Plug II

Lavazza makes the only good medium roast that I know of. Mostly I drink dark roast, of which there are many kinds, from local roasters, all wonderfully drinkable, but I also bib from the Lavazza medium. One of the worst things is an insipid cup of coffee. It should be a crime. And how did drip machines ever become the norm? All what you need is a kettle or something to boil the water, a grinder to grind the beans (if one does not have a conical burr grinder, then a mortar and pestle I suppose would also work, and work really well, since you are wanting to bust up the beans, or grind by cracking, so that you have grounds that are not uniform, which is what you get with those nasty electric "grinders"), and some kind of metal strainer. I use a french press. "French press" is just a fancy term for what my Uncle Peter called "trapline coffee" (he kept traplines way up north in his homesteading days). There are various methods, and each to his own, but all what it necessitates is pouring the boiled water (having cooled down somewhat from its boiling temperature) into some vessel containing the ground coffee, letting it steep for a minute or two and then stirring the brew (this step is absolutely important and cannot be ignored as the movement being introduced to the liquid releases all the good stuff - hence flavour - from the coffee beans) with a spoon or something and then letting it steep for a few minutes more before straining it off in some way (use a metal strainer of some kind, whatever). Then wrap a tea towel or something around the remaining coffee in the pot or french press glass or what have you. That way you are also being a good steward by not using all that paper for those nasty coffee filters and you can be a little bit more Catholic since Pope Francis is writing an encyclical on the environment, which everyone will be reading, especially those who are more Catholic than the Pope and who heroically and indeed miraculously find the time from their hours of devoted prayer life to engage courageously from behind their computer screens in the greatest fray the world has ever seen since the Arian heresy to save us fantard Ultramontanists from our errors by their authoritative parsing of Francis' words.