Category: coffee

After yesterday’s post about laundry, I thought I should write up something more typical of this blog. So here’s an article about making coffee.

I finally bought an AeroPress. I think I first heard about the AeroPress around 2011, from something Cory Doctorow wrote, probably this. It seemed to be very popular with a certain crowd of tech folks at that time. For instance, here’s a blog post from Macro Arment about it from 2012.

Here’s an article on the history of the AeroPress. It’s interesting, if you haven’t already learned about it.

Anyway, I never got around to buying one, even though it’s not expensive, and seemed like the kind of thing I’d get some use out of. It’s a simple gadget. Of course, like any simple gadget that becomes popular, there are now several variations of it, in several colors, but they’re all basically the same thing. I noticed last week that Woot had a sale on the original version for just $30, and decided to order one, on a whim. Now, $30 is what the original one was priced at when it first came out, so that’s not much of a deal. But the original is now $40 new, and the slightly fancier newer version is $50, so I guess it’s a good deal.

I’ve used it to make my morning coffee yesterday and today. It works well, and makes coffee that tastes quite good. And it’s easier to clean up afterwards than my Moka pot, so that’s nice.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, long term. I’ve fallen into the habit over the last few years of making my weekday morning coffee with my Krups drip coffee maker, and my weekend morning coffee with my Moka pot, and that’s been working well for me. I could see myself alternating between the AeroPress and the Moka pot on the weekends, depending on my mood.

I’m also thinking about bringing it into work and using it to make my afternoon cup of coffee. But I’m not sure I want to become “that guy who uses a weird gadget to make his coffee” though. I’m probably already known as a weirdo, because, well, I am who I am. So I’m not sure if I should double-down on that, or try not to push it too far. Anyway, the whole office coffee situation is a problem, and this blog post will get too long if I get too deeply into that.

The NY Times has chimed in on the Starbucks Rewards program changes, so I thought I’d post a link to that as a follow-up to my earlier post. They raise a few interesting points, such as how the “we like seeing you” philosophy of the current program, based on visits rather than dollars, doesn’t really make sense, since corporations aren’t people and don’t have emotions.

And, no, I’m not going to start going to Dunkin Donuts instead. Their dark roast actually isn’t that bad, but it’s still not as good as Starbucks.

 

When I decided to lose some weight a few years back, one of the big things I did was to stop going out to lunch every day. Now, I usually bring a modest lunch and eat it in the office. But that uses up only about 10 minutes of my lunch hour, and doesn’t get me out of the office, so I usually follow that with a trip to the local Starbucks for a cup of coffee.

So, previously, consuming too many calories at lunch time was a problem. Now, consuming too much caffeine and spending too much at Starbucks is a problem. Really, it’s not a big problem. If I feel like I’m consuming too much caffeine, I’ll switch to decaf for awhile, and I frequently get only a $2 tall coffee, which isn’t going to bankrupt me.

I’m a member of the Starbucks Reward program, too, so I get a free drink after every twelve, which isn’t much, but it’s something. Well, now they’re changing the program so it’ll be more like one free drink for every thirty. The details on the new program are here, and one (of many) media articles about the change can be found here. The new program will be pretty much the same for people spending around $5 per store visit, but for cheapskates like me who usually just buy a $2 coffee, it’ll take about 30 of those to get a free drink. There’s more about this over at Consumerist.

I do realize that this is a classic first-world problem, and the fact that I make enough money to spend $2 a day on halfway-decent coffee is something I should be thankful for. And I am. And I appreciate that Starbucks doesn’t have to give me any free coffee, so I should be happy regardless. But I am also an old man who likes grousing about how much money he’s spending at Starbucks, and how they’re making plenty of money, and they could really afford to give me a lot more free coffee.

Peet’s cycling jerseys support The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. (And they make good coffee too.)

Kopi Luwak coffee: I heard about this some time ago. It got a mention in News of the Weird this week. Still weird.

A have a little bag of coffee labelled “Cafe Noisette”. Now, I wasn’t sure what “noisette” meant, so I looked it up.: “A small round piece of meat, especially loin or fillet of lamb, veal, or pork.” Huh? Oh wait, meaning #2: “Made or flavored with hazelnuts.” That makes more sense.

My coffee maker died this week, after about 15 years of daily use. Assuming Krups still makes good stuff, I suppose I can justify the cost of this thing. While I’m waiting for it to show up, I can still make espresso with the old machine, so I should be able to get myself out of bed and off to work without too much grief until then!

From yesterday’s Times: Mighty Brew for the Do-It-Yourselfer. I prefer Peet’s, myself. I had never seen the coffee review web site mentioned in the article; it looks pretty interesting.