Kickstarting 2021 with Cuban Coffee

Why Start a Coffee Blog?

This new year, we visited this place called Key West, the southernmost tip of the continental USA, which is just 90 miles from Cuba. The Cuban cuisine, spice palates, and culture have permeated the food and most importantly coffee bars in Key West and Miami area. You can see the Florida sun gleaming on the streets adorned with graffiti, cigar shops, Cuban coffee bars buzzing with Latin pop. Excited to experience this we had an enthralling, eye-opening espresso shot at the famous ‘La Colada Gourmet-The House of Cuban Coffee’, which is a very famous coffee bar in the Miami area. Since the idea of starting a coffee blog had been marinating in our minds for a long while, we bought an authentic bag of Cuban Coffee to experience this amazing coffee for a month and write about it in the Grad Caffeinator; This would mark the perfect start for 2021!

Cuban Coffee: Background and Origins

Firstly, let us get to know some basics about these highly aromatic and nutty Cuban coffee beans. Arabica and Robusta are the types of coffee beans grown in Cuba. After arriving from Cuba, the local store owners roast these beans in-house. The roasting times vary with the extent of the desired roast: light, medium, and dark. The darker the roast, the higher is the chocolaty taste of the coffee, and the lesser is the hint of the original coffee bean. If one wants to fully experience the origin of coffee beans, then it is wise to opt for a light roast. Lastly, the beans are packed and can be freshly ground for drip coffee machines, Moka Pot, Chemex, or any ground size that you desire. We chose to experiment with freshly ground medium roast gourmet Cuban coffee; the medium roast would provide a balance between the chocolaty dark roast and yet have hints of the original coffee bean. Struck with a sweet and overwhelming nostalgia of strong and aromatic south Indian coffee during our time in India, we kindled our passion project: The Grad Caffeinator. In this short read, we are going to describe ways of brewing different coffees, shed light upon brewing ratios followed by a book and bake of the month. You can find an in-house recipe for the traditional Café Cubano drink at the end of the article.

Simple Way to Brew Coffee

Often new coffee drinkers get baffled by the various methods/machines to make coffee. There is drip coffee, Chemex, French press, Moka pot, and the list just goes on. This to keep everything simple, for the first coffee of the month, we will focus on a more budget-friendly and convenient option to resonate with a larger audience. Both of us have a simple drip coffee maker (DCM) which we use as a quick fix to make drip coffee (coffee connoisseurs, please do not kill us!). We do have a filter to make an espresso shot when we intend to make a cappuccino/latte/macchiato. As we proceed onto the upcoming months, we will address different ways of brewing coffee. But for now, as a starter pack, we both got the simplest drip coffee maker from Walmart; perhaps everyone in the country has one. Brewing coffee with DCM is very simple, but everyone uses different amounts of coffee and water which lead to an inconsistent flavor. This is easy to solve; Throughout the month we used 4 cups of water (the DCM will have an indicator on the side to measure this) and varied the amount of ground coffee powder. For example, we varied the amount of coffee from 10 g to 20 g using a simple kitchen weighing scale. This basically changes the Brew Ratio, which is the ratio of grams of coffee and amount of water. You can learn more about Brew Ratio here. This is a painless way to brew coffee of varying strength and tailor-make your ideal cup!

Review of different brew ratios

Throughout the course of the month, we tested these different brew ratios and took notes of what we experienced and observed. Since we use the drip coffee method for this month, it is imperative that you do not dilute the cup with milk or sugar. This is because the natural flavor of the Cuban bean will be just overhauled by the sweet milky additions.

What's the Verdict?

Although we tested only three variants between the two of us, you can try to go stronger with 18-20 g of coffee. If you are just coming from a coffee culture dominated by sweet milk and creamers, then you can start with 10 g of coffee and try to find your ideal cup. The idea of this blog to encourage the readers to debunk the idea that coffee is just a consumer beverage that temporarily inhibits sleep and will allow you to continue your workplace drudgery. A freshly brewed cup of coffee, irrespective of the origin of the coffee beans, is much more than just a hot beverage.

For example, for the ‘Kickstarter’ cup in the morning, it takes around 2 minutes for the DCM to brew the coffee. This is the perfect time for you to take a deep breath, think about the targets for the day. Our favorite one is ‘The Pacifier’ cup because, at the end of the daily rut, you pair this cup of coffee with a book of your choice and read for some time. While you taste each sip feel the warmth and physical and mental relaxation it provides. Surprisingly, just following this we were able to finish ~ 3 books a month. (If you want a book suggestion, then the book of the month is mentioned below.)

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Book of the month: Awakening your Ikigai by Ken Mogi

In recent times, social media and seemingly all the people are talking about Ikigai, which is essentially exploring the reason (gai) to live (iki). Thus, we wanted to start the year 2021 by exploring this concept. This is the perfect book to explore this concept.

It basically talks about Ikigai, which is a fundamental principle practiced predominantly by the Japanese people. In the simplest form, Ikigai is a reason to live, something which gives you pleasure, happiness, and the grit to move on. For example, the book mentions Comiket (kind of a comic-con for anime and manga fans) where ordinary people who are engineers, managers, teachers, librarians, etc. cosplay their favorite manga character. The participants feel a unique sense of joy in doing this, a break from the everyday rut, and it is their Ikigai. There are similar examples in the book about sake (popular Japanese alcohol), sushi, and the famous Japanese tea-ceremonies.

Since the purpose of the book is to render the reader in a contemplative state to introspect about his/her ikigai, it perfectly complements ‘The Pacifier’ cup at 6 pm in the chilly winters of this month. While reading the book we realized that one of our flatmates has a habit of coloring paintings to just calm down and relax, which gives him happiness and satisfaction. Similarly, Suyash found his ikigai in baking, and every week he would bake profiteroles, cakes, scones, and muffins to achieve a sense of contentment and delight. The coupling of the reflective nature of the book and the serenity of the evening coffee cup enhances the overall experience and we highly recommend trying it out.

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Bake of the month: Chocolate cream profiteroles!

For this month since we chose Cuban coffee for the blog, I tried a few bakes to determine the best pairing. Because it is quite a strong and particularly bitter coffee, a sweeter bake would be able to make its mark with a sharper flavor. Having tried about 4-5 different things, we concluded that chocolate cream profiteroles were a spot-on pairing. Profiteroles are made from choux pastry (French: Pâte à Choux), a unique pastry that involves cooking the flour dough twice.

It is simple and involves basic ingredients that are easy to find in every household – milk, flour, sugar, salt, butter, and eggs. First, you need to mix all these ingredients in a stainless-steel pot and heating it to a boil, dashing in the flour, taking off the heat, and cooking till it comes together as a boil. Then, you add the whisked eggs in small batches with continuous mixing (you can use an electronic hand-mixer) to a pipeable consistency. Next is piping about 1 inch of viscous batter in circles 2 inches apart from each other on parchment paper and baking at a high temperature. You can find the detailed recipe here. The egg content of this pastry is quite high which puffs it up and hence it can be filled with something sweet (like chocolate buttercream) or sour (lemon curd). The chocolate buttercream is prepared by whisking together <71% cocoa powder, sugar, fresh cream, butter, and vanilla extract. The puffed-up choux pastries are cut-open, and the buttercream is filled in. It is very important to not be a miser at this stage, be generous to fill up the cream puffs and finish them with dusting icing sugar.

Now the bitterness of the Cuban coffee would lift the sweetness of anything else that you would pair it with, so I limited the sugar content in the profiterole. The pairing worked wonders, and as expected the sweetness from the profiteroles was establishing its sweet identity despite the prominence and depth of Cuban coffee flavor. It is a balanced combination for the palette.

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Café Cubano: The Traditional Cuban Coffee Drink

During our time in La Colada Gourmet, the Cuban coffee bar, we wanted to experience the authentic Cuban espresso, and perhaps become a part of its cult following. The coffee beans are brewed in a traditional Moka pot, which is ubiquitous in Cuban households, to brew a rich and pure shot of espresso. A bit of sugar is added during the espresso preparation; Adding the sugar during espresso preparation rather than at the table gives it a thicker consistency than an Italian espresso. The espresso shot is then whipped with some brown demerara sugar and was served with a pair of biscotti, thereby making the traditional ‘Café-Cubano’. It has a strong aroma, a depth in its bitterness, a rich creamy texture, and a dash of sweetness. If you have a Moka pot, you can try to make this a home as mentioned here.

And this concludes the pilot for the Grad Caffeinator!