Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The simplest coffee ever

I have to give kudos to my brother-in-law's girlfriend for this one. Shane loves coffee, but he also tends to suffer from acid reflux and heartburn. Coffee has always made this worse, but he never wanted to give it up. Then, Megan mentioned that she'd heard cold-pressed coffee has little to no acid in it, unlike regular brewed coffee, and that it might be easier on his stomach.
It is. And it's ridiculously simple, so Shane has switched to only making coffee this way. And since it's brewed in the fridge, it's very low-resource. (After all, we'd have the fridge running anyway.) The ratio is half a pound of ground coffee for every gallon of water. Put those in a jug (we have some big glass jugs, which are only 2/3 of a gallon so Shane changes the proportions to match) and place in the fridge. They stay there anywhere from 3 days to a week to "brew". Then Shane filters out the coffee grounds. He uses a regular coffee filter, which we already had from our old coffeemaker (I'll probably get him to use our cheesecloth instead when those run out) inside a fine wire strainer, and it drips the coffee into a juice container before transferring it back to a clean glass jar for storage in the fridge. That's it.
It's a coffee concentrate, so it needs to be watered down. Depending on how strong you like your coffee, 1/4-1/3 of the cup should be the cold pressed coffee and the rest should be water. Iced coffee is easy enough because all you need is tap (or filtered, if that's your preference) water and some ice. For hot coffee, just heat up some water before adding it to the coffee concentrate. It's easy enough that the non-coffee drinker in our household (me) will often make the coffee on weekends when I hear him waking up.
The best part is that, since he started using this method, Shane's stomach problems have nearly gone away. Isn't it funny how one simple change can affect everything else?

Also, after my post yesterday about how much I love my walk, I woke up this morning to at least 6 inches of fresh snow, and plenty more falling. (The storm advisory yesterday said 2-4 inches. Ha!) When I let the dog out, all she could see was a wall of white and she looked back at me like, "Where do you expect me to go?" It was miserable to walk in. Not the falling snow so much (although, having that blow into my face wasn't fun) but the deep snow. Even most of the roads weren't plowed yet, let alone the sidewalks. I could have easily twisted an ankle because I could never see where the curbs ended. I got to work 15 minutes late. At least I have an understanding boss!

1 comment:

  1. I'm happy it has been working for him, Liz. I started making it because I preferred the taste over regular brewed coffee but I'm glad Shane has found it easier on his stomach also. Win-Win!

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