On 9/2/2010 1:21 PM, phaeton wrote:
> Hey folks. As you recall I recently asked about electric coffee
> percolators, and got a lot of responses. My research didn't stop
> here, though. I found a lot of similar dissent about the percolator
> around the web, but there was also a very small population of radicals
> that were arguing that percolators are great. Many of these folks use
> other "coffee snob" methods (press pot, manual drip, vacuum pot)
> alongside an electric percolator. Something I noticed a lot was that
> a lot of people who hated percolators had also never used one.
>
> Seems like the bad reputation that a percolator gets comes from about
> 20+ years ago. Here's why:
>
> 1) Most percolators were stovetop. It was difficult to know the
> difference between 'perking' (between 190-205F) and boiling (212F) the
> water. As we all know, actually boiling the coffee destroys it.
> Modern electric percolators are regulated to the 190-205 temp, which
> is also the optimum extraction temp for coffee. It seems to be a
> common misconception that percolators "boil and reboil the coffee",
> but they actually do not boil if used properly.
>
> 2) Up until 30 or 35 years ago, all coffee in the US was made from the
> cheap and bitter Robusta family instead of the Arabica. Arabica costs
> more (significantly less yield per tree) but the taste difference is
> huge. Coffee as an 'art' wasn't established yet in the US. Just like
> how the only beer you could buy was Budweiser, Schlitz or Coors,

Don't forget Dixie, Lone Star, Pearl, Jax, Narragansett, National
Bohemian, Falstaff, Colt .45, and a zillion other local brands of beer.
Not to mention local and regional brands of coffee that were actually
made with Arabica beans.

the
> only coffee you could buy was robusta. Nobody really knew the
> difference.
>
> 3) You must keep percolators spotlessly clean. A lot of people either
> don't know this or don't do it. You also have to remove the coffee
> basket when it's done perking, as the steam from the coffee below will
> continue to overextract the grounds above.
>
> After learning all this, I decided to take a chance on one. I bought
> a National Presto 12-cup electric percolator. It makes some pretty
> good coffee. Really strong, really smooth, not bitter. Gone is the
> 'plasticy' flavor i used to get from my Automatic Drip machine. So all
> in all, I think that coffee from the modern electric percolator is a
> completely different animal than that from the old stovetop in the
> 1950s.
>
> Just thought I'd share.
>
> -J