Manual Brewing Methods and Instant Coffee

I live in a small city named Solo in Central Java, Indonesia. Coffee manual brewing methods are something new in my country. I'm not sure when it began, but I started to learn the methods last year.

I don't really remember how and when I started to like coffee. Maybe I like coffee because it is usually offered in various restaurants, and street food vendors in Indonesia besides tea. You will easily find both of them in my country. But most coffees that are served, drank and sold in my city mixed with other ingredients like for example corns. I just found out about it recently. The reason coffee farmers mix coffee with other ingredients is so that they can sell coffee cheaply. If they sell coffee beans without other ingredients, the beans will be expensive and most people probably cannot afford it. And of course, instant coffee is popular and common here.

Since I was a teenager, I liked to drink instant coffee. Why not? It was cheaper, came with various flavours. Real cafes that used coffee makers both manual or machine were rare at that time. The most famous was Starbucks and it was/ is expensive for most people here.

So, in my mind at that time, real coffee was expensive and unaffordable for me. Even now, I will think many times if I am asked to spend $5 for a cup of coffee. It's not that I'm stingy, but I live in a small town where everything here is cheaper. With $5 you can eat three times, each with delicious foods. I hope you can grasp what I'm trying to say here. Oh yeah, most people here probably are paid around $5 per day. Most people will prefer to spend their one day earning for other things.


About 3-4 years ago, I had severe stomach ulcer. My doctor asked me to give up coffee, any caffeinated drinks and spicy foods. It was very hard for me since caffeinated drinks and spicy foods were that little things that made me happy. And I was very stubborn, each time I got better I would eat my favorite spicy foods and drank coffee. Then, the ulcer would relapse. This vicious cycle repeated itself many times until I felt very tired of it. So, I stopped drinking coffee and ate spicy foods.

I think it was about 2 years ago, my stomach was getting better. Then, I started to drink caffeinated drinks and had a courage to add bit spicy condiments on my foods. I just started to notice that instant coffee gave me bad effects like stomachache, diarrhea, and my heart beats faster. But I just kept drinking because I liked it. I remember my coworker, who had the same stomach problem, would occasionally scold me when he caught me drinking coffee.

I started being interested in automatic coffee makers because I had impression that coffee brewed with the machines looked more delicious. I tell you the story more later.