Rachael Ray

I probably shouldn’t write anything about coffee. I am not a coffee expert. I don’t go to “cuppings.” I don’t care at all about espresso (which is to coffee nerds what cleavage is to regular nerds.) Oliver Strand, the country’s leading coffee writer, still talks about how I put Sweet n Low in a $20 cup of Esmerelda.

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I know this much, though: coffee has gotten a lot better. And it’s not hard to get on board the so-called “third wave” of coffee drinking. I had the good luck to marry a woman who lived in San Francisco and was steeped (if you will forgive the term) in coffee culture. I also eat out a lot, and I am friends with Oliver, who is on a one-man crusade to caffeinate the whole country. But one way or another I have found out a few things about coffee, and I offer them to you by way of a beginner’s guide.

• There is something going on now in coffee that is, to Starbucks, what Starbucks was to the crappy canned coffees that they served back in the 60s. This “third wave” of coffee is bought directly from coffee plantations around the world and not mixed with forty other kinds of coffee. For that reason, it tastes distinctive, and you can get a sense of what coffees from that part of the world generally taste like. Which is cool.

• Once the coffee is shipped, it’s roasted right away, rather than sitting around in warehouse somewhere. And when it is roasted, it’s to a degree that the importer thinks is right for that particular bean. The Starbucks-type operation gets a million beans, cooks the bejesus out of them, and then grinds it up and hopes you’ll put enough caramel cream into it that you won’t notice. That inky taste isn’t the taste of coffee; it’s the taste of burned coffee. That’s why it’s bad. Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly puts it this way: “We are now in the third wave of coffee connoisseurship, where …roasting is about bringing out rather than incinerating the unique characteristics of each bean, and the flavor is clean and hard and pure.” Nice!

• The three most influential and best importers seem to be Stumptown, Counterculture, and Intelligensia. But there a lot of other ones, too. The color of the roast is less important than it being from one particular farm, rather than just a country, i.e. “Kenya AA” or “Indonesian.” That said, the country by itself gives you some idea what it will taste like. The African coffees are acid and winey, and are sometimes so clean they are almost like drinking tea. You can practically see through them in the pot. Then there are the Indonesian ones, which tend to be super earthy. You practically feel like you could eat them. They are so full bodied you want to burp afterwards. Then there are the central American ones, everybody’s favorite, which are balanced and even and harmonious. When you drink Chock Full of Nuts or some other good quality blend, it’s likely made from beans grown in this region.

• As for how to make it, you are on your own. We use the french press for everything, which also means having an electric teapot taking up space. Am I going to tell you that using Mr. Coffee would ruin the coffee and make it undrinkable? No, I am not going to tell you that. But then I am a crude case. I actually drink Chock Full of Nuts as my go-to coffee. I will say that it’s better to use good water than bad water, because coffee is basically just water. If your tap water sucks, you coffee won’t be that good. It’s not superstring theory.

As for what to put in it, I can’t tell you that, either. I use dehyrdated milk and Sweet n Low. But Danit makes it for me, and between her technique and the good ingredients she uses, even I can’t screw it up competely.