Your Marine Water Heaters Distributors Talk About the Importance of Coffee Science and Boating

Raritan Engineering your marine water heaters experts would like to share with you this week some great information regarding great ideas for brewing coffee while boating.

A few years ago, a gourmet coffee maker contacted us*about a new blend it had developed especially for sailors. As I recall, the medium roast was formulated to create a full-bodied taste and aroma when savored outside in the salt air.

As far as I can tell, no one yet has designed the ideal way to make cup of coffee underway aboard a sailboat. With the hopes of sparing other coffee-lovers years of frustration, or possible injury, I’m sharing my experience with the several methods we’ve tried.

Instant coffee: We spent a couple weeks re-caulking our ketch, Tosca, in Cartegena, Colombia and were chagrined to discover that Nescafe was served at all the restaurants in this coffee-producing country, prompting us to give it a try. Perhaps the South American version was different from the one we knew? Nope.

Cowboy coffee: We were introduced to this method by a couple of Canadian conspiracy theorists in Fiji, who refused to buy anything made in an industrialized nation that they did not absolutely need. As I recall, all their meals — like their coffee — were made in one large pot.

Your Marine Water Heaters Manufacturers Share Great Coffee Making Options With You

Stovetop percolator: Your marine water heaters professionals discuss how we picked up one of these at a hardware store in Venezuela. It worked tolerably well at anchor, when the tall pot remained upright, but if you need your morning coffee fast, waiting intently for the telltale gurgle and drip (it seemed to take forever) is a sadistic form of torture.

French press: I only recently learned that I have been using this wrong all these years, which might be why I never really fully appreciated the taste. The correct approach involves freshly ground beans of a uniform coarseness (apparently only achievable with a special kind of grinder), and a carefully timed steeping. Here’s a link to one of several sites that describe the process in detail. There are so many ways this process can go wrong that I don’t know where to start, but two words sum it up quite well “burr grinder.”

Stovetop espresso maker: We bought this at the same time we picked up the percolator. (Venezuelans have more kinds of coffee than we have breakfast cereals.)

We were giddy with the excitement of making espresso (real espresso!) onboard, until we realized that this contraption, in the process of brewing, transfers all of the water from the bottom of the container to the top.

Manual drip cone: In the end, we settled for this method. It uses a funnel-type basket that accepts the same type of filters you use in drip coffeemakers. On long passages, we’d make one thermos full in the evening — in the sink, in case of spills — and this was usually accomplished without injury.

Bottom line: It works, but not without risk. A good teapot that pours without spilling helps prevent disasters. When its just me in the morning, I still make my coffee this way.

We are currently investigating other methods of making coffee onboard, including the Aeropress, which works something like a French press to make espresso. Interestingly, it’s made by the same company that developed the far-flying Aerobie flying disc.

Drinking more coffee can lead to a longer life, new studies say

One study surveyed more than 520,000 people in 10 European countries, making it the largest study to date on coffee and mortality, and found that drinking more coffee could significantly lower a person’s risk of mortality.

The second study was more novel, as it focused on nonwhite populations. After surveying over 185,000 African-Americans, Native Americans, Hawaiians, Japanese-Americans, Latinos and whites, the researchers found that coffee increases longevity across various races.

People who drank two to four cups a day had an 18% lower risk of death compared with people who did not drink coffee, according to the study. These findings are consistent with previous studies that had looked at majority white populations, said Veronica Wendy Setiawan, associate professor of preventative medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, who led the study on nonwhite populations.

The study on European countries revealed an inverse association between coffee and liver disease, suicide in men, cancer in women, digestive diseases and circulatory diseases. Those who drank three or more cups a day had a lower risk for all-cause death than people who did not drink coffee.

“The fact that we saw the same relationships in different countries is kind of the implication that its something about coffee rather than its something about the way that coffee is prepared or the way it’s drunk,” he said.