The Napier vacuum coffee maker

There is a bit of a cult amongst programmers surrounding the conspicuous consumption of coffee. In fact, it has become a stereotype, the "programmer's coffee", consisting of caffeine-enriched extra-dark roast served not in French style thimble sized cups but in vast mugs like the one carried by Wally in the Dilbert cartoons.

While Wally is and always has been a hero of mine, I've never fully bought into the whole coffee cult thing. I wouldn't drink decaffeinated coffee unless someone was paying me full contract rate with danger money to do it but I have never owned an espresso machine and my idea of the height of coffee drinking sophistication has been to drink CaféDirect rather than Nescafé.

It was with an engineer's interest rather than a coffee fiend's interest therefore that I viewed the discovery that an ancestor of mine invented a coffee maker.

The principle of a Napier coffeemaker is simple. Water is heated in a boiling vessel wihich is sealed except for a pipe which passes from the base of the boiling vessel into the bottom of a coffee brewing vessel via a filter. The heating process creates steam pressure which forces hot water through the pipe and into the brewing vessel where the ground coffee has been placed. When nearly all the water has passed into the brewing vessel in this way, the heat is removed from the boiling vessel, and as the steam condenses it creates a vacuum which pulls the liquid - by now freshly-brewed coffee - back into the boiling vessel. The result is a boiling vessel full of perfectly filtered coffee brewed at the optimum temperature of just below boiling point. The advantage of this process is that since the heat is never directly applied to the coffee, instead being transferred via the boiling water, the laws of physics dictate that the coffee can never be hotter than the boiling point of water at atmospheric pressure so the coffee can never be burned.

Once I'd discovered my ancestor invented a coffeemaker, I read up on the process and decided that this was a gadget I had to own! Unfortunately for me though, vacuum coffeemakers are no longer as fashionable as they used to be and try as I might I could not find one on retail sale on my high street. A search of the web revealed that my best chance was to look for either a Cona who despite their truly nasty web site make some seriously good kit, or a Bodum, one of whose tea pots I've been using for years. I decided to go for the Bodum Santos, mainly because it was a lot cheaper than the Cona and because unlike the Cona I could find a supplier who was willing to sell me one. (They also do an electric version of the Santos and a mini electric Santos as well, but personally I think they're ugly.)

Amazon.co.uk now carry the Bodum Santos, but since at the time I bought mine it was only available from Amazon.com I decided to buy mine direct from the Bodum UK mail order department. On reflection I would have done better to get a friend to buy it online for me and risk the carriage to the UK since Bodum UK's customer service sucks. They lost my order, then their courier couldn't deliver it and all through the process they were the most rude and unhelpful customer service department I've ever had the misfortune to deal with. (As an aside, a few years ago my job for a couple of years was the customer service and support telephone contact for the UK publisher of the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia so I have a lot of sympathy for customer service drones. There is no excuse for being cr@p though.)

I ordered the Bodum Santos gift set, a boxed set containing the coffeemaker with a spirit burner, stand, brewing vessel stand, cleaing brush and stirrer. Since Bodum UK were unable to supply me with a standalone Santos I suspect that this may be a UK only package. Either way I would recommend buying the coffeemaker without the gift set if you can; while the brewing vessel stand and the cleaning brush are rather useful the rest of the kit is not worth the price.

The coffeemaker itself is composed of two glass bowls one on top of the other, the bottom one is the flat-bottomed boiling vessel and the top one is the brewing vessel. They are detachable from each other, being held together by a substantial rubber seal round the glass pipe protruding underneath the brewing vessel. The filter is a plastic disk which sits in the bottom of the brewing vessel held in place by a spring and hook. There is an adequate plastic handle attached to the neck of the boiling vessel.

Using the coffeemaker is a straightforward process. Fill the boiling vessel with water to the line, attach the brewing vessel, place some ground coffee in the brewing vessel and place the coffeemaker on a source of heat. The spirit burner supplied by Bodum proved to be an insufficient source of heat, while it eventually boiled enough water to force the bulk of it into the brewing vessel it took far too long in the process. Waiting over half an hour for a cup of coffee is not entertaining once you've seen the coffeemaker in use once. Instead I now use one of the burners on my gas stove, set to a low heat it takes about ten minutes for the brewing vessel to be filled. Once the brewing vessel is full, after a minute for steam to pass through the coffee and a quick stir, it is time for the vacuum coffeemaker's theatrical party-piece, the return of the coffee to the boiling vessel. Remove the coffeemaker from the heat and as the steam condenses the coffee is sucked down through the filter in a couple of seconds' furious bubbling. Detach the brewing vessel and you have a jug of perfect coffee.

I had read some online reviews of the Bodum which complained that the filter can become clogged as the coffee returns to the boiling vessel. This has never happened to me, I can only guess that either I stir the coffee more than others, I use different coffee (standard CaféDirect ground coffee) or more likely Bodum have improved the design of their filter.

I am very pleased with my Bodum vacuum coffeemaker. It produces a very good pot of coffee every time and aside from the family angle it makes a good after-dinner talking point. I am not at all impressed with the staff at Bodum UK though and I'd advise against buying the gift set if you can buy the coffeemaker on its own.

Buy the Bodum Santos Vacuum Coffeemaker from Amazon.co.uk, or buy it from Amazon.com.