they were making what they called "voyageur coffee" one time, which I sampled. They said the voyageurs used to boil the whole beans. Don't know if this is correct or not, maybe I will see them this summer to find out where their information comes from.
Hi Riley -
Here's an excerpt from a cowboy-era poem, from here:
http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org/research/r_cowb_imag_4.html
Check the 4th line of it.
Excerpts from Allen McCandless' "The Cowboy Soliloquy"
"All day o'er the prairie alone I ride,
Not even a dog to run by my side;
My fire I kindle with chips gathered round,
And boil my coffee without being ground.
Bread lacking leaven' I bake in a pot,
And sleep on the ground for want of a cot;
I wash in a puddle, and wipe on a sack,
And carry my wardrobe all on my back.
My ceiling the sky, my carpet the grass,
My music the lowing of herds as they pass;
My books are the brooks, my sermons the stones,
My parson's a wolf on a pulpit of bones.
But then if my cooking ain't very complete,
Hygienists can't blame me for living to eat;
And where is the man who sleeps more profound
Than the cowboy who stretches himself on the ground."
I don't know how far back that coffee technique goes either, this reference is probably from 1860-1890, I'd guess.
Seems like the reason you grind the beans is to expose more of the bean's insides to the water so more flavor and color can leach out. Seems like boiling them whole would waste a lot of beans, unless they were cheap (hard to believe), or you dried them out and used them over and over?
Patsy