My friend Raj had this to say in his comments of my post An Uncle, A Sister And Coffee.
“Hi Ramana: I am surprised that no one, including the video has spoken about the one step prior to this: namely the making of the powder itself. In my childhood, we had to “roast” the raw coffee beans in a rotating-roller roaster machine so it uniformly roasts.
Then, minutes before making coffee, we had to grind it to a fine powder and then proceed like the video shows. Aaaahhh! those were the good old days ! No Starbucks ! No Dunkin !”
Those words took me back to my childhood and pre-packaged-coffee-powders-in-shops days when coffee beans were roasted and ground at home to make fresh coffee. The aroma coming out of the whole process was to die for.
The beans were first roasted in a grinder over charcoal fire in my home. The roasting was done in a gadget like the one shown below.
The next process was grinding the roasted beans into a powder which was done in a gadget like the one shown below.
Mind you, the roasting and grinding was an every day affair. One did not roast, grind and store away for use later.
The powder thus ground was used to distill the decoction as explained in my earlier post An Uncle, A Sister And Coffee.
The aromas coming out of the kitchen were simply amazing and many youngsters would long to grow up fast to be able to drink coffee which was denied to them.
Do you have any memories of such long drawn process of making coffee?
No, our coffee-making routine is very simple. We buy roasted beans from the local tea and coffee merchant and then grind them ourselves in a coffee-grinder that gives us several days’ supply. We wouldn’t want to grind the beans every time we have coffee. In our opinion the coffee still has a great taste a few days after grinding.
My tea making is more complicated than my son’e coffee making. I make the Indian Chai with which I am sure that you are familiar.
Oh My God Ramana !! The pictures are exactly the likes of the machines we used. I was struggling with words and your pictures are perfect !
As a side note, after we drank up the coffee, the remnant spent wet powder was fed to the plants “so they grow nicely”. Ha Ha….
Thank you. I remember the dregs going to the garden too.
I never had to roast the beans but I did grind beans to make a fresh pot daily. Lynn and I became coffee snobs of a sort and the lowest quality we drank was Starbucks LOL. For years I ordered beans from various and sundry roasters – it was fun and not too expensive. The best I recall was Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
I can relate to your snob days as my son and heir is going through that phase just now. We use Indian coffee beans as we grow quite a variety of them.
I can’t even recall coffee at home in my childhood – yes loose tea steeped in various ways. But not for children!
We had tea too. In fact mostly tea and coffee was when my grandfather or uncles came visiting.