Espresso Enthusiasts

[Kurwenal]

What a dandy post

What a lovely, informative, helpful and utterly delightful post.

Most kind. Thank you.

take a bow, guys (and gals); it is always a pleasure to drop in, to read, chuckle, and sometimes, above all, to learn from those who take such utter pleasure in sharing their knowledge and expertise.

I agree, this thread is the God Thread, but you bow as well.

And, you should be getting a percentage from the makers of Bialetti pots...with your descriptions of the pleasures of the moka pot...it seems at least a few here want to share your enjoyment of that production method.

Indeed. The Bialetti has now joined the aeropress and Chemex to compete for my 7:00 pm cup. For years, it was a french press. Now, so many, many nice choices.

 

[DeSnousa]

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This was such a useful post I will need to flag it / print it to keep. Thanks you very much for taking the time to write this

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Thanks Shrink and all others, very good support. Something I wish my wife would do instead of nagging me to hurry up making a coffee during the weekend Although she does not complain when I froth extra milk for a hot chocolate.

 

[Shrink]

This was such a useful post I will need to flag it / print it to keep. Thanks you very much for taking the time to write this



Thanks Shrink and all others, very good support. Something I wish my wife would do instead of nagging me to hurry up making a coffee during the weekend Although she does not complain when I froth extra milk for a hot chocolate.

You're welcome...always a pleasure.

It's so hard for non-coffee-crazies to understand that making good coffee takes more time than drinking it. We must admit...that is a bit strange.

You might suggest to you wife that she read the entire 1853 posts here so she can gain some insight into the coffee sickness.

Or...perhaps not, unless you have a very comfortable couch...which is where you will end up sleeping for a while!

 

[S.B.G]

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Excellent post! It was an enjoyable read and I agree with you 100%. The best part is the time spent in and around the coffee environment with family & friends and the memories that are created with it.

 

[Kurwenal]

Catching up on blogs. I thought this one worth posting here.

How Do Artists Work? By Drinking Coffee, Of Course.
Beginning in 2007, Mason Currey set out to find the answer to a single, ancient question: What makes artists tick? For his book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Currey dove into the days, nights, and working habits of history’s most interesting creative luminaries, looking for patterns and answers. While he found no single, reliable secret to unspooling creative output, he did find a few crucial rituals. Of the keys he did uncover, after swimming through the diaries and works of 161 artists, the most popular were these: walking, working in the quiet dead of night, waifish diets, and what he calls the “great uniting force of the collection:” coffee. And heroic amounts thereof.



Coffee is indeed a working artist’s dream — partly for its stimulating, exciting effect, and partly for the ritual of preparation that offers a valuable bridge into a creative mindset.

Of artistic coffee fanatics, Balzac was perhaps the most famous example, swigging up to 50 cups a day, a habit that prompted him to write this beautiful, feverish love letter to it:

“Coffee glides into one’s stomach and sets all of one’s mental processes in motion. One’s ideas advance in column of route like battalions of Grande Armée. Memories come up at the double, bearing the standards which will lead the troops into battle. The light cavalry deploys at the gallop. The artillery of logic thunders along with its supply wagons and shells. Brilliant notions join in the combat as sharpshooters. The characters don their costumes, the paper is covered with ink, the battle has started, and ends with an outpouring of black fluid like a real battlefield enveloped in swaths of black smoke from the expended gunpowder. Were it not for coffee, one could not write, which is to say one could not live.”

Balzac did not live incredibly long; he died of heart failure at 51. We’ll take this opportunity to endorse moderation.

Other disciplines, too, struck up a love affair with coffee.

“A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems,” said Paul Erdös, an mathematician himself. Filmmaker David Lynch spent seven years of afternoons in Bob’s Big Boy diner, drinking first a chocolate milkshake, and then up to seven cups of coffee dosed with sugar. Frenzied and high on all of it, he poured the ideas onto napkins with a pen as they bubbled up.

Others were more attached to the ritual than the effect. Beethoven was famously meticulous about the number of beans in his morning cup, counting precisely 60, by twos, every day. Kierkegaard developed the habit of filling a coffee mug with sugar, and then slowly dissolving the pile with a slow, steady stream of strong black coffee. And then taking it down in one gulp.

Be wary though, says Balzac. Coffee is merely an accelerator, not the origin of ideas. “Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring.”

I wonder how Beethoven prepared his coffee after putting exactly 60 beans "in his morning cup."

 

[Shrink]

Catching up on blogs. I thought this one worth posting here.

I wonder how Beethoven prepared his coffee after putting exactly 60 beans "in his morning cup."

Thanks for posting the blog...

My question is...how long did Kierkegaard's teeth last?

 

[Kurwenal]

Thanks for posting the blog...

My question is...how long did Kierkegaard's teeth last?

Yah, really. I do not recommend the sugar approach.

At the risk of posting another link today, let me add this. A good friend purchased this for me for Christmas, and while I am not really into cappuccinos, I heartily recommend this entirely enjoyable movie (perhaps it is better called a coffeementary). I think parts of it, in particular, will resonate with y'all. Well worth the price of three ventis.

 

[Shrink]

Yah, really. I do not recommend the sugar approach.

At the risk of posting another link today, let me add this. A good friend purchased this for me for Christmas, and while I am not really into cappuccinos, I heartily recommend this entirely enjoyable movie (perhaps it is better called a coffeementary). I think parts of it, in particular, will resonate with y'all. Well worth the price of three ventis.

Your posts, links and blogs are wonderful. Don't stop!

I think SBG will be interested...he enjoys lattes and cappuccinos, among others, I'm sure.

OK...what's a "venti"?

 

[S.B.G]

OK...what's a "venti"?

It's a Starbucks drink size.

Small = Tall
Medium = Grande
Large = Venti
Extra large (iced drinks) = Trenta

 

[Shrink]

It's a Starbucks drink size.

Small = Tall
Medium = Grande
Large = Venti
Extra large (iced drinks) = Trenta

First...thanks!

OK...I can buy the phony baloney Italian silliness. But Small = Tall!? How does that work out? You want a small, but you have to ask for a tall?

More Starbuck's wonderfulness...

 

[S.B.G]

First...thanks!

OK...I can buy the phony baloney Italian silliness. But Small = Tall!? How does that work out? You want a small, but you have to ask for a tall?

More Starbuck's wonderfulness...

Yeah, I don't understand it either. I guess they wanted to be different.

 

[mobilehaathi]

First...thanks!

OK...I can buy the phony baloney Italian silliness. But Small = Tall!? How does that work out? You want a small, but you have to ask for a tall?

More Starbuck's wonderfulness...

Marketing ploy to get you to think that even the smalls are large thus good value?

meh

 

[Kurwenal]

Venti means "you drink too much coffee." Whenever I order a "large americano" at SB (not all that often, I hasten to add) the cashier immediately and seriously looks at me and says "venti."

It's kind of fun....."Large...venti." "Large....venti." Like a parrot.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Catching up on blogs. I thought this one worth posting here.



I wonder how Beethoven prepared his coffee after putting exactly 60 beans "in his morning cup."

Lovely quote - and what a wonderfully fascinating blog.

Actually, I am reminded of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose life was insanely regulated in a somewhat similar way (it was said that neighbours could keep their clocks by the time he took his evening stroll around the ancient city that was then known as Koningsberg). While I do not know how many beans he insisted on selecting with which to make his coffee, (although an obsessive number would not surprise me) he did love his coffee and is reputed to have remarked that he liked his coffee "as black as the devil and as hot as hell."

Marketing ploy to get you to think that even the smalls are large thus good value?

meh

I think you have hit the proverbial nail on its little head with this apt observation.

Actually, I recall reading, oh, quite some years (ah, decades) ago, a fascinating piece in the business section of the (London) Observer, which described the difficulties experienced by those in the business of manufacturing condoms in ascribing an accurate yet descriptive size to the end product when it would appear on the shelves of vendors.

For obvious - if not quite explicitly stated - reasons, the standard sizes of 'small, medium, large' were deemed inappropriate. Thus, the creative types beavering away in deep in the marketing departments bludgeoned their brains and came up with a trilogy which went something along the following lines: "Large, Extra-Large, and Enormous"......

 

[Shrink]

Marketing ploy to get you to think that even the smalls are large thus good value?

meh

I'm sure you are right. It certainly would work for me..."Wow, that's a really TALL small. What a bargain."

In the service of full disclosure, I have been to Starbucks on several occasions, but did not have to deal with the venti-shmenti stuff as I always ordered a double shot...which, if memory serves, is 1.8 ounces according to Starbucks. However, since I tend to drink all of what is put before me, they really did me a favor by shorting the double shot.

OK, now I feel a little bad (very little) being such a snot about Starbucks. A lot of people like it, and more power to them. It's just not my cup of...well...

As for the condom thing...I always looked for Size "Hung Like A Donkey"...but I could never find it!

 

[Kurwenal]

OK, now I feel a little bad (very little) being such a snot about Starbucks. A lot of people like it, and more power to them. It's just not my cup of...well...

Same here. My father-in-law drinks coffee at the same SB every morning at 9:00 am. He does not have to order, he walks in and his cup is ready and everyone pretends that is it not decaf. I have taken him to shops that offer fresh coffee, but he prefers that same, small, crowded SB. More power to him, and on a not infrequent basis, when I can, I drive out there and surprise and join him for a cup at "his" SB. If people like SB, great, as Jefferson said (or said something like this), it neither breaks my leg nor steals out of my pocket (and I am intentionally ignoring the "it's a big evil corporation" stuff).

But, I do not judge it as snotty to state my opinion that SB's coffee is over-roasted crap created by "baristas" most who know nothing more than how to push a button. I don't see how you can make a real espresso without knowing how to pull, tamp and dose, and without having access to fresh coffee. I think SB stores don't even have tampers any more.

SB has to make a billion pounds of coffee a day (or some huge number). They over roast (burn) intentionally because it is easier to be consistent that way, and because over roasting hides defects in the coffee. And, then they let the coffee go stale in those bags because it is impossible to do otherwise with their business model.

If I had to make a billion pounds of coffee a day, I would probably do the same thing. But, I don't, and fortunately there are (other than in most airports) many choices of coffee stores that offer fresh coffee, freshly and properly made.

If someone likes and wants to go to SB, more power to them. But, that won't stop me from stating my opinion if that person tells me "SB makes really good coffee." I feel the same way if someone tells me "McDonalds makes really good burgers." No they don't, and Starbucks is the McDonalds of the coffee world.

None of this applies to anyone who orders a "Frappucino." I reserve my human right to fully and ruthlessly ridicule that person.

 

[mobilehaathi]

It is a tenuous (at best) connection to coffee, but the color of the universe is called Cosmic Latte! Mmmm I wouldn't mind a sip!

Link

Sorry I'm just nerding out a bit at lab as I sip a cup.

 

[Shrink]

It is a tenuous (at best) connection to coffee, but the color of the universe is called Cosmic Latte! Mmmm I wouldn't mind a sip!

Link

Sorry I'm just nerding out a bit at lab as I sip a cup.

Close enough for jazz...and an interesting article (what I could understand of it!).

 

[Kurwenal]

Sorry I'm just nerding out a bit at lab as I sip a cup.

The Big Bang is a Mazzer Mini?

And the Big Crunch is the tamper?

I'll stop now.

 

[Shrink]

The Big Bang is a Mazzer Mini?

And the Big Crunch is the tamper?

I'll stop now.

Oooh...could be time for a bit of rest, or time off from the job...or heavy medication!

 

[mobilehaathi]

Oooh...could be time for a bit of rest, or time off from the job...or heavy medication!

Time off from heavy medication or time for heavy medication?

Is caffeine contraindicated?

 

[Shrink]

Time off from heavy medication or time for heavy medication?

Is caffeine contraindicated?

As far as I'm concerned, caffeine, in a well prepared conveyance, is always OK.

(Well, not really, but going over the conditions where caffeine is contraindicated would be boring beyond belief).

It did seem that there was a need for time away from work...but I'm sure a good night's sleep made you right as rain...


YEAH...RIGHT!

 

[S.B.G]

At the risk of posting another link today, let me add this. A good friend purchased this for me for Christmas, and while I am not really into cappuccinos, I heartily recommend this entirely enjoyable movie (perhaps it is better called a coffeementary). I think parts of it, in particular, will resonate with y'all. Well worth the price of three ventis.

I just finished watching it - thank you for the link.

It was a fascinating film about espresso and coffee in general and the so-called Starbucks culture which has become so pervasive in society, likely American society in particular.

I really liked the parts where she went to Italy to study the espresso culture, it's history and creative process.

I'm also glad to know the outcome of the Starbucks lawsuit featured within this film. If I ever happen to visit Tulsa, I will go to DoubleShot and support them and enjoy their espresso.

 

[Kurwenal]

I just finished watching it - thank you for the link.

Glad you enjoyed it.

It was a fascinating film about espresso and coffee in general and the so-called Starbucks culture which has become so pervasive in society, likely American society in particular.


I really liked the parts where she went to Italy to study the espresso culture, it's history and creative process.

Agree 100%. I wish the film had been more Italy and less SB. And, I want to know how I can get the government to pay me to go to Italy for one year to study "the origins of cappuccino."

I'm also glad to know the outcome of the Starbucks lawsuit featured within this film. If I ever happen to visit Tulsa, I will go to DoubleShot and support them and enjoy their espresso.

Also agree 100%. As a lawyer who works for a big corporation, I was, uh, cringing a bit during those segments. But, I am glad that, for whatever reason, SB, dropped it. The coffee is available online and is very good.

 

[mobilehaathi]

And, I want to know how I can get the government to pay me to go to Italy for one year to study "the origins of cappuccino."

Trade that JD in for an anthropology or history PhD!

Of course you still have to win a grant...