Help with my Percolator
 

I'm having trouble using a new percolator I bought, and I'm not sure what's wrong. I was hoping there might be someone here who's a relative expert on the subject. The peroclator I have doesn't always let the water all the way through the to the spout at the top. It seems like it gets trapped in the grounds. I've tried changing certain things, but I still get inconcistent results.

I guess there's a series of questions I've got:

• How fine/coarse do you grind the beans?
• do you press the grounds at all when it's in the filter? I know you're not supposed to press the grounds down hard or anything, but are you supposed to at least give it a little pat or something?
• how hot should the stove be? I have an electric stove (which might be my problem...) and it crank it up to high.
  

And any general advice to avoid typical problems would be appreciated. :D

All the percolator-type coffee pots I've used had a filter basket at the top for the coffee and a water reservoir below. A tube connected the two with a heating element below the lower end of the tube. Liquid in the reservoir flows into the heater, boils up the tube, bubbles out over the coffee, drips through the filter and back into the reservoir.

The most common problem was the seating at the bottom between the tube and the heater. Most of these were monstrous carafe w/ spigot at the bottom type things, but on the one top-pour I've encountered, we took out the used grounds before serving the coffee. In any event, I honestly am not following how your particular machine is supposed to work. What's the manufacturer and model?

Percolator coffee is ground coarser than automatic drip, but not as coarse as french press. If your pot uses regular paper coffee filters and not an installed filter basket, this question is more one of strength/bitterness than of not having coffee grounds in your coffee.

The grounds should be shaken so they evenly cover bottom of the filter. It's not necessary to tamp them down... this isn't espresso and pressurized steam.

The stove should be on hot enough to boil water.

A percolator is the simplest way to brew coffee. I use one during power outages and have never had a problem with it. A better description of your percolator would help.

French Press.

That's what I thought! I've used one for a couple of years now, off and on, but all of a sudden I'm having the problems I mentioned above. I got a new percolater, and I seem to be having the same problems...

Also, I think there might be a problem of semantics. What I have might also be known as a "stove top espresso maker."

Here's the one I have:

http://www.amazon.com/BonJour-Milano.../dp/B00004R8YW

It doesn't call itself a percolater on the box, but I see no fundamental difference between this one and the one I had before. And here's wikipedia's page on the type of maker it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_percolator

I have the "Pressure Type" one.

So the end result of my problem is that not all the water (or brewed coffeee, i guess) makes it into the upper container. Sometimes a small amount does... but definitely not all. Plenty of steam seems to be rising out of the top spout, but not coffee. Is it a problem of heat? Insulation? A bad filter? Incorrectly ground beans?

Grr... I really like the taste of the coffee when this works, but I'm very close to buying a Mr. Coffee at this point.



*edit*
So I just found this off of Wikipedia. It's tips on how to use my type of percolator.

I think I'm discovering that tips I've been reading might only apply to other types of percolators, and not the type I have.... hm. *scratches head*

I think you may have have bought an espresso maker when you wanted a coffee maker. Espresso is brewed with steam and yeilds a strong beverage very different form coffee.

the thing i bought is virtually identical to the one i had before, and is exactly structured like the "pressure type" percolator in the wikipedia article. i'm assuming that the company that made mine just decided to call it an "espresso maker" for whatever marketing reasons they had.

well, whatever the case, i'm doing something wrong. if i should be considering this thing an espresso maker, what should i be doing differently?

holy coffee filter, batman, i think i figured it out.

it looks like the valve that's on the bottom basin part was the culprit. I shoved a nail in there to jostle the ball bearing inside it, because I guess it was lodged in there and not allowing the necessary air to be let in, and now I have coffee to drink!

man, that took a lot burnt coffee to figure out.

What you have is definitely an espresso maker. That particular style was invented in the 1930's by Alfonso Bialetti. The original had 6 sides rather than 8.

I'm glad you got it to work -- but the fundamental difference between this device and a percolator is that this one uses steam as pointed out by <b>newtx</b>. A percolator just uses hot water that recirculates through the grounds. The flavors are disinctly different and if you like what you get using what you use then who cares?

For a really, really good cup of coffee try one of these:

http://www.sweetmarias.com/prod.brewers.vacuum.shtml

Doug