I like cupping coffees, especially delicious ones. I am occasionally guilty of liking a coffee so much that I swipe the bowl after we’re done for drinking. This is obviously a disgusting and shameful habit, but hey – tasty is tasty.
Cupping is something that occupies a constant pocket of my mind – the process, the purpose, the results and everything in between. Like many people who often fall in love with coffees on the cupping table I also like full immersion brewing a lot. Often that means the french press. (more…)
Back in 2006 I published a recommended reading list. Since that time my collection of books has (worryingly) increased so I thought I should probably update it. I could easily write a list of coffee books that one should avoid (having learned the hard way) but I suspect that would get me into rather a lot of trouble, so I shall leave that for now. I’ve broken it down into two parts and then down into sections, and have indicated which are nice to have, and which I would consider are essential on that subject.
I will try and keep this one updated – if you think I’ve missed something obvious then let me know. I haven’t recommended books I don’t own, so this means some books may be missing that you would expect to see here.
Yes, yes – I know we are all bored to tears with hearing about Twitter, but sadly we are stuck with it so we might as well embrace it and microblog ourselves into a stupor [↩]
Got a phone call this evening about a little machinery project that we embarked upon with Marco, telling me that they will be debuting the machine at CatEx – Ireland’s HORECA tradeshow – between the 9th and 11th of February. It was an idea we had that they agree to R&D, and the data coming back from testing was impressive.
At the moment I still can’t give much away, it is nothing to do with espresso, it isn’t a coffee brewer either but I hope it will be great. I have yet to see a finished unit, and I gather the aesthetic side is still quite open. I’ll likely be heading over on the 1oth for a quick play with it, and to make coffee for people at the show and to talk about the project a little more.
I wanted to tackle a tricky brewing method for this videocast, and it will probably cause some debate – people saying that I am using it wrong etc etc…
I wasn’t trying to recreate espresso with the little brewer – I just wanted to find a way to use it so it made clean, sweet and tasty coffee with no bitterness or astringency. It took a while and I ended up grinding coarser than even I expected. There aren’t a lot of good brewing guides around for stove top brewers – but credit to the Stumptown one for ideas and inspiriation.
