MAKING GOOD COFFEE
[To the Editor of the Spacraroa.] Sza,—In several recent issues you have exhibited an interest in the preparation of Coffee as a beverage. Many ingenious and elaborate mechanical devices have been described and claimed to extract the total desired constituents of the bean at a single operation. All of these are either failures or un- necessarily expensive in use. This is consequent upon the fact that the extractive matters of coffee are of two distinct kinds, which yield respectively the body and the fragrance or aroma of the completed beverage. The last is due to an essential and volatile oil, easily dissipated and lost by exposure for a few minutes to a temperature of over 180 degrees.
Satisfactory extraction of the substances which give agreeable body to the drink is only possible when the coffee is actually boiled.- Most of- the devices above referred to may be made to produce a palatable beverage, but only when so large an amount of the Material is employed as allows for inevitable waste.
_ TO economize, boil the usual quantum of ground coffee for at least ten _ minutes. The volatile oil is necessarily lost, and only. the body-giving constituents remain in solution: Take a second quantum of ground coffee, equal to.the former, and place it in a suitable funnel provided with a filtering cloth of fine muslin. Pour through this the hot solution obtained from the first operation, which by this time will have attained a temperature of approximately 180 degrees, and the readily soluble essential oil of this second quantum of coffee will go into solution. The resultant is a perfect beverage, provided that the original material was a high-
grade coffee. The residue on the filter, from which only the volatile matters have been extracted, is employed as was the first quantum, when next coffee is made.—I am, Sir, &c., A. MeGn.t.
Late Chief Chemist to the Health . Department of Canada.
806 San Carlos Ave., Berkeley, California.
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