An appreciation for the anti-crema

[soniabegonia]

For those of you who drink French-pressed coffee and use milk or cream, this will be familiar to you: once you get into the last half cup or so, a slightly fuzzy dark crescent appears with each sip as the liquid picks up a tiny amount of the fine dregs on the bottom of the cup.

When I first started pressing my coffee, the dregs bothered me a bit, but now I find myself craving this crescent that adds the perfect little note of bitterness to each sip. I don’t think there is a name for this so I am dubbing this the “anti-crema.” When French-pressed coffee sits for any length of time, the fine, velvety sediment will settle into the bottom of the cup, causing the coffee to become slightly diluted. The anti-crema adds the perfect amount of body and bitterness back to each sip. I find myself chasing the anti-crema, taking a sip to create the anti-crema, then rotating the cup about 30 degrees with the slight twist of the wrist, and taking another quick sip to capture the anti-crema before it dissolves back into the liquid.

Call me obsessive, but this is the ritual I go through each morning and I just wanted to celebrate this little serendipitous law of physics.

[Bunnyfood]

I am with you- I even bring my press to work...however, all that "anti-crema" also means I need to bring a toothbrush and whiting toothpaste as well- that coffee silt does a number on the pearly whites!