Coffee

xp I have always vouched for McDonald's coffee - my go-to anytime there isn't "good" coffee around.

Man alive, suburban coffee cognoscenti

McDonalds can be a lifesaver in parts of the world that are not coffee-centric

otm

I can definitely relate to the bottom right before I have my morning coffee. How are you feeling today? 😂 pic.twitter.com/p59T1XFs9Y

— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) August 9, 2021

lol

Quit coffee about 6 months ago after being big coffee guy into very small batch new guinea, oaxaca, diff ethiopian women's collective farms etc. w/e and yeah it's had a huge positive impact on my mind and ability to get through the day. It's a shame, but whatever. I have a cup of matcha a couple times a week. Anyway, yeah, quitting coffee and intermittent fasting really cleared up a bunch of diff things that were going on with me

It's kind of crazy how much difference the water quality can make to the taste of coffee. I've always been too cheap to use bottled water to make coffee, but it doesn't make sense to pay good money for beans and then use lousy tap water that ruins the flavor.

get a charcoal filter jug thing
cheaper than bottled water for sure

ban bottled water too

I absolutely love my tap but the very sporadic “btw you shouldn’t have drank it last week because it had the chlorine of pool water, sorry about the stomach issues” notification makes me question my choices

The water utility sends us a very smug mailer every year about our water quality with gorgeous photos of our protected watershed and I’m smug as a result and brew my coffee with it right out of the tap

I installed a decent inline filter on my cold water line in the kitchen so my whining is mostly unjustified

I have one of those Brita water pitcher filters. Maybe I should upgrade to a better one. I noticed the taste especially last week because (1) we'd just come back from a vacation in the mountains, where the tap water was very good and (2) there had been a boil water advisory before we got back and as a result I think the water had even more chlorine in it than usual.

A couple of months ago I splurged for one of those Fellow digital pour-over kettles. This morning, someone I love very much and forgive accidentally ruined it. I don't know if I can bring myself to outlay that kind of money again. I used the shitty old non-gooseneck electric kettle this morning and tbh I didn't notice much difference in taste, but the speed at which it heated and the ability to hold temp was really nice.

I like instant coffee

It looked really good on the counter and felt really good in my hand. I don't know that it was really worth what I paid for it.

I like the extra control of pouring from a gooseneck pitcher. I just have a simple metal gooseneck pitcher that doesn't do anything except hold the hot water that I've boiled in my cheapo electric kettle. They seem to be hard to find online but shouldn't go for more than $20.

I wonder if American Psycho will place on the film poll

A coffee shop opened around the corner from me. The owner is truly passionate about coffee. The espresso is the best I've had in this town. But sometimes I just want a cup of cof, and dude is obsessed with natural process coffee that tastes like socks. Oh well. I'll enjoy the hell out of the espresso.

Also the Bonavita electric kettle is $50 and I really doubt you'll notice a huge difference from the Fellow.

A coffee shop opened around the corner from me. The owner is truly passionate about coffee. The espresso is the best I've had in this town. But sometimes I just want a cup of cof, and dude is obsessed with natural process coffee that tastes like socks. Oh well. I'll enjoy the hell out of the espresso.

Just out of curiosity how did the person ruin the Fellows kettle? I've been thinking of getting one, too. They have them at Sur La Table now.

blue bottle tastes sour to me, no thanks

Yeah it wasn’t good at all! Certainly not worth the $5.50 I paid. I use a drip filter at home and it tasted like that except if I hadn’t used enough grounds

Blue Bottle isn't good. Great example of the power of good branding.

There's a Blue Bottle at the end of South Park in SF and it's a big hob-nob place for tech knobs.... everyone looks like the theranos lady

Atmosphere in the one I was in was like a funeral parlor with hipster lurkers

xp I know the place. Used to be Jeremy's, who moved out I believe because they got priced out of the area. The place was empty forever, and I rooted for it to stay that way to punish the greedy building owner. But then Nestle Blue Bottle moved in.

Just out of curiosity how did the person ruin the Fellows kettle? I've been thinking of getting one, too. They have them at Sur La Table now.

― beard papa, Friday, 29 October 2021 23:42 (yesterday) link

Don’t worry, what happened here is not something you are likely to do. She put it on the stove in a moment of what I assume was extreme morning exhaustion.

tbf that sounds like something i would do

It seemed extremely well built. My one complaint was the on/off button was a little wonky and required a certain touch.

I'm pretty happy with my Bonavita pourover temp-controlled kettle; definitely a bit cheaper than the Fellows. They don't look too bad, either.

agreed blue bottle is the worst of the big third wave companies

Thirded. I feel like Stumptown and Counter Culture have gone down somewhat too, although still prefer Stumptown to CC or BB. I've been mostly ordering Tandem lately. I sometimes mix decaf beans into my regular beans now to cut the jitters, although the flavor takes somewhat of a hit. Partners and Grumpy are both solid, although for some reason the Grumpy beans at Whole Foods are often not as recently roasted. Tried some Irving Farm beans recently, not particularly impressed but fine.

gf accidentally bought decaf coffee, which we've been drinking all week without realizing. horrible

ouch

that is a legit horror story

lol

i like counter culture the best of the stumptown intelligentsia blue bottle cc bunch i think tho i havent had it in a while

I have a support request in about that Fellow (Stagg EKG) kettle and the finicky power button! It’s great once you actually get the damn thing turned on

(I would not normally spend that much on a kettle but it was discounted by quite a bit)

Is there a benefit of using a kettle when you can just boil water in a small pot? Wtf am I missing here

i live in the UK so i already have an electric kettle obviously.. getting another one feels a bit redundant/decadent. i feel like as long as you let 30 seconds / 1 minute pass after the boil it’s pretty much the right temperature for a pour-over. a goose-neck would be nice tho

calstars i think some of these kettles have temp controls on them for the real finicky types

We have a pretty standard Capresso burr grinder. Never had a problem with it, really, except the last batch of beans we used suddenly started to get all static-clingy over everything. (Or the powdery residue did, at least.) Apparently this *can* be a problem with burr grinders, enough so that Cook's Illustrated tried (and failed!) to find a solution.

https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/8357-minimizing-static-in-burr-grinders%E2%80%8B

And yet, we'd never had the problem before, and in fact, after we went through that bag of beans and opened another, the problem went away. The roast itself was one of our regular rotation, but we had noticed it tasted a bit darker than usual, which made us wonder: could it, the particular bean or roast, have been what was generating all the static electricity? And if so, why?

there’s your podcast right there

have noticed this a couple times but never cared enough to remember what kind of beans. if it roast was a factor i would expect a dark roast to be less staticky because they are more "oily." maybe the beans were a little older and had lower moisture content. anyway you have to repeat this experiment under the same temp/humidity conditions with the cup exactly as clean/dirty each time. please report back.

calstars i think some of these kettles have temp controls on them for the real finicky types

its also much faster