NOTE: There is a fair amount of disagreement on this article. For opposing views please take a look at the comments and make your own decision based on what you like.
Percolators violate most of the natural laws about brewing coffee.
- Don't over extract the oils and flavor. Percolators work by taking coffee and reheating it and throwing it over the grounds over and over and over again.
- Never reheat / boil coffee. This destroys the flavor. For best flavor, boil the water, pass it over the grounds and retain the heat. Don't reheat it.
Violating these rules may not sound like much, but these are about the only rules there are. The effect of a percolator is to keep passing boiling water/coffee over the grounds until there is no flavor left and the flavor in the coffee is so dead that it's a worthless waste.
There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding about the re-boiling of already brewed coffee.
About half way through this video from "Coffee brewers institute" (1961) there is a good example of the boiling and re-brewing over and over again of coffee in a percolator. At approximately the 7 minute 40 second mark they show a glass percolator.
If you look in the bottom half you will see already brewed coffee. The already brewed coffee is boiling and being pushed back over the grounds. That's a pretty good visual demonstration of what is happening.
Electric Percolators
Most modern percolators are the electric variety - they plug into a wall outlet and are a self-contained unit.
Most electric percolators use a stainless steel basket with quite large perforations, which makes select the appropriate grind important. You do not want to use a paper filter with these, as it could prevent proper drainage and flow, and cause the coffee to spill over.
There are also stove top percolators, which are meant to be placed on a stove surface instead of plugged in, and these are different from moka pots.
Percolator vs. Vacuum pots
Reading several comments some seem to be people who are not talking about a percolator but a vacuum pot or a moka pot.
If you have a brewer that pushes water up into a second (usually upper) chamber by steam and holds the water in the upper chamber during brewing then pulls it back via vacuum into the lower changer after brewing that's not a percolator. That is a vacuum pot which is described over here. Vacuum pot coffee also happens to be one of my favorite ways to have coffee.
Percolator vs. Moka Pot
A moka pot (unlike a vacuum pot) will push the water through the grounds and into an upper chamber that it is served from.
I realize that in a few cases manufacturers have chosen to add the word percolator to the description of their moka pots. Strictly speaking this is not any more correct than calling a moka pot an espresso maker which is another common marketing gimmick for moka pots.
How to choose a percolator
Ultimately the preference of coffee makers comes down to personal preference. I'll go further to say most people will probably prefer whatever they are accustomed to so if you grew up on perc pots you may always prefer them even if they have inherent problems. There is nothing wrong with that.
You won't get the "best" cup of coffee as defined by coffee snob, but it will produce a cup of coffee on par with most coffees brewed at home in a regular drip pot coffee maker. Having said that if you are looking for your first coffee pot or your first non-drip coffee pot I would encourage you to skip the perc pot.
If budget is a concern a French Press is excellent. If budget is less of a concern you can get a good manual Vacuum pot for a little more than an electric perc pot.
If you have already tried the other methods and want to try something new give a perc pot a try. They are not expensive so you won't be out a lot of money. If you end up loving perc above all else then by all means celebrate your discovery of the way that is right for you.
Coleman Percolators
Coleman brand percolators are a line of percolators designed for outdoor use at campsites, picnics and barbecues. They're rugged and specifically designed to be used over campfires, similar to stove-top models.
User reviews seem to indicate that while the outside is durable, the glass knob on top, and aluminum basket, can be problematic over the long run.
Be sure to follow the instructions provided when you purchase your brewer.
Hamilton Beach Percolators
Hamilton Beach manufactures a line of stainless steel electric percolators with detached electrical cords, making them portable. While initial usage indicates that these make good coffee, quickly, there are a large number of complaints that the machine stops working under a year. Make sure to get a good warranty.
West Bend Percolators
West Bend is a brand that manufactures large-scale percolators, labeled as "urns". The distinction between a regular percolator and an urn appears to be that an urn is meant for serving large quantities of coffee, such as at events.
They come with a dispensing spout (spigot) near the bottom of the machine that makes it easy to dispense coffee without tipping the machine.
Urns and percolators operate off the same principles.
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Michael
EVERY coffee site seems to reference STOVE TOP percolators when discussing this brew method. True.. you can easily make a horrible pot of coffee if you aren't careful with the temps -- but you can perk a nice pot of coffee on the stove if you know what you're doing. But... no one includes modern electric percolators. I use one everyday - and when company stops by. Everyone loves the coffee - I've never had any complaints it's bitter. Older electric percolators had higher temp settings, but not modern ones. My Hamilton Beach percolator brews at below boiling point (it was 198 degrees when I took a temp reading from the pot).
Stop hating on percolators - especially electric ones.
Tim Bradbury
I own eight different coffee makers. The Bunn and Bonavita drips are very good, as are the Saeco espresso machines. The Cuisinart percolator is interesting and also makes very good coffee. One thing I would note is this - the video that gets referred to as how a percolator commits the sin of boiling the coffee is using a stove top percolator with water at a rolling boil at the start of the process. However, the burner gets turned down when the coffee gets made, and those of us who understand this would surely turn it down to just below boiling wouldn't we? What my percolator does do for sure is this - for a seven cup pot, it takes about three minutes to preheat with a few sputters of water through the glass cap (thus automatically pre-soaking the grinds) and then brews the seven cups in about four minutes of intense percolating. These are perfect times (and temperatures) and should result in excellent coffee. If it's boiling the water, I sure can't hear it - I'll look into this some more.
Turns out that the same guy who invented the Rumford fireplace also invented the coffee percolator! Who knew?
Marnie
Has anyone tried Cowboy Coffee.? Which is basically loose grounds in boiling water and you add cold to make the grounds sink(I think I would drain it through a filter myself?)
I was just looking at "vintage" percolators on line and it made me nostalgic to try it for coffee.. But.. Upon reading this article and the comments I am more confused then ever! But I don't think I'll try it.. I'll try Cowboy Coffee or my French press again..
Wow.. So many ways to make coffee!
CoffeeFAQ
Great points Mark. This article was originally published in 2006 with points taken from a newsgroup discussion and should probably be updated.
Gerry Lundell
Egg Coffee. Speaking of Grandma - My Mother too made egg coffee. Really. Mix egg whites with the proper coffee grounds and bring to boil in a stove top kettle/pot. It's referred to as Swedish coffee. It's great but takes a little more grounds than other methods. Terrific. Try it, you'll like it.
N kaye riley
Bingo. Brewing perc coffee wrong is the understatement. Never fill it any fuller than one inch below the basket, the boiling water need never touch the grounds, pay high respect to the coffee you're drinking, always fresh ground beans, stale old grounds are guilty of giving the perc a bad name. Listen, if you grew up with a perc and are loving it fir its full, round tasting brew, then you're probably at the age where ground coffee was the standard. Fresh beans were just not sold in bags or tin cans standing next to Kroger or hills brothers perc blend in the grocery store. Now, in the 3rd wave of coffee education, the bean, its roast and freshness will make any brew, any brew method, and every brew lover, defend their favorite.
Its sure fun wrangling about it, though.
Mark
This article gives a lot of misinformation while claiming to be debunking misinformation:
"Strictly speaking this is not any more correct than calling a moka pot an espresso maker which is another common marketing gimmick for moka pots." WRONG, moka pots like the traditional Bialetti ARE espresso makers. What makes espresso espresso is that pressure is used to force hot water rapidly through tightly packed finely ground coffee. That pressure is created by steam. This is exactly what a moka pot does - why do you think they have a pressure relief valve on the side of the lower pot? To release overpressure that could be dangerous, but the valve is set at a high enough pressure to allow the steam to do its job. It doesn't matter if the water and steam pressure are coming from a tank in an espresso machine or a pot at the bottom of a moka pot, once they pass through tightly packed finely ground coffee, they have made espresso.
This issue of pressurized steam being used to make espresso also exposes the lie in the usual claims of "natural laws of coffee brewing", specifically that boiling water is too hot and "ruins" coffee. Steam is water at its boiling point. When you pressurize steam, by confining it to a set volume as an espresso maker tank or moka pot, you are elevating its boiling point. That is, you are creating steam that is hotter. It's basic Combined Gas Law, P1*T1/V1=P2*T2/V2. So the temperature of the steam/water combo coming out of a moka pot or an espresso maker is going to actually be HIGHER than 212 F. And yet somehow people all over the world still manage to enjoy espresso and not find it "ruined."
Then there is the other "natural law of coffee brewing" that warns against "overextraction" as a way to defend drip coffee's "once-through" method as the only "right" way to make coffee. Turkish and Greek coffee violate this rule as the coffee grounds sit and sit in the water as it extracts coffee flavor over a significantly longer time than percolation does. Even if the surface of the water is only at a simmer, the coffee grounds sink to the bottom of the pot and are right up against the heat source, so they are at a much higher temperature, over a fairly long period of time. This was the method of making coffee for CENTURIES before any other method of making coffee was invented. It's a good thing no American coffee snobs were around to tell them they were "ruining" coffee, or else they might have given up making coffee completely, and nobody would have ever bothered to invent the "right" way to brew coffee.
The fact is, the drip coffee maker was invented to be a labor-saving device, NOT to make "better" coffee. Once it became the standard in the US for its convenience in the 70s, Americans became accustomed to its weaker product, (let's remember coffee is an acquired taste, and nobody likes even drip coffee black the first time they taste it), stronger percolated and European style coffee tasted "wrong" to them. Fast forward to "serious" coffee drinking being invented in Seattle in the last few decades of the last century, "connoisseurs" of the American coffee style retconned these "natural laws of coffee brewing" to rationalize their expectations of coffee flavor that had been shaped by convenience rather than anything else.
Also, on a more minor note, the author is picking semantical nits about what is and is not a "percolator". Percolation is simply the process of a fluid passing through a porous solid medium, so technically even drip coffee makers are using percolation to make coffee. Yes, because the partially-brewed coffee passes through the grounds more than once in an official "percolator" versus a drip maker, the cumulative residence time of water on grounds is higher in a percolator than a drip maker. However, the temperature and residence time in percolators and drip makers are much more similar to each other than they are to espresso makers/moka pots and Greek/Turkish coffee, respectively, methods which still are widely considered to make delicious coffee.
Most anti-percolator articles like this are written by people who have never actually tried percolated coffee, and are just repeating as gospel the "received wisdom" about percolators they heard from others who heard it from other, ad infinitum. If by off chance they have tried it, they already went into it with the received biases as well as their own history of drinking weak drip coffee. They're like people who grew up on Lipton's orange pekoe turning their noses up at English breakfast tea for being "too strong, too bitter."
Greg West
Been all over the world, drank coffee brewed every way from green in Shitstainistan to hand roasted Kau .
Each thing is different. You can make bad coffee in many ways.
If each way is performed well it will be a good example of that kind.
Coffee like anything is like music. I don't like any bad music even in my favorite genre.
Hannah
I've never seen a small scale one - most percolators I've seen do 40-cups to 100-cups (they're really small cups) at a time and it takes about a minute per cup.
Ben
re: I must disagree with those
I must disagree with those who prefer percolated coffee. It's absolutely the most tasteless cup of joe I've had. I recently bought a nice percolator, remembering it was always in my home as a child. The quality of the coffee tastes more like a cigarette when you don't smoke -- it's a strong but harsh tobacco taste, with less coffee flavor and aroma. It's mostly robust brown water. The drip method preserves more of the smooth, rounded coffee flavor. Too bad -- I love the way the percolator looks and the stainless-steel innards. Very cool, and the pot looks better on the cabinet. But I've packed it away, probably forever. Drip method from now on.
Anon
re: Not true.......
Not true.........people come on here every day and read all the comments.
User
re: You are talking to nobody,
You are talking to nobody, those posts are all out of date, so take your percolator and put it …...
User
re: Im very grateful for all of
Im very grateful for all of the comments. Can't wait to try out a percolator! !
kikaida
re: Severe Constipation
Since I quit caffeine again 3 months ago I have been having digestive issues. Constipation is one of them. Some weeks things will be ok then another week constipation again. I know I had this back in 2011 when I quit caffeine for a year but I forgot how bad it was. What was the longest any of you had to deal with constipation issues because its a pain in the butt.
Zack Opheim
re: Let me add this to my last
Let me add this to my last comment. With a percolator you can take starbucks beans and make a better cup of coffee than Starbucks makes. Of course, the same can be done with other manual methods as well.
Zack Opheim
re: Just try it once.
Percolated coffee is among the best brewing methods. I've had countless pots in a french press, through high quality auto drip, pourover, vacuum, (not to mention the barrels of coffee through low shelf auto drippers that I've had the displeasure of consuming). The only method I haven't used is the aeropress. I do use high quality beans that are freshly roasted, and I grind fresh every brew. That said, in my view percolated coffee is definitely up there with all of the other methods I've tried. If anything, percolator brew tends to be smoother than some of the other methods while maintaining a fully body and richness. Over-extraction has never been a problem with my percolator (while occasionally I have screwed up with other manual methods).
The electric percolator I have (a cheap 40 dollar Presto) keeps the coffee in the holding tank at just under 190 degrees while brewing (I checked it with a candy thermometer after reading this article), so overheating is not an issue. I wasn't able to check the water tempt as it hits the coffee, but most seem to agree that the water coming out of the percolator stem is just under boiling as it should be.
As for the idea of percolated coffee being over-extracted via the brewed coffee mixing in the reservoir and then being re-brewed, this is no different than french press, which steeps the coffee for 4 minutes in one big reservoir.
All of that said, the proof is in the pudding. If you are a coffee lover, get a percolator and try it out for yourself. It is my go to method for serving coffee when I have a large group of guests over. There is definitely a lot of disinformation out there about percolated coffee.