Reply To: Fresh Coffee on Shabbos

Thank you all for this interesting discussion. I did not know that there were actually some opinions that would allow the coffeemaker. My Rov does not permit it, but that’s my Rov.

Just a few facts about coffee that seemed to be unclear:

At what point is coffee cooked? Before the black liquid appears in your mug, it goes through the following steps – the coffee bean is harvested, then roasted, then ground, then mixed with water (and either separated from the water using one of various methods or left to settle to the bottom in the case of Turkish coffee). But the beans that you buy from a store – ground or unground – are already roasted. You can eat the roasted beans, or the grounds, with no cooking (and I always do taste a bean before buying a new kind).

If we are talking about a simple brewing machine that strains water through the grounds, there are two ways to do this – using hot water or cold water. If the machine uses cold water, the coffee grounds are never cooked – only the water reaches the hot plate. If the machine heats the water before passing it through the grounds, then there might be cooking problem on the grounds as well (yeish bishul achar tzli).

Instant coffee – This vile brew 🙂 is actually brewed coffee that has been dehydrated (by flash burning out the water). It is just like evaporated milk – it only needs to be reconstituted.