The New Complete Book of Food
chlorinated water will taste better if you refrigerate the water overnight in a glass (not
plastic) bottle so that the chlorine evaporates.
Never make coffee with hot tap water or water that has been boiled. Both lack oxygen,
which means that your coffee will taste flat.
Always brew coffee in a scrupulously clean pot. Each time you make coffee, oils are
left on the inside of the pot. If you don’t scrub them off, they will turn rancid and the next
pot of coffee you brew will taste bitter. To clean a coffee pot, wash it with detergent, rinse
it with water in which you have dissolved a few teaspoons of baking soda, then rinse one
more time with boiling water.What Happens When You Cook This Food
In making coffee, your aim is to extract flavorful solids (including coffee oils and sucrose
and other sugars) from the ground beans without pulling bitter, astringent tannins along
with them. How long you brew the coffee determines how much solid material you extract
and how the coffee tastes. The longer the brewing time, the greater the amount of solids
extracted. If you brew the coffee long enough to extract more than 30 percent of its solids,
you will get bitter compounds along with the flavorful ones. (These will also develop by let-
ting coffee sit for a long time after brewing it.)
Ordinarily, drip coffee tastes less bitter than percolator coffee because the water in a
drip coffeemaker goes through the coffee only once, while the water in the percolator pot
is circulated through the coffee several times. To make strong but not bitter coffee, increase
the amount of coffee—not the brewing time.How Other Kinds of Processing Affect This Food
Drying. Soluble coffees (freeze-dried, instant) are made by dehydrating concentrated
brewed coffee. These coffees are often lower in caffeine than regular ground coffees because
caffeine, which dissolves in water, is lost when the coffee is dehydrated.
Decaffeinating. Decaffeinated coffee is made with beans from which the caffeine has been
extracted, either with an organic solvent (methylene chloride) or with water. How the coffee
is decaffeinated has no effect on its taste, but many people prefer water-processed decaf-
feinated coffee because it is not a chemically treated food. (Methylene chloride is an animal
carcinogen, but the amounts that remain in coffees decaffeinated with methylene chloride
are so small that the FDA does not consider them hazardous. The carcinogenic organic sol-
vent trichloroethylene [TCE], a chemical that causes liver cancer in laboratory animals, is no
longer used to decaffeinate coffee.)Medical Uses and/or Benefits
As a stimulant and mood elevator. Caffeine is a stimulant. It increases alertness and concentra-
tion, intensifies muscle responses, quickens heartbeat, and elevates mood. Its effects derive