Banjo does French Press Coffee

French Press is also known as a 'Press Pot'.

With our latest escapades regarding the Keurig Model B60 coffee machine causing consternation, we have decided to try making coffee via the French Press method.

This will be updated daily, as we work our way through the process of discovery on making the best cup of coffee.

Basis of Comparison
We used to frequent a local Italian restaurant (owned and operated by Iranians' !) that simply had the best coffee we have ever had.  Unfortunately, in a recent trip there, their coffee had lost all of its exquisiteness.  We have fond memories of it, and it will constitute our basis for comparison.

Ingredients

• Coffee: Starbucks brand.  Whole bean, which we ground in the store.  Note: the coffee bean chosen has one of the biggest, if not the biggest, impact on the flavor of the coffee.

Method
This is where the majority of the variation will occur, so the different tests will center around the various aspects of preparation.  Some of the elements associated with method are:

• Bean choice - Starbucks Espresso Roast Whole Bean Coffee
• Grinding method (e.g., using the in-store grinder will mean you have some carryover flavor from other, previous grinds.  Same with at-home grinding, but you can better control how much of the previous grind is cleaned out).
• Size of grind (how fine the coffee beans ground)
• Water temperature.  Currently, we are bringing it to a full boil before placing into brew carafe.
• Water choice.  We have the option of using tap water, filtered tap water, bottled distilled water, branded bottled water.
• Amount of coffee grinds placed into the carafe.
• Length of time coffee grinds sit in carafe with hot water.
• Heated utensils.  E.g., whether the carafe, plunger, cups are all heated prior to use (prior heating will keep the utensil from cooling down the coffee)
• What the coffee is stored in.  We have a vacuum sealer, so I may try to get the attachment that will allow us to place the coffee into Mason Jars and then vacuum out the air between each use.  Currently, we are using a big ceramic jar made for storing coffee (it has a clasped lid with gasket), but does not provide the ability to remove air.

 Tests
Note: our tests are not scientific - they are just documenting our search for our perfect cup of coffee; see links for other sites that may offer you more information. 
8/1/11:

• Coffee: Starbucks Espresso Roast Whole Bean, ground at grocery, course grind.
• Water: Filtered tap water.
• Number of cups: 2
• 8 scoops (7 gram scoop) placed into French Press
• Cups and French Press preheated with hot water.
• Water brought to boil, then poured over coffee and cap placed on.
• Mixture stirred with wooden spoon
• Timer set for 4 minutes.
• Results: a little too strong for us, but not bitter.

Links
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09113/964681-51.stm
http://www.coffeegeek.com/guides/presspot

Charleston Dining - Anticipation of Cypress!

Tonight we head back into Charleston, where we will dine at Cypress. We are planning on having the 'prix fixe' dinner for $39 each.

S, our daughter, alerted us to The Glass Onion, so we are planning on having lunch there this coming Wednesday, and possibly a dinner there next Tuesday week for fried chicken.

This coming Wednesday, we travel to Bowens Island Oyster Roast, between James Island (south of Charleston) and Folly Beach for shovel fulls of roasted oysters! This guy is a pro! At home, we host parties for 20 - 25 people where we serve 500 steamed oysters, which are my favorite...roasted are very difficult to cook to just the specific-right temperature because of the hot fire; steamed is much easier to control the 'doneness'.

Final - Test of Low Temp Oven

Today, at noon, we tested the results of the Low Temperature Oven.

The meat, a 6.1 pound Top Round piece of beef, has cooked for 2.5 days (60 hours). It started at a temp of 200 dF for 3 hours. then switched to a setpoint of 140 dF. Because of a high deadband (134 - 146) due to the 'dusk-to-dawn' (DTD)limitations, I later lowered the setpoint to 137 (131 - 143).

We just had lunch with the meat.

The meat was cooked to a perfect medium rare. The meat itself was tender, but most of the gristle had not been converted.

The meat was not overcooked anywhere. There was at most 1 Tbsp of fat drippings in the pan. As noted previously, this is a very, very lean cut of meat. It therefore did not have any fat to carry flavor, which resulted in the meat being bland.

The test itself is a successful test of the concept and the equipment. Because it was a test, we used the cheapest cut of meat we could find, a tough, very lean piece of Top Round. It is not a cut of meat I ever intend to use again by itself. It may make good Philly Steaks, and/or sandwiches. We intend to cut thin slices and make sandwiches with some of the remaining meat.

Will conduct a later test, I intend to use a better cut of meat with more fat in it, cook it at a higher temperature (this was a little too rare for our likes), (I'll try 145) but not for a longer time.

Because this is a oven with no air circulation going on, it does not transfer heat to the meat as fast as a Sous Vide water immersion bath does, so it takes considerably longer to tenderize the meat. This same cut of meat cooked in our Sous Vide cooker would have been fork tender, and all of the gristle would have been converted.

The crust on this was too dried out. It was just tough, not a 'crust'.

So, results: equipment worked great. Bad choice for a meat cut. Temperature a little low for our tastes.

3rd Day - Low Temperature Oven Test

It's 10:40 AM, Thursday April 7, 2011. I started the test at 10:00 PM on Tuesday, April 5, 2011. So I am 36 hours into the test. I plan on going to noon tomorrow, for a total of around 60 hours, or 2.5 days.

So far, the temperature controller has worked flawlessly. However, the 'dawn-to-dusk' (DTD), as mentioned in the previous post, appears to have been designed so as to have a deliberate delay. This delay is causing the temperature to swing a little wider (known as deadband) than I would like - it's settled out at +/- 7 dF. Because of this, at a setpoint of 140, the temperature was getting up to around 146, which is too high. So yesterday I lowered the setpoint to 137. With this setpoint, the highest reading to date is 143.95, which is rare to have happen.....most of the time it gets up around 141, while the low temperature has been 130.65, and most of the time gets no lower than 133.

I forgot to mention it, but the temperature controller is taking a temperature once per second, and thus making decisions on whether to heat (250 watt bulb in oven turned on), or coast (bulb in oven turned off).

Also, in the past, for my BBQ air inlet damper controller I developed (1999), I used Atmel AVR microcontrollers. I'm still using those, but now in the form of an Arduino. The Arduino, which has an Atmel AVR on it, really only gives me a hardware platform, with a thermocouple 'shield'. My previous development used an AVR 12-bit ADC and relays, so I had to do more development to convert microVolts to temperature, and it used some relays to control the damper motor rather than the DTD commercial product I'm using for this test. Not sure yet which direction I'll go for future product of low temperature oven. This is the Arduino UNO, which uses an ATMEGA328 microcontroller.

So things appear to be on-track for a successful test.

Test results will be eaten at noon tomorrow!

2nd Day - Low Temperature Oven Test

Yesterday, I worked on the software until I got it complete enough to use. It's not 'production ready' yet, but close enough for use as a test.

I spent several hours running tests without any meat in the oven. The first test had a 100 watt bulb placed into the oven, but it was unable to get the oven temperature up past 175 dF or so. I needed a new, higher wattage bulb. Since we are on a vacation island (Edisto Island), things are a little difficult to come by, but I was in luck - the Ace Hardware store, located about a mile off-island, had 250 watt heating bulbs (the guy said they were for keeping biddies (young chickens) warm). I bought one, along with a 200 watt bulb (total was $11.50!) and came back and plugged it in. With the 250 watt bulb, I was able to take the oven up to about 230 dF, so since my starting setpoint was going to be 200 dF, I was in business!

So, at 10 PM, I got the beef covered in a rub, then popped it into the oven.

The starting temperature is 200 dF. I intended, after about 3 hours, to lower the setpoint to 140 dF (when I get home where I have more electronic components, I intend to automate this step too). The oven, which had been at 200 dF from an earlier no-meat test, took 1.5 hours to come back up to 200 dF. This effect was caused by: 1- having to leave the door open a long time while I worked with getting the meat in the door (the bulb takes up the bottom half of the oven - it's a very small condo studio oven), and 2- the meat, at 6.1 pounds, is a big heat soak. So anyway, the oven was back at 200 dF at about 11:30 PM.

I let the meat cook at this temperature until 2:00 AM, at which point I lowered the oven temperature setpoint to 140 dF.

Observations on the first test:
1- Ovens aren't all that efficient. They could use more insulation.
2- the temperature controller I had designed, coded and built, worked perfectly.
3 - The 'dawn-to-dusk' (DTD) controller I was using as an optical switch (my controller outputs light from an LED taped to the DTD photocell) to turn on/off the oven heat source (the 250 watt bulb), has a long delay built into it. For instance, if I turn my LED off, which will result in the DTD turning on it's switch to supply power to the oven bulb, there's about a 1 minute delay before this happens. It's the same in the other direction - when my controller turns its LED on, the DTD takes about 1 minute before it turns the oven lamp heater bulb back off. I think this is probably designed on purpose into the DTD, as it makes the DTD less sensitive to transient light in it's designed use: e.g., a passing car's lights wouldn't cause the DTD to cycle off-on as it passes. When I get home, I'll pop this device open and have a look at the electronics - I'm expecting a simple capacitor-resistor timing circuit to be in place to slow down the response time.

This built-in lag time on the DTD is resulting in larger-than-desired deadband, or temperature swings between high and low. The deadband is about 10 dF. With a setpoint of 140 dF, the lowest reading is about 134 dF, while the highest reading is about 145 dF. This is too gross a control, so I'll improve it before I'm finished with this project. I want to have a deadband of +/- 1 dF.

I'm planning on letting the test run for a total of 48 - 72 hours. I would like to go the whole 72 hours but we've got some friends coming in to visit, and the 72 hours may not be a good fit, so will have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the test is going, and smelling(!) great!

Edisto Beach Test - Low Temperature Oven

Today, I'm planning on starting a new test with a low temperature oven.

Yesterday I went into Charleston to Home Depot in order to buy the parts necessary for the test oven construction.

First, I'm going to modify the existing code I wrote for the temperature controller. This controller is using a thermocouple and a microcontroller. The temperature controller will drive an LED using inverse logic; when it doesn't want heat, it will turn the LED on; when it does want heat, it will turn the LED off.

The LED will shine into a 'dusk-to-dawn' photocell switch I bought at Home Depot for less then $10. When the 'dusk-to-dawn' switch sees light, it switches off its electrical output; when no light is present, it switches on its electrical output, and thus the reason for the reverse LED output above.

I plan on driving a simple 100 watt bulb for the heat generation. This may not be enough, so I can add additional bulbs if necessary, up to 600 watts, before I start hitting the first of the current limits.

While here on vacation, I'm limited to what I can use or build for an oven. At home I have a large clay pot (ala Alton Brown) that I use for an oven, but I didn't bring that with us on our vacation trip. So I've been scrounging around to figure out something cheap and safe to use. Since my temperatures are so low (it won't exceed 200 dF), anything can be used, even a cardboard box. However, we are so cramped in this little studio condo, I don't want to put anything else in here. I can't do it outside because the dang raccoons are getting into everything! I did buy a small cooler for the task, but on the drive back home, I realized I could just use the oven in the condo's stove and be done with it. I'll just place the bulb in the bottom of the oven, and control the heat in the oven this way.

My test will consist of a large piece of beef round tip, 6.1 pounds.

I plan on cooking it for at least 2 days, possibly 3.

I'm going to modify my controller so it will maintain a 200 dF temperature for the first 4 - 6 hours, until the internal temperature of the meat comes up to 130 dF, then switch to a lower temperature of 140 dF for the oven, which I will maintain for the next 2 - 3 days.

I'll post an update later today on the oven construction and software mods. My wife needs the oven through lunch today, so it will be early afternoon before launch.

A BBQ Book

While adding my recent low temperature BBQ post, I could not seem to quit adding stuff. It finally occurred to me, I need to put this into a book.

So yesterday, using a great free tool - FreeMind, I've mapped out a book on BBQ. I'm calling it (at least right now):

Souther BBQ - An Engineer's Perspective.

While I haven't written a word yet, I can say, so far, it's mapped out to 14 chapters! Seems a little long to me, so it may be too granular; time will tell!

BBQ and Low Temperature Cooking

This blog actually started out somewhere else that I was going to go, but it took on a life of its own, so I just started following it. I hope to get to the direction I was heading in a future post!

If you've been reading this blog from the start, then you will be aware that I have been cooking BBQ for a long time - I started trying (!) in 1986. It was hard back then because we were living in Florida, there wasn't any BBQ insight available that would lend insight on how to make it, and there wasn't any Internet (although I did have a usenet feed via uucp to a UNIX system I was running at home - circa 1989).

BBQ, for the uninitiated, is cooking tough cuts of meat, at a low temperature, for a long period of time. Since, as all God's chosen (Southerners) know, BBQ is only pork - it ain't beef, and typical cuts are the shoulder , which when split yields the Picnic and the Boston Butt.

Butt butt butt you say, I thought the butt was at the rear end of the pig! Nope; it's at the shoulder/neck, where the shoulder butts up against the neck. The rear end is the Ham, and that's a whole different creature.

While you will see references as high as 250dF to cook BBQ, this is a poor way to make it. People that smoke their Pork at 250dF are doing it because they are in a hurry, and don't mind sacrificing quality for speed. Well, go to McDonald's and get a McRib. You'll also see references to 225dF, which is better, but no joy yet. Real BBQ has to be done below 212 (at sea level; lower if you live higher).

Think about this: I'm sure you've seen a pressure cooker in action. That pressure is created by boiling water, and water boils (at sea level, lower temperatures at higher elevations) at 212 dF. You've got to put a lid on that pot and lock it down to be able to contain that pressure - it's trying to burst out!

So what's going to happen to meat that you cook above 212 dF? It's going to heat the water in all the little cells, cause them to expand, burst through the cell walls, and flow out of the meat where it will evaporate. You just lost a lot of moisture.

But flavor is transported by fat; so what happens to the fat when you cook at 250dF? Pork fat [rules]starts to render out of the meat at 140 dF. The higher the temperature, the faster it renders. So if you are looking for low-fat BBQ, then continue to cook at 250 dF, or 225 dF.....and you are tossing a lot of that flavor out of the meat.

So why are people cooking at 250 dF and at 225 dF? It's because they are in a hurry. Well, I'm cooking BBQ for FLAVOR and I'm not in a hurry to get it!

Note that we are concerned with two different temperatures here. The first temperature we are concerned with is the temperature of the oven, while the second temperature is the internal temperature of the meat. The temperature of the oven determines, ultimately, the highest internal temperature the meat will reach. For instance, if I cook at an oven temperature of 145 dF, then the internal temperature of the meat can not ever go above 145 dF, regardless of how long we leave the meat in the oven....2 years later and it will still not be above 145 dF.

So the oven temperature determines the following things: it determines how fast the internal temperature of the meat will come to your desired temperature; it determines what the maximum internal temperature of the meat can reach; it determines the temperature difference between the outside meat and the inside meat; and, since temperature determines the amount of time you can leave the meat in the oven, it also determines the tenderness of the meat.

The higher the temperature of your oven, the faster heat will be transferred to your meat. It can only be transferred by going from the outside of the meat into the inside of the meat. So the outside of the meat is going to get hotter and this hotter temperature will gradually be transferred into the interior of the meat. The higher the outside temperature of the meat, the higher the difference between the interior of the meat, and the faster the transfer. If the meat is left in the oven long enough, then at some point, the interior temperature and exterior temperature of the meat will reach equilibrium, and no further transfer will take place; the whole of the meat is at a steady uniform state.

When people look at cooking temperature vs. time charts, for example when cooking a Thanksgiving Turkey, they are interested in two things: the oven temperature, and the time to leave the turkey in the oven at that temperature. That temperature and time solution is solving the following problem: trying to cook the turkey in the shortest time, while getting the interior of the turkey done. Too long at too high a temperature and the surface is dry and hard while the interior is just right. Too short at too high a temperature and the surface is just right while the interior is still raw. So the temperature that is chosen is that which will satisfy the need to have the surface not too dry while the interior has had enough time for the heat to migrate into the interior and bring it up to a safe, good temperature.

The larger the piece of meat, the greater the distance from the surface to the interior middle of the meat. The larger this distance is, the further the heat has to travel, and the longer it takes for the heat to do so. So big pieces of meat takes longer for the heat to migrate into the interior - another way of saying this is it takes longer for the meat to get done.

This is the reason fast food hamburgers are wide and thin - the heat migrates all the way through in just a few minutes; the whole thing is done, at the same temperature, in a really short amount of time, so you can blast it with a lot of heat. Thicker pieces and you've got to lower that temperature and cook it for a longer time to allow the heat to migrate to the center.

Harold McGee, in "On Food and Cooking" remarked that the real way to cook something would be to cook it at the desired temperature you want it to end up at. In other words, if you want your BBQ to end up at 160 dF, which the US Government says is safe, then you want to cook it at 160 dF. However, Alton Brown says that pork is at it's prime at 145 dF.

That means I may want to cook mine to 145 dF, as that is probably the best temperature for flavor. But I haven't tried this yet, because I haven't had an accurate enough low temperature oven and temperature controller yet....but I'm changing that! I have cooked a Chuck Roast at 165 in a low temperature oven. It came out tender and moist.

Pork cooked to 145 or even 160 won't look very appetizing; it will look gray - dull, and unappetizing. To improve that, you'll want to place that Pork into an oven (a smoker is an oven, just with some smoke in it) at 325 - 400 dF after cooking at 145 or 160, in order to create a Maillard Browning effect. But at 325 - 400 dF for how long? I'm not sure yet, but I'm researching; so in the meantime, you'll have to just put 'er in and watch till it gets to the point where it looks like you want it to look!

But back to how long to cook the Pork meat at 145 or 160 dF?

That brings us to Low Temperature Cooking.

Sous Vide has pioneered low temperature cooking for the average cook. However, we've already seen that BBQ is the basis for low temperature cooking, and Sous Vide is just adapting this approach, by putting it into a plastic bag, removing the air, and cooking it low and slow.

If you read about Sous Vide cooking, you will note one similarity with this approach and BBQ - how tender the meat is.

So, if our goal is to cook BBQ and have it at it's peak (which for me is 145 dF), and at it's NC style Pulled-Pork tender, then you need to cook it for at least 2 days, and maybe 3 days...I don't know yet, but I'm going to experiment to find out, and when I do I'll post an update here.

Which leads me to the post I actually wanted to make - low temperature cooking, which will be in a future post.

I'm designing and building a low temperature controller for a low temperature cooking oven.

When I've got it completed, I will post it here.