French Drip Coffee Pots 
French Drip Birdhouses 
Remembrances 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
REMEMBRANCES...

If you have a fond memory of French drip coffee that you'd like to share, please email it to me and I'll post it here. Thanks and enjoy...            
Sandy Hebert LaBry wrote this poem in English and in French to honor not only her grandmother and mother but the tradition of making coffee in a French drip pot or "la grégue", a tradition handed down "without a recipe". She learned this way of making coffee by watching and imitating her mother, who learned it from her mother.

La grégue
La grégue de ma grand-mère
reste toujours sur mon fourneau
un don de ma mère sans recette
mais avec une connaissance des
rites
de faire le café dans une manière
patiente
lentement
trois cuillères de l'eau bouillante à
la fois
et puis trois cuillères de plus
jusqu'à ce que la grégue soit
remplie
juste comme nous avons vécu nos
vies
nous
ma grand-mère
ma mère
et moi
au fur et à mesure
comme faire le café dans
la grégue
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La grégue
My grandmother's drip coffee pot
still sits on my stove
a gift of my mother without a recipe
but with an understanding of the ritual
of making coffee in a patient manner
slowly
three teaspoons full of boiling water
at a time
and then three more
until the pot is filled
It's just as we have lived our lives
we
my grandmother
my mother
and me
little by little
like making coffee
in the "grégue"

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Reading the posts here makes me realize that we all have the same background in Louisiana, and that same coffee tradition.  Folgers?  Yech!  Starbucks? Overpriced, rancid dishwater.  If only people from the rest of the U.S. understood that REAL coffee comes from a French Drip pot.  A $4 pound of CDM and this $25 coffee pot costs as much as 6 of those bland lattes, lasts forever, and nearly worth the price just for the smell, much less the taste. I never called it "French", either, because everyone had one:  my friend who's black, my aunt's very Italian Mama and the Irish lady down the street.  For years used a French Press until I went to a childhood neighbor's house and her 85 yr. old Daddy brewed some CDM coffee and chichory with one of these pots and it was about the best cup of coffee I'd had anywhere.  Better than Greek, better than Italian and better even than my fancy French Press.  I've been on a quest to find this pot and brew what my Grandma used to make with that old cloth filter, starting us on coffee milk as children and graduating us to a full cafe au lait by the teenage years.  My grandma's coffee pot and her rice cooker are the two things we fought over when she passed away.  Coffee brewing and rice steaming were the constant smells in her kitchen. I hope this pot will bring back one of those delightful memories, of all the grandkids gathered around the table dunking french bread and butter in our coffee milk on Sunday morning.
 
Meg (New Orleans)

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Both of my parents, my brother and I  were born in New Orleans.  We moved to the  Washington, D. C. area  in the early 1960’s when I was about 5 years old after my father got a job as a mathematical statistician at the US  Census Bureau.  My mother missed many things about New Orleans one of which was the coffee.  My grandmother mailed my mother a two cup ceramic pot and Luzianne coffee a few months after we moved out of Louisiana.        

As I grew up I watched my mother make coffee every morning in that little white pot.  The wonderful smell of the coffee brewing in the morning is something I still remember.  We would drive to New Orleans every summer to visit cousins and grandparents and return with  bags filled with Luzianne coffee   When I left for college one of the things I  missed most was drinking coffee with my mother made in the little porcelain ceramic pot.                                                  

Today I still drink Luzianne coffee but it doesn’t taste as I remembered growing up.   Now I have found that little white pot just like my mother used when she made coffee when I was growing up.

 Steven A. Seraile                                                                                 Edmond, Oklahoma

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I remember my father always had an old drip pot (it never occurred to me to call it a French drip pot but since his mother was French, what else would it be!? ) and taught me how to use it, which was really strange since I never drank coffee until my 30s. I remember him telling and showing me how important it was to just pour the water a little at a time to get the best brew. Now that I think about it (which I NEVER have before) if he hadn't done that, I wouldn't know how to make a good brew.

I remember the smell of coffee in the house - he would get up long before daylight, make his coffee and leave for work, hunting, or fishing. My Mom drank tea and still does. Dad died in the early 90s.

I've been using a modern electric coffee maker for years, several through the years, actually. And it came time recently to toss the old one so I started buying coffee makers. I have purchased 4 electric coffeepots in the past few months, and never could get that plastic taste or "aroma" out of the coffee but was unable to return them since I'd been using them.

In disgust, I turned to my husband the other day and said, "That's it. We are not buying any more of these. I want to find a REAL coffee pot. Without wires. So he went shopping and came back with an old alumnium one and I'm thrilled to have coffee without plastic. But I'll continue my search for a "real" coffee pot/ the french drip.

Suzie / Lafayette

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I used to love to drink my grandmothers coffee out of her French drip brewer in Vidrine. It was a white porcelain with black trim. I have it here at the house since she passed away in the early 80's.

She always used the muslin cloth filter to brew through. We would wake to the sound of her grinding her coffee in an old cast iron, wall mount grinder that would rattle the walls but soon you would smell the wonderful aroma of the dark roasted coffee she used.

Allen

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I just returned from my first visit home (New Orleans) in 10 years.
The conditions there, this long after Katrina, upset me greatly. Or as
my aunt would say it “enragé ma âme!” ( I hope I got the spelling
right, my French is not as good as it should be) But that’s another
story and not what I’m here to talk about.
One of the things I had forgotten I miss most about New Orleans and my
aunt is the coffee. She used the traditional French drip coffee pot.
Like one of the other posts, I did not distinguish it as “French”, to
me it was just a coffee pot. Though she did call it la grégue (which I
did not know how to spell until I read the poem on your site…We were
not taught the family language as children…what a sin). I can remember
going to A&P with her. I always thought it was strange the way she
bought her coffee. She would buy the coffee and chicory separately, so
she could grind the coffee and mix them herself at home. (when she got
older she would do the grinding at the A&P) She would keep them in
separate containers and mix them for each pot. The afternoon coffee
always had more chicory in it. On our visit I joked with my sister,
and called it “Nan’s decaf”.
The first morning that I had coffee at my sister’s house, what I missed
most hit me. I could not believe how bad my coffee making skills
had become. When we left to go back to where we live now (in North
Carolina), I stocked up on coffee and chicory (Community and
Frenchmarket), but did not think to buy a drip coffee pot.

Mon âme est française, et je ne peux pas changer cette.

Gene

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My mother-in-law, Gayle, made the best!! She insisted that I buy a french pot, which I used for a short while, switching to a Toddy maker in the 70's. Following Katrina, as we were camping out on our back porch without electricity for 7 weeks, I dug it out of the cabinet and my husband and I are hooked. It was a lovely way to cope with the devastation that surrounded us then, and continues to surround us a year + later. Every morning as I patiently drip ( I'm not working post-Katrina), I am reminded of what makes southeast Louisiana unique and worth preserving - Starbucks eat your heart out!

Peggy - New Orleans

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As soon as I was old enough to reach the stove, my job in the morning was to make my mother's coffee. She expected me to follow her strict instructions: fill the French drip pot with ground chicory coffee just to the first ring of the basket. Heat the water in a small saucepan, just until it sizzled around the edges - not to boiling. Use a tablespoon to pour the sizzling water over the grounds until the coffee had dripped to the bottom of the spout. On no account were you to ever to pour water over the grounds in large amounts - the little filter-like insert to the basket must never have water in it. It had to be done SLOWLY. It seemed to take forever.
  When I was thirteen, my mother decided I was old enough to share this treat, and brought me a cup of her coffee one morning. Black, of course, the way she drank it. It was the bitterest substance I'd ever tasted. I've been a tea drinker ever since.
    
    Nora

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I remember visiting friends with my grandmother and we always had coffee.  The coffee grounds were placed in a white sock and the water was poured over slowly.  The consistancy of the coffee was like syrup.  You added hot water to your coffee to the strength that you liked.  Of course I had a sip of coffee with milk and sugar.   Good old coffee milk.  I can still taste and smell that fresh brewed coffee.  I still drip my coffee in one of those old pots but I don't use the sock.

     Jeanne/Marksville/Salt Lake City

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Reading all the others posts to your website brings back memories for me, too.  My father was a career Marine and was stationed at NAS Belle Chasse in Plaquimines Parish in 1958.  He was originally from Napoleonville, so he was really glad to be back 'home".  By then, his mother was a widower and had moved to the city with his umarried sister.
 Anyway, dad and mom would pack me, my 3 sisters and brother in the car for Sunday visits across the river to gran'ma's house on Banks Street.  She lived in a shotgun house that had a wonderful "old house" aroma - a combination of the all wood construction, kitchen aromas and the unique damp earth fragrance of New Orleans.  Walking into her house on those mornings, we were always greeted with her coffee brewing activity in the kitchen.  Of course, she used a porcelain french drip pot. There she would be pouring teaspoons of simmering water from a saucepan over the grounds of the coffee and chicory in the upper basket.  While this delicious elixir was slow dripping, she would tend the frying pan of bacon and leftover refrigerated grits that she had cut into squares from the previous morning's breakfast (she never threw away leftovers).
 She is gone now, but the smell of her coffee and her home still lingers.  She would allow us kids to share a demitasse of coffee au lait before breakfast.  One sip stuck with me for hours
 Laissez les bons temps rouler!     
 Ed Blanchard

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Yes, coffee milk! I was two and was in my playpen crying inconsolably, my mother had been sick. My ten year old sister had been watching me and had put coffee milk in my bottle a few times and I liked it!
  I had been asking for coggee milk, coggee milk and had thrown every bottle back at my mother when I tasted the bottle that contained only milk. She was at her wits end.
  Finally my sister returned from Our Lady of Mercy catholic school on Marquette off of Government St. and found my mother trying to figure out my problem. "Please help me, I don't know what to do!" she tearfully pleaded.
  My sister heard me "coggee milk!" ...she grabbed my bottle, added coffee from the leftover coffee in the French drip and a spoon of sugar and I said "ah, coggee milk, ah"
  Yes the French drip is what I am searching for, my keurig is great, but I want the real thing, the little pot on the stove in the pot of hot water.
  I am stuck in the frigid North now, Michigan known as the mitten state, remembering growing up in Louisiana, the Boot State.
  Ironic isn't it?

Mary Morton


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Do you have story or memory about French drip coffee? Send it to me and I'll post it if it fits. Thanks...
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