Making Turkish Sand Coffee: Culinary Alchemy on the Streets of Jordan

There’s a lit­tle culi­nary alche­my hap­pen­ing in this video shot in Aqa­ba, Jor­dan. It involves cof­fee and sand. And “Broth­er Gantry” on Red­dit has it all fig­ured out. He explains:

He’s brew­ing cof­fee using tech­niques tra­di­tion­al­ly used to make Turk­ish Cof­fee...

Fill­ing each of those ves­sels (called a cezve) part­way is water, very fine­ly ground cof­fee, and pos­si­bly sug­ar. Because this is hap­pen­ing in Jor­dan there might also be a lit­tle car­da­mon in there and/or no sug­ar.

Nor­mal­ly to make prop­er Turk­ish cof­fee you heat it to a point where it just begins to bub­ble, but under a rolling boil, so it begins to foam up into the neck of the cezve before reduc­ing the heat and allow­ing the foam to die, repeat­ing the process 3 or 4 times before the mix­ture is poured into small cups (fin­can) and you’re left with a won­der­ful­ly strong, thick cof­fee with sus­pend­ed grounds which quick­ly set­tle to the bot­tom. Sand over a flame tra­di­tion­al­ly used in the process as a sort of “adjustable dou­ble boil­er” cups left on the sur­face stay warm and the heat used for brew­ing can be adjust­ed by the depth of the cezve in the sand with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about the tem­per­a­ture of the heat source itself.

The guy in this video seems to be mod­i­fy­ing a lot of the steps to make some­thing like a “reg­u­lar strength” cof­fee more the­atri­cal­ly using tra­di­tion­al equip­ment (e.g. he starts with much less ground cof­fee in the pot, judg­ing from the col­or to begin with, over­fill­ing it, not tak­ing time to let the foam die down but pour­ing out some the brew­ing cof­fee into a cup to reduce the lev­el, and pour­ing the results of a cezve made for sev­er­al cups into a nor­mal sized cof­fee cup instead).

Find more infor­ma­tion on mak­ing Turk­ish Sand Cof­fee at Secret Cof­fee Drinks.

via Digg

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

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Coffee is for People, Not Robots: The New Ad for David Lynch’s Line of Organic Coffee

Pay a vis­it to Whole Foods, and you’ll find The David Lynch Sig­na­ture Cup Cof­fee line, which includes three pre­mier cof­fee blends, each taste-test­ed and select­ed by David Lynch him­self. Last year, Lynch talked with Vice.com about the gen­e­sis of his cof­fee line and explained:

One day, a friend came over to me and said, “David, you drink so much cof­fee, you should have your own line,” and one thing led to anoth­er, and I blind test­ed many, many dif­fer­ent cof­fees. Anoth­er friend of mine said, “I know these guys down in Long Beach who have the great­est cof­fee” but I tast­ed it, and it was ter­ri­ble, so I kept tast­ing dif­fer­ent cof­fees and dif­fer­ent mix­tures and kept com­ing back to this [blend] in blind tests over and over again.

Over the years, Lynch has released some uncon­ven­tion­al ads (of course!) for his cof­fee prod­ucts. Per­haps you recall this one from 2011, fea­tur­ing a seem­ing­ly sev­ered Bar­bie head. Or this almost epilep­sy-induc­ing one fom 2012. Now comes the lat­est ad, cre­at­ed by direc­tor Andrew Parkhurst, remind­ing us that cof­fee is for peo­ple, not robots. Kind of like Trix are for kids.

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via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

George Orwell & Christopher Hitchens’ Ironclad Rules for Making a Good Cup of Tea

Hitchens_Orwell

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It’s not that I don’t appre­ci­ate good coffee—I con­sid­er it a del­i­ca­cy. But at the end and the begin­ning of the day, cof­fee most­ly func­tions as a caf­feine deliv­ery sys­tem. But not tea. Tea must be savored, and it must be good. Amer­i­cans’ enthu­si­asm for tea does not come nat­u­ral­ly. What pass­es for tea in the U.S. is best described by Christo­pher Hitchens as “a cup or pot of water, well off the boil, with the tea bags lying on an adja­cent cold plate.” (See his Jan­u­ary 2011 piece in Slate called “How to Make a Decent Cup of Tea.”) If this doesn’t sound wrong, he elab­o­rates, set­ting up his endorse­ment of George Orwell’s method­i­cal instruc­tions for prop­er tea:

Then comes the ridicu­lous busi­ness of pour­ing the tepid water, dunk­ing the bag until some change in col­or occurs, and even­tu­al­ly find­ing some way of dis­pos­ing of the result­ing and dispir­it­ing tam­pon sur­ro­gate. The drink itself is then best thrown away, though if swal­lowed it will have about the same effect on morale as a read­ing of the mem­oirs of Pres­i­dent James Earl Carter.

I like Jim­my Carter. I haven’t read his mem­oirs, and this does indeed sound awful. And before I had learned any­thing at all about drink­ing tea, it was all I knew. I tried. I cribbed a few notes here and there, wrote in tea shops, read the rough-hewn for­mal­ism of Sen no Rikyu, and looked to the East. I did not look to Britain and her for­mer Com­mon­wealth.

Per­haps I should. George Orwell would prob­a­bly say so. Hitchens as well, though they don’t per­fect­ly agree with each oth­er. “Tea,” wrote Orwell in his famous 1946 essay “A Nice Cup of Tea,” “is one of the main­stays of civ­i­liza­tion in this coun­try, as well as in Eire, Aus­tralia and New Zealand, but… the man­ner of mak­ing it is the sub­ject of vio­lent dis­putes.” The only dis­agree­ment Hitchens musters against Orwell is that some of his rules, “(always use Indi­an or Ceylonese—i.e. Sri Lankan—tea; make tea only in small quan­ti­ties; avoid sil­ver­ware pots) may be con­sid­ered option­al or out­mod­ed.”

Many old restraints may be loos­ened. But make no mis­take, for Hitchens, as for Orwell, mak­ing a good cup of tea is not about mind­ful­ness, patience, imper­ma­nence, or med­i­ta­tion. It is about rules. Orwell had 11. The “essen­tial ones are eas­i­ly com­mit­ted to mem­o­ry, and they are sim­ple to put into prac­tice.” What are they? Hitchens has his own suc­cinct para­phrase, which you can read over at Slate. Orwell’s rather baroque list we reprint, in part, below for your edi­fi­ca­tion. Read the com­plete essay here. Hitchens rec­om­mends you straight­en out your next barista on some tea essen­tials. Imag­ine, how­ev­er, pre­sent­ing such an unfor­tu­nate per­son with this list of demands:

  • First of all, one should use Indi­an or Cey­lonese tea. Chi­na tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowa­days — it is eco­nom­i­cal, and one can drink it with­out milk — but there is not much stim­u­la­tion in it.…
  • Sec­ond­ly, tea should be made in small quan­ti­ties — that is, in a teapot.… The teapot should be made of chi­na or earth­en­ware. Sil­ver or Bri­tan­ni­aware teapots pro­duce infe­ri­or tea and enam­el pots are worse.…
  • Third­ly, the pot should be warmed before­hand. This is bet­ter done by plac­ing it on the hob than by the usu­al method of swill­ing it out with hot water.
  • Fourth­ly, the tea should be strong. For a pot hold­ing a quart, if you are going to fill it near­ly to the brim, six heaped tea­spoons would be about right.…  I main­tain that one strong cup of tea is bet­ter than twen­ty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a lit­tle stronger with each year that pass­es.…
  • Fifth­ly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strain­ers, muslin bags or oth­er devices to imprison the tea.…
  • Sixth­ly, one should take the teapot to the ket­tle and not the oth­er way about. The water should be actu­al­ly boil­ing at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours.…
  • Sev­enth­ly, after mak­ing the tea, one should stir it, or bet­ter, give the pot a good shake, after­wards allow­ing the leaves to set­tle.
  • Eighth­ly, one should drink out of a good break­fast cup — that is, the cylin­dri­cal type of cup, not the flat, shal­low type.…
  • Ninth­ly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sick­ly taste.
  • Tenth­ly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most con­tro­ver­sial points of all; indeed in every fam­i­ly in Britain there are prob­a­bly two schools of thought on the sub­ject. The milk-first school can bring for­ward some fair­ly strong argu­ments, but I main­tain that my own argu­ment is unan­swer­able. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stir­ring as one pours, one can exact­ly reg­u­late the amount of milk…
  • Last­ly, tea — unless one is drink­ing it in the Russ­ian style — should be drunk with­out sug­ar. I know very well that I am in a minor­i­ty here. But still, how can you call your­self a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sug­ar in it? It would be equal­ly rea­son­able to put in pep­per or salt.…

Relat­ed Con­tent

10 Gold­en Rules for Mak­ing the Per­fect Cup of Tea (1941)

10 Essen­tial Tips for Mak­ing Great Cof­fee at Home

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

High-Tech Japanese Camera Proves That the Shape of a Wine Glass Affects the Flavor of Wines

Japan­ese sci­en­tists have devel­oped a cam­era that con­firms what we’ve long sensed: “wine glass shape has a very sophis­ti­cat­ed func­tion­al design for tast­ing and enjoy­ing wine.” That’s what Kohji Mit­sub­ayashi, a researcher at the Tokyo Med­ical and Den­tal Uni­ver­si­ty, told Chem­istry World.

It’s a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed, and I’d encour­age you to read this Chem­istry World arti­cle, but the upshot is this: Mitsubayashi’s team used a spe­cial cam­era to ana­lyze “dif­fer­ent wines, in dif­fer­ent glass­es – includ­ing dif­fer­ent shaped wine glass­es, a mar­ti­ni glass and a straight glass – at dif­fer­ent tem­per­a­tures.” And they found that “dif­fer­ent glass shapes and tem­per­a­tures can bring out com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent bou­quets and fin­ish­es from the same wine.”

In the video above, you can see the new-fan­gled cam­era in action, demon­strat­ing how wines at dif­fer­ent tem­per­a­tures (some­thing that’s affect­ed by the geom­e­try of the glass) release dif­fer­ent vapors. And those trans­late into dif­fer­ent fla­vors. Get more on this at Chem­istry World.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe for the DIY Con­nois­seur

The Physics of Guin­ness Beer Demys­ti­fied

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Watch Björk’s 6 Favorite TED Talks, From the Mushroom Death Suit to the Virtual Choir

Björk_-_Hurricane_Festival

Image by Zach Klein

Singer-song­writer Björk, cur­rent­ly enjoy­ing a career ret­ro­spec­tive at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, cel­e­brat­ed TED’s bil­lionth video view with a playlist of six trea­sured TED Talks. What do her choic­es say about her?

In this talk, artist Jae Rhim Lee mod­els her Mush­room Death Suit, a kicky lit­tle snug­gy designed to decom­pose and reme­di­ate tox­ins from corpses before they leech back into the soil or sky. Despite Björk’s fond­ness for out­ré fash­ion, I’m pret­ty sure this choice goes beyond the mere­ly sar­to­r­i­al.

For more infor­ma­tion, or to get in line for a mush­room suit of your own, see the Infin­i­ty Bur­ial Project.

Con­tin­u­ing with the mush­room / fash­ion theme, Björk next turns to design­er Suzanne Lee, who demon­strates how she grows sus­tain­able tex­tiles from kom­bucha mush­rooms. The result­ing mate­r­i­al may var­i­ous­ly resem­ble paper or flex­i­ble veg­etable leather. It is extreme­ly recep­tive to nat­ur­al dyes, but not water repel­lent, so bring a non-kom­bucha-based change of clothes in case you get caught in the rain.

For more infor­ma­tion on Lee’s home­grown, super green fab­ric, vis­it Bio­Cou­ture.

Björk’s clear­ly got a soft spot for things that grow: mush­rooms, mush­room-based fab­ric, and now…building mate­ri­als? Pro­fes­sor of Exper­i­men­tal Archi­tec­ture Rachel Arm­strong’s plan for self-regen­er­at­ing build­ings involves pro­to­cols, or “lit­tle fat­ty bags” that behave like liv­ing things despite an absence of DNA. I’m still not sure how it works, but as long as the lit­tle fat­ty bags are not added to my own ever-grow­ing edi­fice, I’m down.

For more infor­ma­tion on what Dr. Arm­strong refers to as bot­tom up con­struc­tion (includ­ing a scheme to keep Venice from sink­ing) see Black Sky Think­ing.

Björk’s next choice takes a turn for the seri­ous… with games. Game Design­er Bren­da Romero began explor­ing the heavy duty emo­tion­al pos­si­bil­i­ties of the medi­um when her 9‑year-old daugh­ter returned from school with a less than nuanced under­stand­ing of the Mid­dle Pas­sage. The suc­cess of that exper­i­ment inspired her to cre­ate games that spur play­ers to engage on a deep­er lev­el with thorny his­tor­i­cal sub­jects. (The Trail of Tears required 50,000 indi­vid­ual red­dish-brown pieces).

Learn more about Romero’s ana­log games at The Mechan­ic is the Mes­sage.

Remem­ber those 50,000 indi­vid­ual pieces? As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Aaron Huey doc­u­ment­ed life on Pine Ridge Reser­va­tion, he was hum­bled by hear­ing him­self referred to as “wasichu,” a Lako­ta word that can be trans­lat­ed as “non-Indi­an.” Huey decid­ed not to shy away from its more point­ed trans­la­tion: “the one who takes the best meat for him­self.” His TED Talk is an impas­sioned his­to­ry les­son that begins in 1824 with the cre­ation of the Bureau of Indi­an Affairs and ends in an activist chal­lenge.

Proof that Björk is not entire­ly about the quirk.

See Huey’s pho­tos from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic cov­er sto­ry, “In the Spir­it of Crazy Horse.”

Björk opts to close things on a musi­cal note with excerpts from com­pos­er Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque” and “Sleep” per­formed by a crowd­sourced vir­tu­al choir. Its members—they swell to 1999 for “Sleep”—record their parts alone at home, then upload them to be mixed into some­thing son­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly greater than the sum of its parts.

Lis­ten to “Sleep” in its entire­ty here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Cookie Monster, Life Coach, Shows Why Cookies Are the Key to Happiness

You can look for answers to life’s big ques­tions in the Zen teach­ings of Alan Watts, in the exis­ten­tial­ist mus­ings of Hunter S. Thomp­son, or some­where in our col­lec­tion of 130 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es. But maybe that’s over-think­ing things — pro­vid­ing com­pli­cat­ed answers when the key to life is real­ly quite sim­ple. Eat­ing cook­ies. Ladies and gen­tle­man, your favorite life coach and mine, Cook­ie Mon­ster.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Life and Death of an Espresso Shot in Super Slow Motion

Some YouTu­ber post­ed online a pret­ty nice clip of an espres­so shot being pulled from a La Mar­zoc­co FB80 espres­so machine at 120 frames per sec­ond. They rec­om­mend mut­ing the sound, then putting on your own music. I gave it a quick shot with the famous sound­track for Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I’ll be damned, it syncs up pret­ty well. Have a bet­ter sound­track to rec­om­mend? Feel free to let us know in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Clas­si­cal Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

voltaire coffee

I think I speak for many of us when I say that cof­fee fuels our great­est intel­lec­tu­al efforts. And even as we get the jit­ters and leave brown rings on our desks, we can take com­fort in the fact that so it also went with some of the most notable philoso­phers in the his­to­ry of the dis­ci­pline. As far back as the 18th cen­tu­ry, no less a writer, thinker, and agi­ta­tor than François-Marie Arou­et, bet­ter known as Voltaire, “report­ed­ly con­sumed some­where between 40 and 50 cups of joe a day, appar­ent­ly of a choco­late-cof­fee mix­ture. He lived into his eight­ies, though his doc­tor warned him that his beloved cof­fee would kill him.”

That comes from Aman­da Scherk­er at The Huff­in­g­ton Post writ­ing up “9 Famous Genius­es Who Were Also Huge Cof­fee Addicts.” Voltaire’s java habit also comes up on “10 Odd Obses­sions of Famous Philoso­phers” by Vir­ginia Muir at List­verse, who names his drink­ing venue of choice (the Café Pro­cope in Paris) and indi­cates the extent of his enthu­si­asm by not­ing that “he even reg­u­lar­ly paid exor­bi­tant fees to have lux­u­ry cof­fee import­ed for his per­son­al use” — which cer­tain­ly does­n’t seem so eccen­tric today.

immanuel-kant

Lat­er that cen­tu­ry, Immanuel Kant took up cof­fee in his last days. Writ­ing first-hand on the sub­ject in the apt­ly titled The Last Days of Immanuel Kant, Thomas De Quincey (no stranger to life-chang­ing habits him­self) describes the philoso­pher’s “cus­tom of tak­ing, imme­di­ate­ly after din­ner, a cup of cof­fee,” a rit­u­al he so came to rel­ish that, when­ev­er he sensed he may not get his new favorite bev­er­age, there “com­menced a scene of some inter­est. Cof­fee must be brought ‘upon the spot’ (a word he had con­stant­ly on his mouth dur­ing his lat­ter days) ‘in a moment.’ ” Know­ing this would hap­pen, De Quincey made sure “the cof­fee was ground; the water was boil­ing; and the very moment the word was giv­en, [Kan­t’s] ser­vant shot in like an arrow and plunged the cof­fee into the water.… But this tri­fling delay seemed unen­durable to Kant.”

Kierkegaard Mug
(pic­tured: Søren Kierkegaard cof­fee mug)

In the 19th cen­tu­ry, Søren Kierkegaard would also get into a cof­fee rit­u­al. He “had his own quite pecu­liar way of hav­ing cof­fee,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Joakim Garff. “Delight­ed­ly he seized hold of the bag con­tain­ing the sug­ar and poured sug­ar into the cof­fee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incred­i­bly strong, black cof­fee, which slow­ly dis­solved the white pyra­mid.” I always drink it black myself, but who among us dares think our­selves too good for the teeth-aching pre­ferred by the author of Fear and Trem­bling?

We must always bear in mind, too, that while cof­fee may con­sti­tute a nec­es­sary con­di­tion for our intel­lec­tu­al achieve­ments, it nev­er con­sti­tutes a suf­fi­cient one. Before pour­ing your next cup, whether your first of the day or your fifti­eth, whether before or after din­ner, and whether into a pyra­mid of sug­ar or not, ask your­self how much progress you’ve made on your own Can­dide or Cri­tique of Pure Rea­son. A sober­ing ques­tion, to be sure — but after enough caf­feine, you feel pret­ty sober any­way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: London’s First Cafe Cre­ates Ad for Cof­fee in the 1650s

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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