[Avodah] Brewing coffee on Shabbos

Sun Nov 13 05:11:11 PST 2016

How can one make coffee on Shabbos?

It seems to me that when most people ask this question, the idea of normal
brewing is simply dismissed out of hand. Besides the bishul problems, we're
dealing with a filter of whatever kind, and that's obviously borer. So, the
discussion turns immediately to instant coffee.

In my research, I have found that just about every sefer on Bishul
B'Shabbos discusses the topic of using tea leaves/bags on Shabbos, but I
have not seen even one that discusses using ground coffee on Shabbos. That
surprises me, because the halachic issues are very similar: Both involve
some sort of cooking (whether of tea leaves or of ground coffee beans), and
both involve some sort of straining (whether done by the tea bag or the
coffee filter). The two cases can shed light on each other, and when we
consider how popular coffee has gotten in recent decades, I wonder why I
have not seen anything written on this question.

The purpose of this thread will be to suggest that it is indeed muttar to
brew fresh ground coffee on Shabbos, subject to specific halachic
constraints that we will discuss.

(Full disclosure: I am somewhat nogea b'davar. Personally, I am not at all
particular about what kind of coffee I drink, but my wife is at the other
end of the spectrum. For lack of anything better, she drinks "Starbucks
Via" (instant coffee) on Shabbos, and refers to all other instant coffees
as "artificially flavored sorta-kinda fake coffee beverage".)

I will now describe the halachos as I heard them on Shabbos Bereshis, from
Rabbi Avrohom Herman, rav of the JEC Elmora Shul in Elizabeth, at his short
Hilchos Shabbos shiur during Kabalas Shabbos. I am also including a great
deal of my own research that I did based on the sources that he cited, and
elsewhere.

Mechaber Orach Chaim 319:9 says that on Shabbos, one *IS* allowed to put
shmarim (the leftover grapes that were used to make wine; Feldheim
translates as "dregs") in a filter (described in Mishne Brurah 319:31), and
pour water over it to produce a drink. There are a couple of conditions,
though.

The first is that the filter (which Beur Halacha 319:"Afilu" describes as a
strainer that is taut over the mouth of a container) must be set up before
Shabbos, to prevent the d'Oraisa of Ohel.

The second is that the shmarim must have been placed on the filter before
Shabbos. MB 319:32 says that this is to prevent borer or m'raked. I
understand this MB to mean that if one would place these wet shmarim onto
the filter *on* Shabbos, the juice of the grapes would drip through, and
this would be the borer or m'raked that he refers to.

This seems to be extremely similar to the procedure of a single cup coffee
filter. Google that phrase ("single cup coffee filter") if you need to
visualize what I'm describing. First we have a single piece of hard
plastic, which has a flat bottom so that it can sit on top of your coffee
cup, and above it is a cone-shaped portion. Then a paper coffee filter is
put into the cone, ground coffee is put into the filter, hot water is
poured onto the grounds, and fresh-brewed coffee drips into the cup.
The first and most obvious problem is that the coffee grounds are being
cooked by the hot water. But (as far as I know) all such grounds are
roasted first, making this a textbook case of Bishul Achar Tzli, and so one
may certainly pour Kli Shlishi water (Rav Eider, pg 263) or even Irui Kli
Sheni (Rabbi Herman in the public shiur) onto the coffee grounds.

The rest of this post will focus on the filtering.

The first requirement of the Mechaber was that the filter must be set up
before Shabbos. This is to ensure that one does not make an Ohel on Shabbos
by stretching the filter (a cloth of some sort, I presume) over the
container that catches the liquid. I don't think this would apply to our
coffee filter setup. See, for example, Rabbi Dovid Ribiat's "The 39
Melochos", pp 1078-1079, that containers may be covered with their
designated covers, or even with an undesignated item such as a plate, or a
piece of foil (that had been cut before Shabbos), "because these coverings
are regularly used for this purpose, and are similar to a designated cover.
... (However, one may not drape a cloth or other undesignated protective
covering over a barrel of wine or large trash can because this would indeed
constitute an Ohel)." If one can say that the plastic filter-holder is like
a plate in this regard, then this would solve that problem.

Another way to solve the Ohel problem would be to use a coffee cup whose
interior height *or* diameter is less than a tefach. There's no issur of
Ohel unless there's at least a tefach of airspace below it, both vertically
and horizontally. (Rabbi Ribiat, pg 1065)

The Mechaber's second requirement was that the shmarim must be in the
filter from before Shabbos. This is because putting them there *on* Shabbos
would be a clear act of straining their remaining juice from them. (Beur
Halacha 319:"Liten bah shmarim") This would not apply to ground coffee,
which has no juice of its own. If one puts ground coffee into the filter on
Shabbos, there's no way that anything is going to drip out, until and
unless one puts water on them.

So here is the very simple procedure, almost identical to how one would use
this filter on a regular weekday:

One puts the holder on top of the cup, the filter into the holder, the
roasted ground coffee into the filter, and pour hot water onto the grounds.
And in a short while, one has hot fresh coffee in the cup, by the same
process that gave the Mechaber a grape drink. One minor change from chol
concerns measuring out how much ground coffee to use: One should not
measure it exactly, but estimate the desired amount. (Rabbi Ribiat, pg 979,
Shmirat Shabbat K'Hilchata 29:34 in the 5740 edition, or 29:36 in the 5770
edition.) [Below, I will mention one other detail to be careful about,
based on RSZA.]

When I heard all this, I was surprised and confused. Mah Nishtanah, I
asked: What makes this filter different from every other strainer and
colander and sifter? When the filter allows the coffee (or grape drink) to
pass through, while holding back the grounds (or dregs), isn't that a
classic case of m'raked? MB 33 answers that:

> The shmarim are tzalul, and the water will drip from it with
> some of the wine that remains absorbed in it. The reason why
> adding water doesn't constitute Borer is because the water
> he is adding is tzalul, and doesn't contain anything that
> would be removed.

I would usually translate "tzalul" as "clear", but in this context, it
doesn't mean "colorless", but rather "lacking p'soles". It seems that we
look at the plain water at the top, and the flavored water at the bottom,
and nothing got removed, so there is no Borer. This is a commonly studied
halacha in Hilchos Borer: One may strain a liquid, provided that it is
already clean enough that most people would drink it as is, and that he is
among that majority. (Someone from the finicky minority, who would not
drink it as is, is not allowed to strain it.)

When we learn that halacha, we tend to think of it simply, in terms of
passing the water through a paper filter or a mesh strainer of some sort.
We don’t really perceive anything being held back, nothing significant is
prevented from going through, and we figure that’s why no melacha is
occurring.  But this case seems different. Here we see a mixture of water
and grounds, and we see coffee dripping through the filter, and we see the
grounds being held back, and we jump to the conclusion that this is clearly
Borer. But the point of the Mechaber here is: No, it’s NOT different!

The whole process is actually very similar to using tea bags on Shabbos
(with Kli Shlishi water) - doesn't the bag prevent the leaves from escaping
into the drink?

In fact, the Shmirat Shabbat K'Hilchata (second paragraph of 3:58 in the
5739 edition, or of 3:64 in the 5770 edition) cites this very Mechaber and
MB to allow making tea on Shabbos by pouring hot water over tea leaves that
are in a strainer. (He requires the leaves to be precooked, but that's a
bishul issue, and he stresses that there is no borer problem.)

That SSK also cites another source, that of Chazon Ish, Orach Chaim 53. In
that siman, he discusses a faucet to which one has attached a filter to
catch impurities. He writes as follows in paragraphs V'im and V'afilu:

> If there is a filter on the faucet to filter the water from
> sand, then if most people don't refrain from drinking
> unfiltered water, it is mutar, as found in Sh"A 319:10. But
> if there is so much sand that most people do not drink it
> unstrained, then it is assur.

> And even when much sand has already accumulated in the
> filter, it seems mutar. Even though there is already a lot
> of sand in the filter when the water enters it,
> nevertheless, since the water flows because a person opened
> the faucet, that water is tzalul! Even though it mixes with
> the sand afterward, and then goes and gets filtered, this
> is not the melacha of Borer, as we learned in ... [Here the
> Chazon Ish cites the Gemara that Sh"A 319:9 was based on,
> and MB 33 there]

At this point, I need to mention another halacha about tea bags. The
Shmirat Shabbat K'Hilchata (*first* paragraph of 3:58 in the 5739 edition,
or of 3:64 in the 5770 edition) says that those who use tea bags in a Kli
Shlishi should be careful to remove the tea bag from one's cup by means of
a spoon, and not to lift it by the string, because if any tea drips from
the bag to the cup, this would be a "chashash issur" of Borer. In the
footnote there, he quotes Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach as distinguishing
between this case and that above, because the water is not flowing straight
through, but rather

> the water and the leaves are already mixed, so by removing
> the bag and holding it with his hand, it is like straining
> dirty water, not clear water. And if so, on could say that
> the same also applies to the Mishmeres [of the Mechaber],
> that if it [the bottom of the grape-dregs filter] is
> actually inside the grape drink, then it is assur to raise
> the filter in order for the water to flow out. But if one
> just removes the [tea] bag without any care for the liquid
> that comes out, it's likely that even though there's a Psik
> Reishei that some drops *will* drip from the bag,
> nevertheless, since they come out easily, and all he's
> doing is picking it up and holding it, and the straining
> happens by itself, it is possibly *not* considered Borer.

Based on RSZA's words near the end ("all he's doing is picking it up and
holding it, and the straining happens by itself") it seems clear to me that
if one uses this procedure for using a regular coffee filter to brew his
coffee, then he must NOT shake the filter to coax additional liquid coffee
from it. (For those who are checking sources, this SSK and RSZA are cited
in R' Ribiat's "39 Melachos" on page 519, and footnote 46 there.)

So I was wondering... Why hasn't anyone suggested this method of making
coffee on Shabbos? Even if a posek feels it would be assur, I wonder if
there are any teshuvos explaining that view.

As it turns out, this exact question was raised on these very pages eight
years ago, by R' Stephen Scher, in Avodah 25:425. That thread got only a
few responses, mostly about the bishul issues. One point was about borer,
from R' Micha Berger, who wrote:

> Also, to get around the boreir problem.... Instead of using
> a regular filter, use a french press. They push the grounds
> down to the bottom, allowing you to pour okhel mitokh pesoles.

(For those who want to see how a French Press works, there's a very simple
video on the Wikipedia page. It's only 66 seconds long, and the first half
of that shows him grinding the coffee beans.)

I disagree. There is a two-step process here. I concede that in the second
step, you "pour okhel mitokh pesoles", just as if you had waited for the
grounds to settle to the bottom. But the first step, when you "push the
grounds down to the bottom", that is (at least to me) a clear act of
removing the pesoles from the ochel.

So, I am now submitting this post, hoping that either (A) someone can show
where this logic is faulty, or (B) someone who is writing the next
Bestselling Practical Guide To Keeping Shabbos might spread the secret to
Frum Coffee Lovers Everywhere. :-)

Akiva Miller
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