Coffee Making

Witnessing a quarter-mile line-up at Tim Hortons take-out window makes me shake my head.  Hard to believe there are so many people out there who are so rushed (?), or so lacking in culinary skills that they can’t load a coffee-maker at home without burning water?  Just imagine their lives had they lived a century ago!  To go out for coffee would have entailed getting the horse saddled if you were riding or getting out the carriage and hitching the horse to it with all the harness that entailed and going to town.  Not exactly a spontaneous act. 

 

Back on the home front in a turn of the last century kitchen making coffee wasn’t a spur of the moment decision—it took planning and preparation.  Since you probably got up before dawn finding a match in the dark and lighting a candle or lamp would have been the first task.  When you consider how fumble-fingered we are upon arising it’s a wonder more homes didn’t burn to the ground. 

 

Having made it to the kitchen the first task would have been making a fire.  Making fire in a kitchen range begins the night before in the wood shed with an axe selecting dry wood from the special kindling pile to make finger-sized splinters.  These would be laid out in a corner of the wood box in the kitchen on a bed of newspaper or birch bark, which would be used as tinder to ignite it.  [If you’ve camped you may remember that even wet birch bark will burn like gasoline once you pull its layers apart.]  Another alternative is pine cones. 

 

Back in the kitchen having opened the stove box the first task is to rake away the ashes from the previous day’s fire.  If there is still a bed of live coals remaining you may not need tinder but otherwise having cleared the fire-box and opened the chimney and stove drafts to ensure a good draw of air tinder is laid—the paper gets crumpled or torn in thin strips—and the kindling laid on top.  Now one finds a match or lights a splinter from the candle.  Once the kindling ignites larger pieces of wood are placed on top to sustain the fire.  When it is burning lively it is safe to close the chimney damper.  If you burn soft wood like pine you will hear the exploding pockets of resin in the wood—the characteristic crackling of a fire—and over time there will be a build up of creosote in the chimney so to keep the heat in your kitchen range and prevent the ignition of that creosote by overheating the chimney you damp down the chimney. 

 

Next task would be to take the pail and go to the well for fresh cold water.  Don’t worry, there’s no hurry, it will take time for the stove to heat up.  Lucky people had a hand pump in the kitchen but if a careless child left the lever in the wrong position they would lose prime and a trip to the well would still be in order. 

 

Coffee beans would be next and they would have to be ground with a hand grinder.  Now to find the percolator, rinse it out and fill it with fresh cold water, fill the basket with grounds and place it on the hottest point on top of the stove.  When the pot stops singing and the watch-glass on top shows that first sign of bubbling water or that perking sound is heard the pot could be moved further back on the stove—one wouldn’t want to burn the coffee. 

 

Now it’s time to check the clock to time that percolation—six minutes for medium, eight minutes for strong—and while we’re at it we’ll probably wind that clock as well.  If you want cream in that coffee a trip to creamer in the small well in the corner of the basement is in order to scoop off some cream.  By now it’s probably time to stoke that fire in the stove and damp down the stove draft.  When the coffee has perked long enough it’s time to remove the basket and its grounds—if they’re left in the coffee gets bitter.  Remember that coffeepot in the jail on Gunsmoke? 

 

Now to draw the rocking chair up close to the fire and enjoy that first cup with one’s slippered feet up on a footstool.  My father made coffee this way with one exception; once I came along we got electric lights and a refrigerator for the milk and cream.