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Strong Black Coffee
The standard drink in the days of the old Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics, was of course, coffee. President Paul Kruger was a man who loved his coffee and he always drank it very strong, very black and very hot. During his entire long presidency, the standard ritual was for him to offer any person off the streets who came to visit him on his verandah, a very large cup of steaming hot coffee. There was a tale which the old folks told about president Kruger and his coffee drinking, which has not really been recorded in print before as far as I know. According to the popular legend of his time, president Kruger one day took a mouth full of coffee and spat it onto the back of a passing dog. Those that told the tale firmly declared that the coffee was even then, still so hot that it burnt all the hair off the back of the unfortunate canine!
Coffee was imported from the Dutch colonies in the east, and in those days there were several large coffee merchants in the Transvaal who made a good living only out of supplying the Boers with their favourite drink. Tea was drunk as well, but coffee was the definite favourite. The Boers always took coffee on commando. If they had to go away for a long time, someone would invariably take a long a coffee grinder with which to grind the beans which the Boers always toasted according to their own individual tastes. The beans had to be roasted over very low heat, and be frequently turned, otherwise the coffee would be bitter. For some reason or other, a sprinkling of salt was also sometimes added to the beans.
After being ground, the Boers made their coffee either by infusion the coffee grounds in a pot, using a kind of muslin strainer, or more frequently, they simply added water to the grounds, and brewed the mixture directly over the fire. In cowboy stories, the hero alway adds a coal from the fire to the brew just before serving. This is supposed to make the grounds sink to the bottom. In my experience though, this is not a very good method. I’m invariably only left with coffee grounds and a coal still floating! The old Boers often added just a touch of cold spring water before serving, and most of the time, this made the grounds sink well enough. The finer secrets of making good coffee are legion, but one of them is the fact that coffee should never actually be allowed to reach boiling point. It had to be removed from the fire just before bubbles would start to form. Again, some Boers liked to add a sprinkling of salt to their coffee – for a reason I have never been able to figure out!
Ersatz Coffee
In later years, during the guerilla phase of the war, the Boer supplies of coffee often ran out. This was rather a serious situation, but the Boers had long had a saying of "‘n Boer maak ‘n plan" – or, "a Boer makes a plan." They were quick to find that ersatz coffee could be made from roasted acorns or any of a wide range of roasted grains and cereals. Wheat and barley were popular, but maize was also sometimes used. To this, several other ingredients were sometimes added in order to improve the taste. An important one was roasted dried peaches or apricots, or even bitter peach leaves. Jan F. Celliers, the famous South African poet, actually wrote in his diary that some Boers perfected some recipes by adding various "secret" veld plants and got their mixtures so refined that they did a little commercial trading by selling their "coffee" and "tobacco," which was often made in like manner!
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