In article
>,
phaeton > wrote:


> Something I noticed a lot was that
> a lot of people who hated percolators had also never used one.

I think percolators are worse, theoretically. Sometimes practice and
theory just don't match.

> Seems like the bad reputation that a percolator gets comes from about
> 20+ years ago. Here's why:

Perhaps different parts of the world, and the US, are different. I saw
very few stove top percolators twenty years ago. We were starving
students when we got married in 1972, and we got *two* electric
percolators for wedding presents.

> 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.

Water boils at 212F at sea level. That's just a fact. In order to
"perc", the water at the bottom has to boil. To the extent that you
have coffee down there, later in the cycle, you are "boiling" the
coffee. It's true that the water being dispersed over the grounds on
the top has cooled to the correct temperature. Of course, the stove top
percolator will boil *all* the liquid on the bottom (if you have a
normal stove), whereas the electric will only boil the liquid right
under the lift tube.

> 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.

Yup. Keep it clean, and keep those grounds away afterwards.

4) Use a paper filter in the basket, unless you plan to drink *all* the
coffee quickly. Otherwise, the fine grounds will go into the coffee and
eventually make it taste overdone and bitter.

> 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.

I was always pretty happy with our coffee from the electric percolator.

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA