DIY Coffee Maker

I noticed the other day when I had forgotten my french press at work, that there is a dearth of info about making coffee. The best suggestion seemed to be cowboy coffee; boil the grounds in a pan until strong and filter it with your teeth as you drink.

I was trying to come up with a system using stuff around the house that resulted in a ground free finished product.

My first attempt was to pour boiling water over the grounds in a big Pyrex measuring cup, let stand 5 minutes, pour through a paper towel clipped into a sieve.

The resulting coffee tasted more like paper towel than coffee. Who would have thought that the taste of paper could overwhelm my coffee? I brew it strong.

My next attempt and my current weekend coffee maker replaced the paper towel with a scrap of old t-shirt. The finished product is delicious and grit free and has the added benefit of soaking out some of the oils that the french press leaves in.

Below is my apparatus in action (coincidentally this is a caption I recently used in my NSFW blog).

Pan for steeping grounds and filter apparatus.

Filter setup up close.

Voila! Coffee!

Shrimp13