So here’s how it went last weekend in my house.
My husband and I are in the habit (good or bad, you decide) of setting up our electric coffee pot with ground coffee and water before going to bed each night. In true 21st-century fashion, the timer on the coffee pot is set for 5:45 a.m., which means that as soon as we roll out of bed at 6, we can stumble to the pot and pour – even before our eyes are fully open – a steaming hot cup of coffee.
Until the coffee maker breaks. And that’s what happened Sunday morning. It was dead. The lights were on but nobody was home.
We rifled through the cupboards looking for our French Press (which we haven’t used in years, sadly) and then remembered we’d given it to my parents because…we haven’t used it in years.
What to do? Caffeine headaches and grumpiness were rapidly setting in!
My resourceful husband (I call him MacGyver) quickly set some water to boil, and we slowly and carefully poured the hot water over the coffee filter set on top of the coffee maker’s glass carafe (set on the counter on a hotpad). And a few minutes later, there it was – steaming hot coffee filling our kitchen with the most welcome, delicious aroma.
As we sipped our cups of joe and discussed replacing the deceased coffee maker, it suddenly hit me: we had just made pour over coffee. Without even trying. And it was really, really good coffee – rich, flavorful, and (honestly) way better than our trusty drip maker would’ve delivered.
Plus, there was something so satisfying about actually taking the time to make (and wait for) the coffee instead of just careening towards the kitchen first-thing in the morning.
Huh. I’m not sure we’ll be replacing the electric maker. We may opt for this method instead. It’s much less expensive, anyway. The cost of a pour over kettle and maker is a lot less than the fancy electric models we considered. Plus, we’ll save electricity and never worry about a power outage, much less a computer breaking in the thing.
And hey, a little change can make a big difference – both in our coffee and in our morning routine. Slowing down and building some quiet coffee-crafting time into our day would be a great thing indeed.
Have you tried pour over coffee? It’s really as simple – and satisfying – as it sounds.
