- Joined
- Feb 20, 2022
You can make a coffee-like beverage from a lot of things, I've read about people using seeds, beans, rice, dandelion roots, I made some myself based on an old German nazi recipe that uses acorns, I took a bunch of pictures too. The process is simple, but labor intensive.
Step 1) Harvest the acorns
They're the best in late fall when they aren't exactly fresh, but also not brown and falling off either.
Step 2) Peel off the shells
The best method I found is to just score them with your fingernail and rip it off from there. They'll start drying out and oxidizing quickly after the shell is off.
Step 3) Blend them up in a blender
This is where I made a mistake, I let the acorns sit for too long, they dried out and got hard as rocks and it actually cracked my blender, it's better to blend them up right away, it's also harder to get them to a fine ground when they're like this.
Step 4) Roast
Spread the ground acorn paste out on a sheet of tinfoil, try to get it as thin as you can so it roasts evenly, roast them in the oven at 350 degrees until it's brown. I recommend going for a darker roast, since the flavor doesn't get as strong as real coffee.
Step 5) Brew
I'm drinking a cup of it as I write this, you can just put it in a coffee maker and brew like regular coffee. You can also mix it in with real coffee to make your supplies last longer and impart some caffeine into it, which this has none of. It looks like coffee, but the taste isn't identical, it's more acrid and astringent, but it's definitely similar. The point isn't to replicate the taste of coffee exactly, but rather to be a replacement for when the real stuff isn't available. It also obviously doesn't have any of the kick that comes from caffeine.
They're the best in late fall when they aren't exactly fresh, but also not brown and falling off either.
Step 2) Peel off the shells
The best method I found is to just score them with your fingernail and rip it off from there. They'll start drying out and oxidizing quickly after the shell is off.
Step 3) Blend them up in a blender
This is where I made a mistake, I let the acorns sit for too long, they dried out and got hard as rocks and it actually cracked my blender, it's better to blend them up right away, it's also harder to get them to a fine ground when they're like this.
Step 4) Roast
Spread the ground acorn paste out on a sheet of tinfoil, try to get it as thin as you can so it roasts evenly, roast them in the oven at 350 degrees until it's brown. I recommend going for a darker roast, since the flavor doesn't get as strong as real coffee.
Step 5) Brew
I'm drinking a cup of it as I write this, you can just put it in a coffee maker and brew like regular coffee. You can also mix it in with real coffee to make your supplies last longer and impart some caffeine into it, which this has none of. It looks like coffee, but the taste isn't identical, it's more acrid and astringent, but it's definitely similar. The point isn't to replicate the taste of coffee exactly, but rather to be a replacement for when the real stuff isn't available. It also obviously doesn't have any of the kick that comes from caffeine.
