Cuttin' the Cost o' Coffee.......

Cindy Made This Picture Of The Box Our New Percolator Came In

Cindy and I love our coffee in the morning.  It's pretty hard to fully awaken without its magical, soothing, creeping warmth in our innards.

So it has been with considerable concern that we have observed the steady escalation of its price over the past year.  Something had to be done---but we could not bear to imagine life without our mornin' joe.

We tried buying cheaper brands.  We didn't like them.  We tried mixing the coffee with inexpensive additives like chickory or espresso.  That was ok, but didn't really save us much.

Then Cindy had the idea of dropping our modern coffee maker in favor of a percolator.  With a percolator, she reasoned, we could cut down on the amount of coffee we use because the action of the percolator recycles the brewed coffee for a stronger taste.

Our "Modern" Coffee Maker Uses A Single-Pass Brewing System And Requires Twice As Much Coffee As Our New Percolator

Problem---we couldn't find a percolator we liked.  We found a lot of old ones in thrift stores, but they all had shortcomings.  We googled to see where we could get a new one, but there aren't many companies making them any more---at least, not ones we liked.

Finally, last week, Cindy's sister, Patti, found one in a hardware store that looked just right for us.  It brews 32 ounces of coffee and works on the stovetop eye of our range. 

The First Time We Brewed Coffee in Our New Percolator, We Made a Mess of the Stovetop.  Sigh.

It works great!  We have used it about six times now, and we have cut our coffee usage in half.  We use 32 ounces of water, three scoops of Folger's Dark Roast Blend and one scoop of Pilon espresso.  We have experimented and found that letting it perk about 15 minutes produces the taste and strength we like.

It does something else, too---it fills the house up with the richest aroma of coffee I ever smelled.  That's something you just don't get from a modern, single-pass coffee maker. 

We're saving money and enjoying our mornin' joe more than ever.