Monday: I assembled the Hamilton Beach BrewStation the night before and, ignoring the "6:15" illustration on the box, set the timer for a more indulgent 9 a.m. The machine drip brews into a plastic reservoir that dispenses a cup at the push of a button. Other companies make carafe style drip brewers with a built-in bean grinder another good anti mess innovation but the BrewStation made a richer, less acrid cup of coffee. 

Tuesday: Early to bed and early to rise make a reporter more or less able to figure out how to use a two chambered automatic vacuum brewer. Hot water rises up into the grounds, where it roils pleasingly until cooling air below sucks an eruption of richly brewed coffee through a filter and back into the carafe. Bodum and Black & Decker make similar versions. Pick Bodum for design appeal and brewing time about 8 minutes. Black & Decker for price ($30 cheaper, with a 14 minute wait). 

Wednesday: Hump day is a good day for a strong jolt, so I went with the Krups Moka Brew. A heating element forces pressurized steam through tightly packed grounds, emulating the silver stovetop espresso brewers favored by Italians and artsy types. The system delivers the most robust coffee of the lot, just this side of true espresso. 

Thursday: Ugh, a headache. And no, I don't want to talk about why. Running late, so I opt for the ultimate in automation. Melitta and Keurig both offer single cup machines that pump hot water through premeasured coffee packets in under a minute. But when it tastes as if it came from a vending machine, does convenience really matter? 

Friday: Definitely too much coffee this week, and my stomach needs a break. Enter the Toddy Cold Brew system. "Brewing" with cold water plan ahead, it takes 12 hours extracts less acid and different flavors than hot brewing. Drinking it black, my spartan brother dismissed it as "diner coffee without the 'ouch.' " My more voluptuary girlfriend, coaddicted to milk and sugar, says she'll never drink anything else. Guess that means it'll be sharing space with the Moka Brew, my pick for the best of the lot. 

Note: U.S. News & World Report published the following editor's clarification in their 2/16/04 issue:

"Although it takes 12 hours to make a batch of espresso like concentrate for the Toddy Cold Brew system mentioned in "A Barista in PJ's" [January 26], it can be refrigerated up to 10 days and used to make a fast cup of coffee. The user mixes one part concentrate to three parts boiling water." 

Edmonton (Canada) - Here's the scene: A hectic morning, and that fresh pot of coffee near your terminal is steaming in your direction. 

The phone rings. Four or five calls later, your coffee is stone cold, and a strange little oil slick has formed on the surface. The fault, dear coffee lovers, could be the heat. 

According to one segment of coffee lovers, the brewing process counts as much as the bean and the roast. That's the theory behind a cold-brew system first used centuries ago by Peruvian Indians. 

It took a chemical engineering student named Todd Simpson to bring it to the attention of North American coffee lovers. He knew that coffee beans contain several compounds that are extracted during the hot brewing process. Some of those compounds, including the oils and fatty acids that cause the slick on your coffee are soluble at a high temperature. The method most of us use at home, including the French press and virtually all steam methods, scalds the beans, which brings out those acids and oils. 

Simpson was studying at Cornell University in 1964, when he discovered that those same acids and oils were not soluble at low temperatures. He found that up to 67 per cent of them, including the ketons, esters and amids that sometimes give hot-brewed coffee a bitter under taste and cause some people to experience a burning sensation in the digestive tract, could be eliminated by cold-steeping the coffee grounds for several hours to produce a rich concentrate. 

He patented the Toddy Coffee Maker -- 40 years old this year. Although the company has never advertised, it's about to sell its one millionth cold-brew system and numbers its enthusiastic converts in the hundreds of thousands. 

People who drink cold brewed coffee swear by it. A recent consumer test article in the Washington Post declared the system to be the ultimate coffee maker. "(It produces) the perfect cup of coffee," said the Post. 

Cold comforts
Some of North America's major coffee chains -- Seattle's Best among them -- are now using the Toddy method to make coffee concentrates. Stacie Osborne, vice president of the Canadian retail division for Seattle's Best, says they use the cold brew method in all seven of their Vancouver outlets. "It's fabulous. Once you try it, you won't go back to the hot water method," she says. "We use one pound of coffee to two litters of water, and let it steep for 12 hours. The home brewers are available in our shops for around $30." 

The Toddy Maker is almost ridiculously simple. It consists of a plastic brewing container with a plug and filter at the bottom, and a glass carafe. Ground coffee and two litters of cold water go into the top and are allowed to steep for eight to twelve hours. The plug is pulled, and the concentrate drains through the filter into the glass carafe. The concentrate must be refrigerated and will keep for about three weeks. It can also be frozen (in ice cube containers) for several months. 

Some like it hot
OK, so it's mild and sweet. But at minus 40C, iced coffee doesn't cut it. We need that steamy mug. And in the hot-versus-cold brew debate, the same coffee chains that rave about the pure sweetness of cold brewed coffee for their chilled drinks -- iced cappuccino, iced latte and so on -- just aren't using it for hot coffee. For that, they stick with the traditional methods. John Delutis, director of operations for Second Cup in western Canada, says his company has tested many methods for making the perfect hot cup, including this one, but they've ruled it out. "We experimented with it for our chilled lattes, but we weren't really set up for it." And for the hot mug? "It wouldn't have replaced our other methods in any case," he says. "We've just been through a major reinvestment in (the quality of) our coffees. We feel that we use the perfect critical temperature. Too hot, and it would be bitter. Too cold, there wouldn't be enough flavor extracted." 

However, home consumers who use the cold brew method for making hot coffee say it produces a smooth, mild, full flavored brew, infinitely superior to the hot brew method. More importantly, it's easier on the stomach. According to the American College of Gastroenterology, more than 60 million American adults experience painful gastro-reflux disease and heartburn at least once a month. The cold brew method all but eliminates the irritating acids released in hot brewed coffee. That's why Shelley Smith, a coffee loving bookkeeper in Abbotsford who suffers from chronic inflammation of the bladder, bought her own Toddy Coffee Maker. "My condition was irritated by the acids and oils in most coffee, and this method produces a delicious, low-acid coffee that I can drink all day." 

Coffee's little secret
According to Smith, the cold process coffee maker reveals something that high-priced gourmet bean sellers don't want us to know: The secret of great tasting coffee is mostly in the preparation. "I don't go around endorsing things, but this is different," she told Bistro. She uses a variety of different coffees. "Use any beans, including supermarket beans. I'm too lazy to grind my own, so I even use Folgers. Don't use a fine grind -- it needs to be regular or coarse grind. Don't shake it or stir it, and you'll have great coffee." She uses one part concentrate to two or three parts boiling water, depending on how strong she wants it. If it's not hot enough, she'll microwave it. Smith also appreciates the low tech aspect of the Toddy. It's basically a water pot, a filter and a carafe. If there's a downside to the cold brew method, it's in the amount of coffee required to make the concentrate. "You do use a little more coffee, but you probably throw out less." 

Ever since an Ethiopian peasant observed the excited and alert state of his goats after they ate from a certain small tree found high in the hills, as the story of coffee's origin goes, people have tried new ways to enjoy the fruits of the plant. In his book "The Devil's Cup," Stewart Lee Allen travels the historical path of coffee's journey from its origin in Ethiopia to mugs worldwide, encountering many creative ways of extracting its essence along the way. Boiling the leaves, eating balls made of whole beans, even collecting beans eaten and expelled by the civet cat -- people will try anything to enjoy a good jolt of joe.

I have had my own journey on the road to java nirvana. But now, at two or three cups a day, my search for the perfect cup of coffee has ended: I have found cold process coffee.

Not long ago a strange package arrived from my sister-in-law Becky. Her birthday gift was a device manufactured by Toddy Products of Houston -- little more than a bucket with a hole in the bottom blocked by a filter and a cork. Inside, ground coffee soaks overnight in cold water. When you remove the cork, a thick coffee syrup drains from the bucket into a carafe. You store the concentrated coffee in the refrigerator. When you want a cup, you pour a little into your mug and add boiling water or hot milk. It's incredibly smooth and mellow.

Cold processing takes 8 to 12 hours to make the syrup, but it's worth the wait. In that time, you get about 36 cups of delicious "instant" coffee that also works wonderfully for cold coffee drinks or baking.

The inspiration for the Toddy maker came to Houston from Guatemala, where Todd Simpson, a garden nursery owner on a plant-gathering trip in the early 1960s, ordered coffee in a small cafe. "They sat in front of him a little urn of coffee concentrate and boiling water," said his son, Strother Simpson. "He tasted it, and he thought it was the best cup of coffee he ever had."

Todd Simpson brought the idea home to his wife. "He sort of made a contraption to make this coffee," said his son, in a Texas accent as thick as coffee syrup. His mother had a delicate stomach and couldn't tolerate coffee, but her system handled the cold brewed coffee just fine. That was enough for Todd, who invented a simple concentrate maker -- soon dubbed "Toddy" after its inventor -- and started a business in his garage. Forty years and thousands of Toddy makers later, Strother runs the business.

Todd Simpson had a degree in chemical engineering from Cornell, so of course he tested his coffee to learn why it was so tasty and gentle on the stomach. Simpson claimed that brewing coffee in hot water leaches out acids, fatty acids and other unpleasant substances, all of which end up in your cup. A cold process coffee maker leaves that nasty stuff behind. According to the Toddy company, lab tests have found 3 to 4 times more acid in hot-brewed coffee (a pH of 5.48, versus 6.31 for cold process coffee, for those of you who still remember your high school chemistry).

The cold process coffee maker proves the secret that high-priced gourmet bean sellers don't want you to know -- good coffee is mostly in the preparation. Overheat your coffee, let the beans go stale, add too much or too little of the grinds or let it sit on a warmer all day, and even the most expensive beans grown inside the cone of a volcano and hand-picked by virgins will taste like pond water. On the other hand, my Toddy maker produces good coffee even from run-of-the-mill, pre-ground beans from a can. Sure, cold processing takes a little foresight, but the results are worth it.

Nobody knows for sure where and when the cold process method came about -- Strother Simpson thinks it started in Peru -- but we know that Todd Simpson was not the first to bring it to America. The editors of Scientific American reported a breakthrough in coffee technology back in 1847. "Among all the new inventions and discoveries that are astonishing the world," they wrote, "we have heard of none which promises to be more useful and acceptable, at least to ladies, than 'The Essence of Coffee,' which is now offered to the lovers of that beverage. It is the genuine stuff, put up in bottles, at a low price. You have only to put a teaspoon full into a cup of water containing the usual complement of sugar and milk, and you have a cup of superior coffee without further trouble."

What happened to that first venture in coffee concentrate is lost to history. But today we can also buy coffee concentrate instead of making our own. Toddy Products sells coffee and tea syrup ready to use, as do several other companies. In fact, since Strother Simpson began selling the syrup in 1990, most of his business has come from sales of concentrate to commercial manufacturers of beverages and food containing coffee or tea.

Even if your taste buds can't distinguish between a fine cup of gourmet kava and a plastic foam mug of overheated slag from a convenience store, the convenience of cold processed coffee is easy to like. It is just as quick to make in the morning as freeze-dried instant coffee, and you can control the strength of each cup by using more or less concentrate. Heating the concentrate itself without adding hot water gives you a drink that resembles espresso. Making cold coffee drinks is a snap, and it even works well for baking recipes that call for coffee.

The Toddy maker is a simple contraption, and its design has changed very little in 40 years. Strother Simpson took over the business in 1986 and made few alterations to the product. "I changed the package and tried to give it a face-lift." Coffee aficionados have bought about 20,000 makers a year since the company began, says Strother, but sales of the maker or the pre-made concentrate never took off in either retail stores or cafes, not even when Starbucks carried the device in its early years.

Americans are still experimenting today with espresso makers and French presses. But for people who have discovered Todd Simpson's little machine, it is the ultimate coffee maker.

Drip, Drip, Drip
Cold Process Coffee: Instructions may vary, depending on your brand of cold process coffee maker. But in general, add ground coffee to the container and fill with cold water, as directed. Let the mixture "cold brew" undisturbed for 12 hours. Remove the stopper and let concentrate flow into the decanter. Refrigerate. To serve, add one part concentrate to three parts boiling water (or add cold water and microwave). For iced coffee, serve over ice.

You can also substitute it in any recipe that calls for coffee, including baked goods, diluting it to normal coffee strength if necessary.

Or use the concentrate in the following recipes. A stove or microwave will work if you don't have a steamer.

Cappuccino: Steam 3 ounces of coffee concentrate in a stainless pitcher to 185 degrees. Pour the steamed concentrate into a cappuccino cup. Froth 6 ounces of 2 percent milk and quickly add to the cup. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

Mocha: Follow the recipe for Cappuccino, adding one ounce of sweetened chocolate candy or baker's chocolate to the concentrate before heating it.

Latte: Steam 8 ounces of 2 percent milk to 185 degrees in a stainless pitcher. Pour steamed milk into your cappuccino cup. Steam 3 ounces of coffee concentrate, then pour the steamed concentrate into the middle of the steamed milk. Pour so that there is a little dot of coffee left in the middle. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

Iced Cappuccino: Mix 2 ounces of coffee concentrate with 6 ounces of 2 percent milk and 1/8 teaspoon of vanilla. Pour the mixture over ice and add sweetener to your liking.

Toddy Frappe: In a blender, mix 1/2 cup coffee concentrate and 1/2 cup 2 percent milk. Add 1/2 cup of ice and 3 large scoops of vanilla ice cream. Blend until smooth and pour into a glass. Top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.