The Old-School Way Bobby Flay Brews Coffee (And The Brand He Always Uses)

Being a bigger fish in the world of celebrity chefs, Bobby Flay has shown off his home kitchen a number of times. These ventures have allowed us to comment on the genius way Bobby Flay organizes his pantry, and it really is a massive pantry with tons of different ingredients. On a recent pantry tour which Flay posted on Instagram, he showed off plenty of spices and hot sauces (including some souvenirs from his "Hot Ones" episode) before moving into his breakfast section. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has some old-school preferences for how he takes his coffee.

When he gets to his coffee, Flay explained that for "espresso, I use Illy whole beans. And for my drip coffee, Café Bustelo. I make very strong coffee in a percolator." Café Bustelo is a popular brand and it's considered pretty good for supermarket fare, although we here at The Takeout ranked it as a middling store-bought instant coffee brand in our ranking. The mention of a percolator is interesting because it's a more traditional method for brewing which gets you a very dark, deep roast compared to modern drip brewing. Beyond the mention of Illy, he didn't elaborate on his espresso technique before moving on to bags of the cat food line he made with his cat, Nacho Flay.

Before the modern, early 20th century drip coffee maker became popular, many folks in need of caffeine brewed their coffee with percolators. It somewhat resembles a tea kettle, but its inner workings are rather inventive; you pour water inside, then place coffee grounds into a smaller container at the top which has a tube in its center. Once the percolator is heated, the hot water rises up through that tube and repeatedly falls over the coffee grounds, extracting flavor until the bottom of the percolator contains freshly brewed coffee. Due to the way it continuously washes over the grounds, it extracts more flavor than a drip coffee machine. The resulting coffee tends to be sharp and bitter.

The Café Bustelo container Flay holds up to the camera is the company's popular expresso-style coffee grounds, which can be used in any coffee brewing method. Espresso is a method of brewing coffee, not a type of bean, but coffee beans labelled espresso are usually dark, chocolatey roasts which imitate the richness of espresso. A dark roasted coffee made in a percolator runs the risk of tasting a little burnt if you make a mistake because dark roasts are already heavily roasted and a percolator heats the beans for a while in repeating cycles. Flay is hardly likely to be making rookie mistakes like that, though.