Wood kiln brew recipe

First off if you don’t drink coffee or don’t fire with wood, don’t read this ceramic recipe if you don’t want to.

Wood kiln coffee cannot be wimpy. Drink water if thats what you need, but drink COFFEE when its what you need. Good coffee needs to be stiffly mixed. You need a thick unctuous brew. If you are going to do some sort of drip stuff, you need more grounds than water. If you are doing French Press you need too grind too fine and then press too hard. With French Press for wood kilns you need a large proportion of the grounds to blow by the filter

Cowboy coffee is fine. You can even do the thing with the egg shells if you don’t know how to filter with your teeth. It is especially fine if you grind the coffee fine. But good wood kiln coffee is done Eastern Mediterainian , ArabeoIsraeliTurkishGreekSerbiaCroationSorryIfILeftYouOutCoffee, thick, sweet, stand up and chew, coffee.

Here is my recipe.

Take a “six” pot, if you fire a large anagama with more than four side stokes use 12 and double the recipe, pots for this have numbers. If you don’t have a six pot it is OK to use a can from pork and beans. Eat the beans first. Rinse the can but do not wash it.. You can fashion a handle out of the lid if you don’t cut it all the way off, but it is too short and hard to use, you will burn your fingers and you need them tonight. I use small vice grips.

For wood kilns you want African Cardamom if you use cardamom. Its smoke dried. One pod is enough for several pots. I grind it with the coffee. Asian stores often have good deals on African Cardamom.

Grind the coffee as fine as you can get it. You can do this in a ceramic mortar with a wooden pestle or you can use your Turkish Grinder or even a Krups. Fine, 80 mesh is not quite fine enough. Don’t use a sieve.

Fill the pot up to just under the narrowest part of the neck with water. It can be hard water, it can be soft, and it can be rain water. Add 1 to 2 TABLESPOONS of sugar. Honey is OK, corn syrup will work. Don’t use any molasses unless you feel way way south of the Mason Dixon line and want to show it.
Heat the water to near boiling in one of the air passages of your kiln or over a side stoking port. Don’t pull coals out of your kiln for this, you won’t get enough woodash in your coffee this way. Don’t fake it by mixing woodash in, are you crazy? Woodash contains lye.

Take the pot off the heat. Add 3 T of coffee powder. Stir it in or not depending on your style. Do not get picky about it, you are firing a wood kiln. Set the pot in the heat again. When it boils up near the rim take it off and let it cool about 30 seconds. I am a barbarian so I do this boil up three times for wood firings.

If this were some fancy setting I would knock the side of the pot with a spoon a few times and let it settle. Its not that kind of setting, I just pour the ambrosia. If you are looking for caravan style add some yak butter. If you don’t have any yak butter a little salt and a little cow butter will do. It is one place where “sweet cream” butter is not wanted.

Don’t forget to stoke the kiln. Drink it. The grounds go into the stoking port.