Scribblings

A quick recap on my coffee post to help you make better coffee without ALL the effort I go to:

- Use fresh roasted beans, no more than 3-5 days from roasting
- Grind just before use. Grounds have about a 3 hour shelf life before they go stale
- Use a decent grinder that creates a consistent ground size. Burr grinders are best, but some blade ones do a pretty good job. I use a blade myself.
- Boiling water is too hot. You want just before the boil.
- A french press or similar (ie.- Aeropress) is the best common means of making coffee as you have control over water, water temp, concentration, and brew time.
- If you're using a drip coffee machine, use a reuseable gold filter, and make sure the water is coming to the right temperature (93C or 199.4F)

Really, they're pretty simple things. I realize that fresh roasted beans can be a pain if you don't have easy access to them. That's why I invested in my own roaster and green beans. Worst case, find a coffee you like. It's a personal choice after all. That said, once I went the route I did, I can really tell the difference.

And remember: Sanka prevents unnecessary spankings:



Man, instant decaf coffee... what's the point? It would be like non-alcoholic Coors Light.

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Then there's this little nugget of stupid. Man claims he had a camera shoved down his throat at a Blue Man Group show. I know exactly the part of the show he's talking about. Now, I haven't been to Chicago (although I used to work in a big department store there...), but at the Vegas show, it was a rather LARGE camera that's used. Ie.- one that wouldn't fit past the lips, let alone down someone's throat. It's a really basic and obvious video-editing trick where they zoom in on an audience member's mouth, zoom to the back of his mouth, and then switch to a video of an esophageal cam tour of the digestive system. There's no way the camera fits down someone's throat. I can see somenoe getting nervous that three freaky-looking blue dudes are approaching him with a camera and sticking it literally in his face, but it sounds like he overreacted and panicked. Bleeding from his nose? Losing fillings? A bad taste in his mouth? WTF? Unless they use a much smaller camera, this sounds trumped-up and that he ended up hurting himself. I could be wrong... maybe they use a mini camera and have no respect for the audience members and like getting sued. Who knows?