Making the perfect cup of coffee

Our first attempt at Tessa’s coffee recipe.

On Friday we mentioned on Facebook about making the perfect cup of coffee. The blog post from Cafedirect gave detailed instructions of how to make the perfect cup using a cafetiere. The coffee drinkers were impressed and it caused some debate over how hot the water should actually be. But we were surprised when one of  our customers Tessa Connorton suggested the following method making coffee:

When I was a junior in a solictiors in London, I had to make coffee for the staff. I was shown by my superior how to make the perfect cup of coffee (taking into account this was 1964) no granules then! it was just plain old jar of ground coffee. This is how it went, add two teaspoons of coffee, 3 teaspoons of milk, beat for EVER with a spoon , when the mixture was smooth, add very very slowly hot milk beating all the time with a fork (still in the cup) the froth will be on top and now you have a cappucino, I had to do this 12 times 3 times a day lol :-))

Yeuch! we thought. But no says Tessa it tasted pretty good she assured us. There was only one way to find out – make a cup!

Our second attempt this time without the coffee grounds, and this time finished. Lovely cup of coffee.

So we followed the detailed instruction suggested by Tessa and we made a cup of coffee – the one you can see at the top of the page – using our favourite Cafedirect Rich Roast Fairtrade ground coffee. It tasted pretty good despite our initial misgivings. However, there was a lot of coffee grounds floating around making the coffee difficult to drink without a tooth pick! Ever resourceful we tried again and this time used a tea strainer to remove the coffee grounds. Now the flavour was very 1970s – took me back to the Misha Black-designed Kardomah Coffee shop in Manchester’s Albert Square when I, as a little lad aged 8, was just beginning to experiment with the “God of drinks”.

So, nice coffee Tessa – certainly option if you like your coffee milky!