Full-court French press

Apparently, I've been grinding coffee incorrectly all these years. I've been using a blade grinder, but my fellow coffee fiend Mark says it's all about the burr because the blade grinder yields an uneven grind. And he says the heat generated by the movement of the blade kills the flavor. Lordy, there's this whole SUBTEXT to my morning coffee, this entire life going on that I never knew about.

I am a bit crazy for coffee. I never even drank the stuff in college. It all started in grad school. OK, admittedly, I did go to graduate school in Italy. They do have top-notch java.

So I started my own coffee odyssey with the badly made home espresso machines in the late 1990s, the kind that foamed your milk for about two weeks and then got all stopped up with dried-milk particles. Then I learned about those handy foamers you could use on the stove. That was good.

And then I did a massive article on coffee-making. And I learned about the Melitta method (you know, that plastic cup thing they sell in the supermarket? Ahrre Maros of Ahrre's Roastery in Westfield prefers it) and the ultimate way to make a French press cup. I even exchanged e-mails with some guy from the venerable Peet's (Starbucks forerunner on the West Coast, from what I hear) about all the ins and outs of French Press. And he said never, ever use the drip method because those machines get all full of calcium deposits, and then your coffee tastes icky. And grind your beans a bit at a time, and keep them in an airtight container, and use good water, because after all, most of your coffee IS water. OK.

And then my ex got all obsessed with "pulling" an espresso after we saw Hugh Grant's pulled espressos in " . . . About A Boy." So he dumped all this money into...a Pavoni. Shiny, crazy, pressurized stuff.

And when we got divorced, he got the Pavoni. But I pulled out my stove-top espresso pot that I paid, like $13 for in a nothing shop in Florence, and I seasoned it and seasoned it, running several pots through and tossing them until the pot had all the right flavorful oils going for it. Really, this isn't just my obsessive side -- well, it is a little; when you first get an espresso pot, you must do this, or the coffee will taste like metal. Lidia Bastianich's daughter told me this, so it must be true. And it is. Metallic coffee is just wrong.

And now I'm back with the French press.

Here, from memory, is the Peet's representative's advice for a perfect cup o' French press coffee:

+Use a coarse grind for your coffee.
+Use 2 tablespoons of coffee for ever 6 ounces of water.

Method:

Boil water. When it comes to a boil, wait 30 seconds before pouring -- because you don't want the water to singe the beans. Pour a bit of water into the French press pot until the coffee grounds "bloom." Stir. Then pour the remaining water in. Wait 3 to 4 minutes. Press.

Yum. You think I'm crazy now, on a Thursday afternoon. But you will thank me later, like tomorrow morning, when you're caffeinated.