Nothing Smells As Good As Percolator Coffee
The coffee snobs will say you are a barbarian for using a coffee percolator, especially a stove top percolator, but that’s OK because no drip coffee maker can match the robust taste and house-filling aroma of percolated coffee.
The litany of complaints are that percolators overextract the aromatic oils of the coffee grounds by boiling it or by reheating the brewed coffee over and over again. A percolator does rebrew the liquid many times in the sense that at least part of the liquid is passed through the grounds every time it bubbles to the top of the pot. That doesn’t mean that it is overextracted, however. The only real way to test this for yourself is to have a cup of freshly brewed percolated coffee and compare it with the output of your drip coffeemaker.
The best of the bunch are Faberware coffee percolators because they are still making them the old fashioned way. The Yosemite model is made from thick gauge stainless steel and it feels it too. The pot comes with a mirror finish and so long as you don’t stick the pot in the middle of a roaring camp fire you can restore its brightness anytime with a little elbow grease.
A surprising number of people have never used a percolator and have no clue how to make coffee with it. There is no one right answer for how long you should let the coffee percolate but for four to eight cups about eight minutes of percolating time seems to produce consistently good resutls. Turn the heat down from high after the first perk hits the bubble. You want to avoid boiling the coffee the whole time or the coffee snobs will have their way. The lower you heat setting that keep the coffee perking up into the glass bubble on the top the better the coffee will taste. Too much heat after the coffee is brewed will result in a burnt taste.
You want to use coarse or regular ground coffee in percolator coffee pots. If you grind your own coffee you can experiment with the setting until you get it right, but if you buy packaged coffee you want to avoid the fine grinds. Too many particles will get through the filter and end up in your cup.