open the valve and let the vapor out? Plus I've alway heard that the ideal temperature for brewing coffee was just under 100, (as opposed to the much higher temperature suitable for frying calamari) so "super-heated" steam won't get you a good cup.

We were taught at a different UC (inland from Berkeley, terribly hot) that brewed coffee is actually stronger than expresso, volume-per-volume.

It has to do with the time spent extracting from the beans - expresso goes so fast that the process leaves some caffeine behind.

Nevertheless, I drink expresso.

D

"Is there any actual coffee in hotel lobby coffee[?]"

I have reliable information that many hotels engage in coffee-related program activities . . .

RT has the right answer--it's what I do, anyway--with one essential qualification: the coffee has to be Peet's.

Yes, RT has it right (and congrats on getting the Erdos reference)

You can coax perfectly acceptable coffee out of a Mr. Coffee machine, you just have to bring your own decent quality ground coffee and some basket filters.

The problem with hotel coffee is that the beans are crap. Garbage in, garbage out.

According to the Brazil Coffee Council, or somesuchlobby group I've been propagandized by, theoptimal temperature for brewed coffee is 87 Celsius.

According to the Brazil Coffee Council, or somesuch lobby group I've been propagandized by, theoptimal temperature for brewed coffee is 87 Celsius.

You can get organic box milk in eight ounce containers, which helps immeasurably.

Dano:

"We were taught at a different UC (inland from Berkeley, terribly hot) that brewed coffee is actually stronger than expresso, volume-per-volume.

It has to do with the time spent extracting from the beans - expresso goes so fast that the process leaves some caffeine behind.

Nevertheless, I drink expresso."

True. Full caffeine extraction takes longer than an espresso cycle. The figures that I saw were: 50 mg for an espresso shot, 50-150 for 8 oz. coffee.

*However*, espresso shots are rather small volume,
so you can drink more.

I find the info at www.sweetmarias.com very useful (I buy green coffee beans from them and roast them myself --a small marginal cost of effort for a huge gain in quality).

If by "strength" you mean caffeine then a lighter roast is better. Contrary to popular belief dark roasts have less caffeine. That is because the roasting process destroys caffeine. Most of the caffeine is extracted during the first 30 seconds of brewing so several wash-and-rinse cycles will have no effect there.

If by "strength" you mean flavor then Zizka has it right. One coffee I have found that you can brew strong without it getting bitter is Gevalia (neither I nor any of my friends, neighbors, dog or family members have any connection with Gevalia Inc.).

Also, the finer the grind the more body coffee has. The flavor is in the aromatic oils but that cling to your tongue after effect comes from other constituents of the beans. When freeze dried coffee was first being developed they thought once you had the aromatic oils extracted you could throw the beans away, who needs 'em. But no, they actually freeze dry the bean, sans oils, then spray the oils back on to get the appropriate combination of flavor and body.

As to hotel coffee, I believe the beans are grown in New Jersey.

When trapped into drinking hotel coffee, I use both the decaf and the regular coffee packets. It's strong enough (coffee should be opaque, dammit!).

I've taken along my own coffee on occasion. For longer stays, I've even shipped myself a big drip pot and gear.

Another alternative is to pack a small, plastic french-press pot (a.k.a. Bodum). Then all you need is hot water. Coffee and sweeteners pack nicely inside the pot.

I second the recommendation for Sweet Maria's. I can't roast outdoors at the moment, alas. Soon ... soon. But being forced to drink ready roasted Stauf's Coffee isn't exactly a burden. :-)

If trying to make strong coffee out of crappy beans, I use two filters -- it takes the water longer to get through the two filters so it is in contact with the grounds more often. It made the Starbucks at the old job tolerable.

If you forget to do what RT suggests (which is what I generally do), try using the hotel coffee packets like tea bags rather than putting them in the basket. They are generally closed well enough that you can put them in the pot itself and let the Mr. Coffee just heat the water (through the coffeemaking heater not the hotplate). The lid on the coffee pot will keep the bag from plopping into your cup, of course.

Barry:

That's exactly why I drink expresso (or espresso).

Plus, if it tastes bad, it's over with sooner than regular coffee.

D

> It's all hopeless. American coffee
> is only good for lemmas.

Didn't you mean enemas?

Anyway, why is this an issue. Didn't you know that there was a law passed that by year 2006 there will be no point in an urban area where you are more than 100 meters from a Starbucks?

Medaglia D'Oro sells instant espresso coffee.

Stubby 2oz jars for ~ $2.79 in Texas.

Of course it does not taste like the real thing, but the caffeine content might upgrade you from lemma to proof.

it's true. HR 1056, Starbucks Zoning and Control.

If you cycle the water through a mr. coffee more than once, you get battery acid, not espresso. You could probably be picked up under the Patriot act for doing that.

And please, hotel coffee is coffee flavored-water.

The only hotel where I ever had a decent cup of coffee was a place called the Willows Inn, just north of Redmond, WA. (If you ever have to go to Microsoft stay there - it's worth it. Added bonus, it's right next door to the Red Hook brewery.)

Generally, I build time into my morning for an excursion to find real coffee.

In Berlin, I became a habitue of the Hackescher Markt Starbuck's, largely because they had free WiFi at the time, and a huge seating area where I could do my German homework and update my travel diary. (I also had the pleasure of noting that under the East Germans, the adjoining S-Bahn stop had been called Marx-Engels Forum.)

I did have a great big airport surprise though. There's a Peet's in the United terminal at JFK, well outside of its normal habitat. And the clerks were even trained properly. It was funny listening to my erstwhile outer-borough homies complaining that the coffee was too strong.

The correct solution to hotel coffee is called.

Tea.

Stirling:

No, tea is not the solution. Generally, it is impossible to get water that's hot enough to make good tea in a hotel. Tea that's made with tepid water is just plain nasty, IMHO.

Then again, if the Mr. Coffee is clean enough, and if you pre-warm the carafe, it just might make water that's close enough to optimal tea-temp (just off the boil.) Then again, coffee pots are made to make coffee, which wants water that's about 195-205 degrees, not 210.

Alas.

Starbucks' business plan is to expand like an enormous prion until the whole universe is one big Starbucks. Long ago they figured out that you can only sell so much coffee. Wanna buy a $500 coffee-maker? They got one for you.

My solution, much like adm's:

Buy green beans at sweetmarias.com, roast them. (When you roast yourself, you can have quality beans that aren't burnt to s***, ala Peet's. ) When at work, brew in Pavoni. When traveling, take a turkish coffee mill and brew turkish coffee. (The grounds settle nicely at the bottom of the cup.)

With regard to Bernard Yomtov's question:

Steam can be at any temperature above the boiling point. You can get super heated steam either by heating water in an enclosed space, such as pressure cookers, or by running water through a coil held a temperature above the boiling point so that all the water turns to steam and then the coil heats the steam.

When you open the valve and use the steam to cook, it condenses back to liquid, but this requires time. Since the speed of cooking varies exponentially with temperature (which is why restaurants can cook steaks in 10 minutes) most of the actually coffee making can take place above the normal boiling point of water.

Now let me disgust everyone. Lately I make coffee by placing grounds in a jar with water and letting it sit overnight (shaking speeds things up). Add hot milk and one gets very pleasant coffee (I use Community Coffee New Orleans style). All you need is a jar, grounds and a microwave. Well suited for the road. The method comes from Central America. You adjust the caffine level by the ratio of grounds to water. Try it.

, and then the steam is in equilibrium with the temperature of the water

If you want good coffee, you'll have to go to Italy. The Brits do make a rather smashing good cup of tea, though.

Eli,
I've tried the cold coffee method and didn't like it very much. Maybe I should try again.

And Andrew, that's BS. What you mean is, if you want good coffee and you aren't willing to invest any of your own precious time in learning how to make it yourself, you'll have to go to Italy.

Worse yet, you can make instant coffee with hot tap water. I had a job once which exhausted me, and I always woke up about 20 minutes before work started. I never ate coffee crystals with a spoon, though.

Calamari? Yomtov, of course.

Eli,

Yes. I understand the business about superheating, but what about the idea that coffee should be made at a temperature below the boiling point? Something is wrong here.

By the way, as your choice of brand suggests you may know, the cold drip method is popular in New Orleans, where coffee-makers designed for it are sold. I think that it is often used to make a concentrate which is then diluted as desired. I'm not a fan. Supposedly it developed because of the popularity of iced coffee during New Orleans' steamy season, roughly Jan-Dec.

Andrew is spot on -- the only culture in the world that really understands coffee is Italian. Which raises the question: since the Italian immigrant experience is so much a part of US culture, how come you make such terrible coffee?

It was the mass migration of southern Europeans to Australia in the 1950s that laid the basis for the destruction of some pretty dreadful culinary habits.

There isn't a single day that I don't thank these anonymous Greeks and Italians for:
1) olive oil and
2) never being more than a few minutes away from a decent cup of coffee.

One caveat to the Eli grounds-in-a-jar brewing method is that paper filters block much of the coffee diterpenes cafestol and kahweol that have been shown to raise both LDL and total cholesterol levels.

Not that you were really going to try it.

Coffee from those hotel filter packs reminds me of a line I once heard from (I think) Daniel Pinkwater on NPR, describing a bad dining experience: "Waiter, if this is tea, I'd like a cup of coffee. If this is coffee, I'd like a cup of tea."

I have learned to survive using RT's method. And yes, I do use Peet's.

Best way to get strong coffee in a hotel is to put coffee in cold water the night before, stir, strain in morning

The dutch used to do it this way in Indonesia - called "dutch cold method".

The best plan is to put both the regular and decaf bags into the pot, and fill up the carafe. Occasionally you can put in just the regular bag and fill the carafe about 60% full.

What I normally do is talk to the morning concierge and ask them to bring in an extra coffe for me in the morning, and offer to pay for theirs.

I was in Utah last week, called my son (who is going to college in Boston) and he asked me "have you found any good coffee yet?" I found a shirt in Moab that said "Coffee - still legal in Utah".

Don't give up the fight.

RR

I work three twelve hour night shifts a week, so I see nothing at all wrong with eating a spoonful of instant coffee crystals straight from the jar. The taste alone wakes me right up, yessirreebob. It's amazing how alert my mind will stay in order to avoid repeating that particular taste experience.

Just an idle thought for Bernard. While steam or any vapor does condense below the boiling point, it needs to find a surface or an aerosol particle to do so. Thus steam will remain steam until it finds a condensation nucleus, even though the vapor is supersaturated with respect to the temperature. That may play a role.

Hmmm. This far down the thread and no-one beefed about the powdered Coffeemate. Slipping, slipping...

By the way, in the Pentagon method for avoiding jetlag, coffee is the biggest no-no of all, for several days before and after the flight. A VERY powerful setter of our many body cycles.

The hotels know this and they are subtly trying to do the decent thing by you Brad.

PS to the above: the polar-opposite of coffee - the benign resetter of the circadian rhythms - is of course melatonin.

Tell the hotels that, and they may relent on mangling the coffee.

Ah, melatonin. Makes night-shift work bearable. That and coffee, of course.

Why is it that you get more postings in a thread on hotel coffee than in a thread on macroeconomics?

Seem that economists, after all, are human as well.

But don't complain about hotel coffee in the USA. You ever tried the UK or Germany?

And what about the colored water most airlines peddle for coffee? And have you ever tried coffee in a restaurant car operated by the Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway?

Forget it, not everybody can live in Italy and have decent coffee any time of the day. This is a cruel world.

Or maybe wait for a new Bush plan to have decent coffee for everybody in God's own country by 2007.

Melatonin is necessary to feeling rested and waking up easily. Much better to take 6 mg of melatonin before bedtime and wake up refreshed then to wake up groggy and have to inject 9 cups of coffee into my veins to wake up.

6 mg? That's a hell of a dose. I seldom take more than 3 mg, usually less. It's been a while since I read any studies of melatonin effects. Is there any consensus on what the maximum safe dosage looks to be?

And what's wrong with coffe injections, anyway? A rounded teaspoon of Folger's instant coffee crystals under the tongue and Wheeeeee off I go.

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