Pentargon Coffee

From its earliest on board development
I have always considered
Pentargon's coffee special.

It evolved from my fondness
for real coffee beans
from the best estates,
ground just before use
percolated by super-heated water

Percolation was part of my growing up.
We had a percolator

Ireland drank tea and so did we mostly.

We rarely drank coffee at home,
but knew how to prepare it
Grand Uncle Tom,
whose entire adult life
was spent in America
lived his final days with us.

Ground coffee went off
unless stored properly
and beans were better by far

but ...

you could not buy a grinder in the 50s.
They were found only in coffee houses
and yes coffee houses would grind beans
but we lived a long way from the city.

But on occasional visits
we got coffee beans ground
and then we drank coffee.

Later as a student in that city
I held court in coffee houses
and discussed the merits
and philosophy
the Fabbonichi series
and high grown coffee
and developed tastes that
would be entertained
in my own galley
decades later

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I use coffee beans from all over the world, bought in a huge variety of locations but always 'altura'. Grown at altitude means they will not be 'cheap'. The price of the bag is an early indicator! Pentargon's motto "At All Costs and at No Cost at All" applies. Soon as a bag is opened, the beans go in an airtight jar and stored in reduced light and temperature. On board I store it in the bilges and in hot weather it goes in the cooler.

I use an Italian Espresso percolator, a Commandante C40 grinder and I lace the grind with jumbo green cardamom seeds cracked freshly from their pods. ( I buy the pods 100g at a time and store airtight in a green plastic screw top jar to avoid ultra violet spoiling). I will pour the made coffee into my mug on top of a good spoon of Demerara. The final ritual before creaming with best whole milk is to take the coffee pot apart, clean it and hang it up.

I do not accept second best and never more so than in food and cooking. In the early years of grinding my own it was impossible to find a proper grinder. They were all the same shoddy basics sold cheap in Indian shops.

Eventually, I found the Commandante by asking a real chef. It cost twenty times more than the rubbish I was using which used to fall apart after months sometimes weeks but now I have a professional tool adjustable to suit the bean and the grind and it will last forever ...