Ye olde coffee...

...when people were into recycling before it went hipster.


1 Gallon water
1 and a half cup of coffee grounds
1 teaspoon salt

if available the shell from one or two eggs  or a little chalkstone nugget

This would make 12 cups of coffee and the coffee wasn´t filtered. You just waited and stirred until all grounds had sunk to the bottom, serving the liquid and keeping a bit of the liquid that was too sandy together with the grounds on the bottom of the can/pot

For new coffee you kept the old grounds, adding a third of new ingredients and the gallon of water.

The grounds were partly dumped when the pot got too full, cleaning out the can at sunday, which was fresh coffee day on the farm.

The egg shells were used to neutralise the acids from the coffee so it didn´t get too bitter or puckered your mouth...same reason for the chalkstone nugget... and the salt..well everything is better with a bit of salt.

Chalkstone was more readily available than fresh egg shells for many people...yes, those were the old times.


The kids got coffee too...one reason was because the water was boiled and the coffee grounds worked as a water filter, killing  also  germs and binding toxins with the acids in there.

Water was drank too, sure..but it could happen during heavy rain periods or very dry ones that the well water got contaminated and than it was safer to boil the water..and most times you made coffee with it.

Often there were added less grounds and the coffee was more like coloured water, but it was safe to drink.

And that was a big reason why kids got coffee when they reached 6 years, sometimes even earlier.