Why Cowboy Coffee is the best and how to make it

For Quarkus Feucht, who never pushed Cowboy Coffee on me, but nevertheless changed my outlook on an important part of my day; and Luigi, who taught me that you should always tell someone what a Cowboy Coffee is well before they finish it.

If you go into a large electronics shop, you'll notice that a lot of shop-floor space is devoted to coffee machines and accessories. And people spend a lot on coffee machines or in coffee shops each year. But the best way to drink the black stuff also happens to be one of the cheapest.

Urban, non-traditional Cowboy Coffee, or Turkish Coffee, is when you put ground coffee in a mug and add water. The coffee granules float around before settling at the bottom to form a thick residue, meaning that you don't drink the last bit of coffee.

To make it, add hot water first, then milk, otherwise some of the coffee won't sink to the bottom. If you take sugar, add it with the gound coffee, pour in the hot water and immediately stir; then raise and lower the spoon a few times to stop the liquid's movement and allow the coffee to settle; then, if you take it, add milk. Blow lightly on the fatty froth to move it to one side of the mug and loosen any clusters of ground coffee from the top. Enjoy, and be a smug bastard. Here's why:

Cowboy Coffee retains the fat of the bean. The only other way to do that is with an expensive espresso machine. The fat, important to the taste, cannot fully pass though a filter, French press or stove-top espresso maker, all cheaper alternatives for the average household.

Usually, instant coffee is shit (although Starbucks claim to have invented one which isn't). So the quickest way to make semi-decent coffee, given that instant's no option, is Cowboy-style.

Nowadays, coffee has been so gayed-up that homosexuals are embarrassed about it - it outcamps them. Cowboys are manly, just look at those two lads in that shit Brokenarse Mountain film.

The three above points, combined with the sense that you belong to an exclusive and small club of smart-arsed, yet cool, coffee drinkers, provides for a fun party conversation when you decide to have a coffee after midnight in order to set you up for a second round of boozing.

February shout-outs: rules proposed by friends

No rule is final, there's nearly always an exception. In the case of this blog's title it's bottle caps and the occasional tea bag.

Paul reminds me of this one: don't drink coffee each and every morning. Ask yourself if you're tired because you've had too little sleep (drink the stuff) or if you're tired because you've woken up in the last hour or two (don't drink).

Markus's father told him something in German along the lines of "do what your body tells you". Brilliant - I, like so many, should pay more attention to my body's needs and desires. More often than not my pathetic-excuse-for-a-man torso is literally and metaphorically "on its arse".

Irish Stu says, "it's ok to steal something you know hasn't been used for 12 months". In his case it was some iPod accessory or other; and I'm not even sure he really waited a year but what the hey, it felt right and so my friend from the Emerald Isle played his 'exception card'.