I make no apologies for coveting the fancy halogen heaters people are using for their syphon bars around the world. Frustratingly they all seem to be weird voltages – 110v – and thus useless to me.
Anette had an old 1000W photography lamp around – I’ve used it in the past for high speed espresso droplet shots – and I’ve noticed it gets quite hot. My inner child suggested I should use it to make a vacpot. So I did.
A few of you seemed quite interested in the Uber Boiler when I posted about it last month. I get the MkII version installed tomorrow (which is good news in a week of bad news – more on that later), and for those of you who want to know more there is a blog for the project:
I am glad the photo on the latest post is low res because that way you can’t see how terrible my handwriting is! (Not that Stephen’s is much better, though at least he can draw a bit…)
Barista competition season is getting close to its peak – UKBC just gone, and a great result, and the USBC happening as I type this. I’ve been pretty immersed in competition now for 5 years – either as a competitor or training or supporting.
I love barista competitions – I think they can be inspiring, educational and create community and spread coffee knowledge. I also have a fair few gripes with them, but I am saving those for another post.
What I want to discuss today is the cost of competition.
Due to the recent rise of non-comments that are essentially comment spam I am now enforcing some level of comment moderation. If you are a first time commenter now then your comment will need approval and I will be much stricter on the spam comments.
If your comment is not interesting or constructive it may well disappear. I do want to encourage conversation on this blog, and as the comment count edges towards 5000 I feel that it has been accomplished, but recently I think comment spam has become a problem.