I’ve always heard that a Siphon brew is much better than a traditional cup of joe, but I haven’t had the opportunity to try it for myself. What I do know, however, is that it certainly looks a lot more fun to make than a traditional cup of coffee. I mean, shoot, making a cup of coffee makes you look like a mad scientist. It’s that intense!
From what I understand, ground coffee is put into the top chamber and water is filled in the bottom chamber. When heated, the water boils to the top and then the chamber is taken off of the hot plate and cooled down rapidly. The cooling creates some sort of vaccuum and the water drains back down into the bottom chamber filtering out all of the coffee grinds and leaving nothing but the purest of coffee.
Sounds pretty delicious. Where can I get a cup in New York City without breaking the bank?
There’s always one kind of post that I’ll always post on Doobybrain, and that kind of post is anything on obnoxiously priced goods. Such is the case with this $20,000 coffee maker.
This is basically how the Japanese siphon bar works:
A siphon pot has two stacked glass globes, and works a little like a macchinetta, that stove-top gadget wrongly called an espresso maker by generations of graduate students. As water vapor forces water into the upper globe the coffee grounds are stirred by hand with a bamboo paddle. (In Japan, siphon coffee masters carve their own paddles to fit the shape of their palms.)
The goal is to create a deep whirlpool in no more than four turns without touching the glass. Posture is important. So is timing: siphon coffee has a brewing cycle of 45 to 90 seconds.
