The French Press, called a plunger in the southern hemisphere and a cafetière in France, is a simple mechanism that gives me maximum control over the variables that make up my cup of coffee: water volume and temperature and weight of coffee. Quite simply, coarsely-ground beans are added into the French Press followed by hot water. The lid mechanism is fitted, the coffee grounds are left to steep for around 3-5 minutes and then I press the grounds to the bottom of the vessel allowing the mixture to be poured into my cup.

The French press method lets the coffee steep instead of being filtered, so more of the coffee’s oils are released into the water. As I wrote a few weeks ago, it’s these oils that make the coffee taste richer and better. The Press method adds no impurities, which usually happens with filters.  Using a French Press means there is only hot water and freshly-ground coffee being poured into your cup. All of the ground coffee is saturated so a maximum amount of oil, and therefore flavour, is released. Drip and filter mechanisms can’t create maximum saturation so drip and filter coffee can’t be as rich as coffee made with a French Press.

Most significantly, a French Press allows me to control the temperature and volume of water as well as the quantity of coffee going into the mixture. It’s OK to be a science geek and experiment with different water temperatures and volumes and different quantities (weights) of coffee grounds. I do and I make notes like a coffee scientist and I’m careful to use exact volumes and weights and temperatures. I weigh the coffee because different varieties have different densities and weight is more accurate than say the number of beans or spoonfuls. African coffees tend to be denser than South American coffee and this density difference means measuring the coffee by volume won’t be as accurate and therefore as consistent as measuring it by weight.

The remaining variable is the time to leave the ground coffee to steep in the hot water. After one minute of saturating or steeping, the grounds have usually floated to the surface so I stir the mixture briefly to maximise the exposure to the hot water. The goal is to release the maximum amount of oil from the grounds. After 2-3 more minutes of steeping, I press the mixture and then pour the coffee. 

If I use the same volume of water and vary the weight of coffee, the water temperature, and the time taken to saturate the grounds, I can definitely taste a difference Adjusting the variables till I achieve the perfect flavour is the science of the French Press. And when I get it right, the coffee is wonderful and rich and satisfying and… perfect. 

China Hand by Scott Spacek is a highly-recommended suspense/thriller told by Andrew Callahan, a fresh young Harvard graduate on a one year teaching stint in a Chinese university before joining a prestigious global consulting firm.

Almost immediately Andrew is attracted to and begins a relationship with Lily, the Dean’s assistant, who also happens to be an Army General’s daughter. Shortly afterwards, Andrew is approached to help the CIA extract a Lily and so is effectively recruited into the CIA with all the risks associated with detection and capture that that entails.

While the plot is initially set in and near the university in Beijing, we are given fleeting glimpses of the colourful local culture as Andrew explores occasional nightclub, restaurant and a boxing club. The setting though is primarily the politically- and culturally-charged university in which USA and by extension ‘all Americans’ are vilified. As anti-USA protests due to USA’s bombing the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade build, Lily’s escape becomes a matter of urgency.

I read the latterhalf of this book in one sitting because the pace picked up significantly and the story quickly turned into an action-suspense-thriller as Andrew helped Lily escape from the university. They soon met with Lily’s mother, whose escape had been helped by another US university teacher/CIA agent and friend of Andrew. Their escape plan was discovered almost immediately forcing them off-script. This involved a long van ride, a plane trip, a train trip, a street chase followed by a shoot-out in a shopping mall, separation from Lily and her mother, and ultimately a high-tension boarding of a ferry to Korea. That’s certainly not where the story ended, but because this is a suspense, I’ll stop there.

The 1980s were a grim time in China, especially if you were an American living and working there and the story reflects that. Nonetheless, I felt the author didn’t give me enough of the exotic culture and setting. There were brief references to eating in restaurants and navigating the city and the air pollution but these were too brief, in my opinion.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading a fast-paced novel written in the first-person because it ‘sounded’ like I was being told the story by the one person who could tell it the best, the protagonist. This adds to the story’s authenticity and credibility. The relationship between Andrew and Lily felt genuine and the danger associated with their capture while running from the Chinese authorities felt more urgent for the story being told in the first person. (I wish there were more thrillers written in the first person.)

I wholly recommend China Hand to those who enjoy a fast and thrilling read with a snappy finish.

Tariq Ashkanani’s Follow Me to the Edge is a detective story about Joe Finch and his journey to solving a family’s murders and the mystery surrounding his partner’s roadside shooting a few months earlier. Finch is the quintessential flawed character, not coping with his marriage break up and struggling even more with his ex-partner’s shooting during a routine traffic stop.

I enjoyed the book’s pace, the parallel stories which we know for sure will come together at some stage, and the layered relationships.

In small-town Cooper, Nebraska, a man is found dead at a lake and shortly afterwards, his whole family is found beaten to death in the family home. The suspicion of course is murder-suicide, but the evidence doesn’t support this. The crime scene is the house in which Finch grew up; where his mother committed suicide after killing her son, Finch’s brother, who was suffering with incurable cancer. Shortly afterwards, Finch and his father left their family home and shortly after that, his father left him with friends before leaving Cooper for good.

Crooked politicians, organised crime, an unprofessional and over-ambitious reporter, corrupt police colleagues, and small town neighbours, many of whom are also Finch’s ex-school mates, combine to make for a muddy and difficult investigation. And to make it worse, the case is quickly assigned to a newly-appointed, ex-Texas detective to partner with Finch.

There is a parallel story of a religious cult on a farm on the outskirts of Cooper which eventually merges into Finch’s investigation and its conclusion.

This detective novel is suspenseful, filled with activity and well-paced. Evocative and descriptive writing helps to develop the characters’ complexities and back stories and enriches the setting, which worked well with the whole book’s sense of fatigue among the characters but especially with Finch.

The ending felt satisfyingly real. I wholly recommend Follow Me to the Edge for its solid writing, a genuine-feeling plot and its satisfying final pages.

Redolent of The English Patient, Teresa Messineo’s What We May Become, is the story of Diana Bolsena, a US Army nurse, separated from her unit at the end of WW2 in Italy.

While trying to reconnect with her Army unit and so continue nursing in the Pacific, Diana finds herself employed first in a small-time brothel and then on a Tuscan estate, employed by the wealthy and somewhat enigmatic owner, Signora Bugari. An ex-Nazi officer, Adler, arrives at the Estate and demands a hidden secret from Bugari. Bugari is clearly terrified of Adler who is aware that the estate was occupied and used by the Nazis and therefore still contains valuable secrets which he believes have great value. Diana is warned to stay away from Adler but she can’t help her curiosity. The story takes a dramatic turn before an Italian-American enters the story and races the plot on to an intense conclusion. 

The story is well-written, thoroughly and evocatively descriptive, generating Diana’s vivid dreams and recollections as well as painting a romantic landscape of post-WW2 Tuscany. The characters are mostly well-developed, albeit with mysterious, undertold pasts, as was likely the case in real life post-war Italy. 

I enjoyed reading the book, especially conjuring the romance of that setting, but also wondering about the realities of people trying to survive during WW2 Italy with its changing loyalties. I appreciated the debate about whether to make use of human research gathered during WW2: to benefit or not from human suffering. Mostly, I enjoyed the interplay between the characters and the setting.

Just as with red wine, cheese, whisky and almost everything else worth savouring, we can sometimes go a little overboard when discussing the flavours of coffee. I’ll try not to. 

The taste of coffee can be described as combination of: flavour/aroma, sweetness, acidity, bitterness, and mouth-feel.

Some biologists (and I) argue that mouth-feel can be considered an element of taste. Mouth-feel, or what some call the coffee’s texture, can be described as creamy, buttery, syrupy, thick, or even thin/watery. So while it may not be a taste, mouth-feel will affect how we interpret and perceive coffee as we drink it and so it will affect our judgement of the taste of a coffee being drunk.

Coffee’s flavour is detected by the tongue, which senses varying strengths of sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savoury. These elements of the final flavour are created during the roasting process when the raw coffee beans are heated to initiate the Maillard reaction, i.e. the caramelising of the sugars, which also accounts for the browning of roasted beans. Between 5 and 10% of a coffee bean is sugar and the highest sugar-level is achieved by harvesting the coffee beans when the coffee cherry (the bean is the seed inside the coffee cherry) is fully ripe.

There are three different acids in coffee which, together, give coffee its varying tastes of green apples, ripe grapes, or citrus fruits. The higher the altitude the coffee plant is grown at, the more acidic the coffee tastes. Brazilian coffee is grown at low altitude and therefore tends to be low in acid. The best of the Ethiopian beans are grown at high altitudes, i.e. around 2000 metres above sea level. The acid in these coffee beans is what generates what we often perceive or describe as freshness. Coffee’s acidic freshness balances its sweetness. 

There is some confusion between acidity and bitterness. Fresh, ripe pineapples, apples, lemons, oranges, grapes etc. taste pleasantly, refreshingly acidic. Consider apples and pears – both tend to have similar levels of sweetness, but apples have more acidity than pears, which explains why apples tend to have a richer, fresher taste profile than pears. Acidity in coffee gives a fresh, not a bitter, taste. Unripe fruit tastes bitter as do burnt/over-roasted coffee beans. Bitter coffee is likely made from robusta beans which are typically roasted to a much higher temperature, some might describe them as ‘burnt’. If coffee tastes bitter, we tend to want to add sugar.Good coffee is not bitter; it is sweet and acidic.

Good coffee is balanced. No one aspect should dominate the cup to a point that it becomes unpleasant and just as with cheese, whisky, and wine, what flavour suits one person may not suit another. One of the joys of coffee drinking is experiencing the many different flavours resulting from the many factors that make up each coffee’s flavour profile.