JULY 7, THURSDAY

THE PERFECT CUP OF HOT COFFEE AT ASSI GHAT

This is a very technical report which should only be read by people traveling abroad who want to be able to make and drink hot coffee for hours at a time in faraway places with no amenities.

Getting ready for my upcoming three months overseas I’ve gone overboard on making sure that I can sit for hours at a time typing or listening to music or reading a book—while drinking hot coffee.

I have to confess that while I always like to have a cup of hot coffee, and have been drinking three or four cups a day for the past 30 years, I don’t really like the flavor of coffee, regular coffee or flavored coffee. And I’ve always been dismissive of people who say that this coffee or that coffee tastes really good. To me all coffee has a slightly bitter, acid flavor. It has also not escaped my notice that restaurants apparently make most of their profit on drinks, with coffee being the main culprit.

So this makes me dismissive of Starbucks coffee which I think has the same slightly bitter, acid flavor of any other coffee and seems to me to be wildly over priced. The reason I know that it is wildly overpriced is because at home I drink Aldi ground coffee. A $5 can of Aldi coffee makes, by Aldi’s calculation, 250 cups, or 2.5 cents a cup. This means that the profit on a $3 cup of Starbucks coffee (if it is still $3, I don’t go near Starbucks to find out) is $2.97.5 cents. Of course, at Starbucks you get the Starbucks ambiance and demonstrate that you are a member of the elite Starbucks crowd. (I remember walking by the opening of the first very elegant Starbucks store on Connaught Place in New Delhi. There was a long, long, long line down the collonaded walkway outside Starbucks waiting for the ambiance and the coffee to dazzle them. (There is a Starbucks in my local Ingles grocery store next to the fruit of the day and fresh flowers, I don’t know what you get for your $2.97.5 cents there.). My old men’s group meets in McDonalds where the senior coffee has gone up from 65 to 80 cents. Even that seems extravagant to me and so I get a refill to take home with me, getting my full 5 cents worth.

I remember years ago near Assi Ghat next to the Ganges in an upstairs coffee shop listening to a very serious discussion between a visiting American scholar at Banaras Hindu University and a beautiful American student about the best cup of coffee. At least I think that was what the discussion was about, she seemed quite dazzled by his brilliance. Apparently a good cup of could only be made with a coffee maker costing hundreds of dollars.

So this is my background for my search for a way to have a hot cup of coffee in my upcoming Airbnb in Montevideo, Uruguay and in Naoussa, Greece. My first high tech solution for a cup that would keep coffee hot was an Ember Cup. The Ember cup has a tiny battery in it that will keep coffee hot for an hour, or when sitting on a charger will keep it hot all day. You can control the cup from your iPhone. By this time I had abandoned the usual glass carafe electric coffee pot which keeps coffee hot but makes it more and more bitter as the day goes on. Instead I had switched to a French Press which would let the grounds soak in boiling water and, when the plunger was pushed down and taken out, would not get progressively more bitter and bitter. Instead it would get colder and colder but last all day. For each new cup I would have to heat up the cup in the microwave (which I couldn’t do with the metal Ember cup without blowing up the kitchen).

But there were a couple of problems with the $130 Ember mug. The battery would only keep the coffee hot for an hour with the charger only working on 110 volt current (not useful overseas) and the cup and charger are very heavy, too heavy and bulky for my carry-on luggage only life style.

So I have been looking for something else with travel websites pointing the way. First, because of the glowing reports by a bespotted woman I bought the Brumatic Coffee kit for $40. When it arrived it was in two parts, a large and very heavy travel mug which would keep coffee hot for hours, and a metal cup into which you put a filter and just the right amount of coffee and carefully pour hot water (205 degrees only) making it bloom as you pour. And you could use your own Aldi 2.5 cent coffee or an equivalent. It didn’t take me long to realize that the travel mug was too heavy to take traveling and that the simple metal silicone pour through device would work on any ordinary cup and was worth about $5. But it did make a cup of coffee which, amazingly, was not bitter at all. There was something to all the hype. But it was too heavy and the metal travel mug would blow up in a microwave.

But another travel site pointed me to another similar device. This is the Aeropress coffee making kit. This also cost about $40 (I am up to nearly $200 so far, still not satisfied, if you are counting). This kit is made entirely of plastic and is much lighter and more compact. Again the system is the same. You put in a paper filter, then a measure of the coffee (Aldi again) and pour water in (no talk of a bloom) and then squeeze the water down through with a plunger similar to a French press.

This makes a very good cup of coffee and even I, after dismissing the barista wannabees for years, can taste the difference.

But of course you have been wondering through all of these paragraphs, how do I keep the coffee hot? Through another travel site I discovered the Bestinkits coffee cup warmer which you set the coffee cup on. It works on both 110 and 220 current anywhere in the world. It will keep my cup of coffee hot for hours and the coffee never turns bitter unless I leave the cup on too long and it turns dark and gooey. It also cost almost $40 but only because I bought it with the accompanying specialty ceramic mug which turned out to be the same as any ordinary ceramic mug. (Up to $240 so far) It is the ideal solution although all I needed was the plastic pour through funnel and plunger, probably $10 worth.

But you ask (whoever is left reading this interminable explanation) how do you get the water hot at the end of the world. I’ve thought of that, too.

Tomorrow or the next day a collapsible silicone electric kettle that folds down to one inch high will be left outside my door by Amazon ($30). If this works and isn’t too heavy, in future at the end of the world I will be able to have my hot cup of coffee (not bitter) at a cost of only $270 plus 2.5 cents, all day long.

But Susie has pointed out one further use for the collapsible electric kettle which relieves me a little. In India where I don’t drink tap water for personal reasons to gross to mention here, I will be able to boil water, again and again, cool it and carry it with me during the day, saving India from a trail of somewhat expensive discarded plastic water bottles and protecting my health at the same time, if it works, otherwise I will continue my search.