Does a percolator make good coffee?

percolator Mccafe decaf

I recently came across a coffee lover asking if percolators made better coffee. Really the question is compared to what? Regardless I think percolators make great coffee especially compared to Autodrip machines.

Do percolators make good coffee? The advantages of percolated coffee are near boiling coffee, variable strength and intensity through brewing time, and versatile use like brewing in a campfire! Disadvantages are harsh brewing conditions for delicate coffee and continuous re-circulation of the brewed coffee that can cause increased bitterness or burning of the coffee easily.

Read on to discover why the percolator is still one of my main methods to make coffee.

Why its awesome!

OK lets be honest the percolator may be the greatest invention for coffee aficionados since well coffee. There are a lot of haters out there on this method but its because they expect too much and honestly they don’t know what there doing.

One thing I learned as a beer brewer is process is everything and percolators are no different. You have to be diligent, consistent and know your process inside and out. My mother is a great example of this. She brewed percolator coffee in an electric percolator for many years. And for many years my brother would complain about her dirty sock water coffee! Consistent but didn’t brew it strong enough for us rough and tumble cowboy types (sorry ma)!

Types of percolators

There are a few different types of percolators. My family mainly used two types as growing up. The stove top percolator and the electric kettle type. Same basic type but some important differences.

Namely

Electric runs on electricity. No electric = no coffee!
Electric are generally meant for indoor use only
Electric generally have set percolator times so there is less control but less chance to be surfing YouTube cat videos and burn the hell out of your fancy Ethiopian beans 🙂
Stovetop require a stovetop, or other heat source so its not an all in one solution
Stovetops work great in many locations like stoves, grills or even campfires. Make sure you get one with a heat resistant handle and a good grill glove to pull it out.

Use it correctly!

Lets talk about the elephant tin the room. How to use it. Most people make one of two mistakes; brewing too hot or too long. Brewing too long is the easy one to avoid, don’t brew too long!

The trickery part is what is too long? Its a process parameter that you need to tailor to your liking. I brew longer for a strong robust cup. I like it darker and perhaps “over extracted” as some users complain. After nearly twenty years of drinking percolator coffee I can’t say I ever found it to be “worse” then other methods. Different yes, but autodrip versus an espresso machine will be very different too! Got you there didn’t I!

Now brewing too hot is going to cause an uproar. That’s right I said percolating temperature will cause an uproar, what doesn’t on the internet nowadays! The issue with brewing too hot is most people are tempted to put the burner all the way up and leave it for 20 minutes and come back to scorched coffee. No No No! You don’t need to baby it either, its a process.

Get it boiling then reduce heat to where its just percolating. Maybe one or two bubbles a second is all that is required. If the bubbles are hitting the percolator top like your running a steam locomotive you are burning the hell out of your coffee. Slow and steady wins the race. Generally I percolate mine for about 7-10 minutes depending on what characteristics I want. Less dark and roasty I brew shorter. If I want bold and dark for when ice fishing in Alaska, I percolate longer. Its all about what you like. To quote my Uncle Bill again about what makes a wine good “If you drink it its good wine, if you spit it out its a bad wine”.

Why use a percolator over other methods?

One thing I can definitely say about the percolator over any other method of brewing coffee is you can toss it into a camp fire and make great coffee easily. My uncle joked one time after seeing me do this on my charcoal grill that I was making “Cowboy” coffee. You bet I was!

This is the best part of a percolator to me. Whether an avid camper or survivalist it makes sense. As long as I have something that burns I can make coffee. Even better is as long as I have a fire it stays hot. During hurricane Sandy when I had no power, I light up the charcoal grill and made my cowboy coffee. Who needs power when you have hot coffee.

SCAA cupping vs percolator taste test

Most of the criticism online about percolators revolves around the method ruining the flavor by making it extra bitter and boiling off the flavors during the process. I conducted a quick experiment of cupping using the SCAA method versus a percolated sample. I must admit i did find the claims percolating changes the coffee to be pretty much true.

Brew strength/time/roast-a bold cup with good mouthfeel

My big caveat I did start with an interesting choice McCafe Decaf. Why? It was what I was drinking at the time. One of my goals on this site is to taste my way through all supermarket grade coffees and then move to higher grade specialty coffees. I want to do this to give a large range of prices, types, roasts and styles for the decaf drinker. I digress though…

Overall taste cupping vs Percolator

McCafe proved to be an interesting coffee with aromas of pipe tobacco it was interesting from the beginning. I brewed both the percolator and cup for three minutes prior to tasting. and sampled them in the same container with lid.

The cupped sample smelled of pipe tobacco, leather, paper and sweet spice. The percolator sample smelled roasty with no distinct aroma perhaps a hint of stale paper.

As I moved to tasting I started with the cupped sample and then the percolated sample to get the full flavor of the pure coffee compared to the percolator.

The cupped sample taste overall burnt but of brown spices, mainly clove and was slightly sweet. The percolated coffee didn’t fair as well. Most notable it tasted of burnt/wet paper, burnt cinnamon and earthiness. The wet paper taste could be from the filter itself.

Over extraction-myth?

I did find it over extracted and more bitter then the cupped sample.

It was reeaaallllly hot though!

Crazy hot, I burned my mouth, enough said.

Smells great but does it lose flavor?

It does mute the flavor a bit and dulls its compared to cupping. I will say even to my amateur tasting abilities I could taste it was the same coffee but shifted from its pure form.

Is it better then a french press?

Many comments I have seen online compare french press to percolator brewing methods. There is a raging debate about what’s better. Honestly the methods are too far apart to compare. You wouldn’t compare a K cup to a espresso machine and they are similar in theory. Same here.

While the french press may seem similar its very different. Percolator may be the most unique method as its one of the few that continually recirculates the already extracted coffee over the grounds. French press is one extraction that gets poured off at the correct time.

I love french press coffee as well but I stopped drinking it because it left a fine residue in the coffee that often irritated my acid reflux. Percolators are guilty of the same issue though. Since the grinds used in a percolator are pretty coarse I find it less of an issue (when I grind myself). I have read this is also a result of using cheap grinders but most of the coffees I buy are preground and not whole bean which are biased toward autodrip machines.

Lets wrap this up…

Hopefully you found this useful and informative. I have drank many coffees brewed in percolators over the years but this is the first I sampled back to back. I don’t think McCafe is the perfect decaf for this test. I used it as an average grocery store coffee sample.

I have found many others to be great percolator blends. Honestly probably the darker roasts will fair better as then are already pretty roasted Perhaps next time I’ll try Seattle’s Best Decaf or Cafe Umbria tin my next percolator coffee binge!

Decaf Mobius