French Perk
This was inspired by an “instructional” I picked up at Verve, a coffee shop in Santa Cruz. It tells you precisely the best way to brew coffee in a French Press. I cut out a step or two for the purposes of trimming it to fit a comic strip… It seemed like a lot of steps… thus the toon.
French Press coffee isn’t any better than any other coffee. You just have to wait so long to make it that by the time it’s ready, you’ve forgotten how wonderful ANY coffee tastes.
For those days when you need the full potency of coffee, I highly recommend Cowboy Coffee. You know you’ve brewed Cowboy Coffee when you throw in a horseshoe and it floats. THAT’S the kind of coffee that puts barbed wire on your chest instead of hair. It charges you with Explosive Awakeness, improves your Outlook on Life, and provides Keen Insights Into Eternity.
I use my french press to measure the water for brewing in a Chemex. I have a friend who thinks I’m stuck in the dark ages. He wants his coffee computer brewed when he wakes up.
If you want COFFEE go to Malaysia. If you turn the cup over on a plate and lift it, you are left with a giggling black mass the same shape as the cup. The horseshoe would bounce off.
-Rob
The best part of wakin’ up is Folgers in your cup. Coffee is too important in a man’s life to go lookin’ for something slow and fancy. And if I wanted it as strong as some folks like it I would just eat it with a spoon and save all the brewin’.
FUNNY! I know all about fussing with fancy coffee. I used to be a total snob, buying the best (most expensive, anyway) whole beans online, grinding it fresh for each batch, making espresso, etc. I also insisted on drinking it John Wayne; commando. I finally caved to convenience and started making it Cadillac, with cream, sugar and vanilla flavoring. Which means that any lousy old coffee will do, including instant.
… oh dear. It appears that you all are all over the board on the coffee preferences.
I must say that the French Press is my preferred method of brewing. A couple weeks ago, the glass broke on the ol’ press, and we had to resort back to coffee machine drip for a day… and I questioned myself as to how I’d ever drunk it drip style, ever! I do admit to being a bit of a coffee snob… Cowboy coffee, eh, Pete? You say you like it strong… Anyone ever try Greek coffee?
Thank you for today’s comic: it inspired me to try out a Starbucks-branded travel mug one-cup press I’ve had for at least six years and never used. Even with cheapo canned coffee from Stater Bros. it tastes quite a bit better than what I usually drink. 🙂
Glad I could help convert you, Mike. It makes a better cuppa joe… smile and think of Squid when you plunge, eh?
So, French-language person…plunger means to dive…Je plunge means I dive. So you dive into your coffee? Sounds refreshing, but messy!
I like that! Dive into that java!
I love Terry Pratchett’s description of Klatchian coffee in his Discworld books (Klatch is roughly equivalent to Arabia):
There the men in taverns drink coffee laced with desert orakh. This drink (made from cacti sap and scorpion venom) is one of the most virulent alcoholic beverages in the universe. But the nomads do not drink it for its intoxicating powers, but to mitigate the effect of Klatchian coffee. It made you knurd.
[…] the state of knurdness is not like sobriety, as an opposite to drunkenness. Knurdness strips away all illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. One can imagine that, after a bit of screaming, the subject will make sure never to get knurd again, ever.
Ah, a hot cup of steaming Knurdiness and all is well!
We have a good lot of Terry Pratchett books in the house… and Tom Holt… I should actually read some of them.
Brig: You should definitely read the Pratchett (I don’t know much about Holt) – but either wait until you come back from La France, or take a couple with you to read on the plane… if you start one now and get into it, you might not get your comics done! 😛