A sign of a good coffee, I think, is that you can drink a full cup readily without any added dairy, soy or other coolants and flavorings. Most of the time I drink espresso, which generally works as a concentrated shot to the stomach and central nervous system, but on a crazy snowy day — we’ve had a lot of them in New York lately — I like to linger over over a regular mug made with the refurbished Jura, which is still going strong nearly two years later.
Posts Tagged ‘Jura-Capresso Impressa F9 Espresso Machine’
From the Coopac Cooperative in Rwanda
February 16, 2010A Side Trip to Stumptown, Manhattan
September 12, 2009
People I know who have spent time in the Portland area have raved about Stumptown Coffee for years. They roast the beans right in the store! Nothing on the East Coast compares! So after the second-day-of-school parents’ breakfast on Friday, my wife and I tagged along through the rain when another parent suggested we walk over to the new Stumptown outlet in the Ace Hotel in an area that some people are trying to call SoMa (for “South of Macy’s”) in the high 20s off Broadway.
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Taste of Agua Preta From Carmo de Minas
April 17, 2009
Earlier this week, my quest for a perfect cup of home-made coffee took me to Chelsea Market, where I picked up this direct-trade coffee from the outpost of Ninth Street Espresso at the market. This was part of my at-home vacation, or staycation, which mostly entailed watching my daughter do gymnastics; taking her to a bookstore, a tea house, and a museum; reading some books; sharing fresh Belgian beer with some friends; working out; updating my Twitter status; and, of course, drinking coffee.
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This Is Chapadao de Ferro (Microlot 494)
April 11, 2009
This has not been a good month for my coffee-blogging. We had some distracting news at the office, then a couple of weeks ago, I was laid low by a burning lump of fire in my throat that turned out to be strep. My daughter and eight other kids in her class, plus the teacher and some parents, probably came down with it too. It took a while to shake that, and the cure was in some ways worse than the illness, but I finally seem to be on the mend. At least I got some reading done.
So I wasn’t drinking as much coffee, and I still had quite a supply of the Ecuadorean beans from Whole Foods. About a week ago, though, I stopped by Cafe Grumpy with my daughter and was pleased to see some selections that were right up my alley. This is the first of the two.
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A Couple of Shots of F. W. Tres Rio Bella Vista
February 1, 2009
In my defense, I live in a neighborhood that has more square feet under the control of Starbucks than it has space devoted to food markets, bank branches or even Duane Reade drugstores. There is just one independent coffee shop, several blocks away, and it serves bad coffee. Plus, it was cold last night, 20 degrees, and the Starbucks was right there, still open, as we walked back from dinner, having just learned that our favorite sushi joint had gone out of business. And I remembered that a relative had given me a $200 Starbucks gift card more than a year ago, and it still had some money left. I needed some beans, having nearly run out of the Indian Mysore. And who knows, if a Starbucks bean turns out to be the object of my quest, that would be convenient.
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A Shot of Cider Currant Spice From Rwanda
January 19, 2009
High-end culinary coffee tends to be marketed in specifically political ways. The goal may be to make the customer feel virtuous, or at least more at ease. Maybe buying a particular batch of beans will help the environment or a third-world economy. (There is an ideological divide, even in coffee, between free traders and those who advocate fair or direct trade.) When I hear “Rwanda,” I think of the 1990s upheaval and genocide that left that African country in ruins. So I was curious to see this bag of beans and decided to give it a try. Rwanda’s coffee industry was nearly destroyed in that era, but now is undergoing a resurgence, thanks to a chain of cooperative farms and efforts to provide simple economic tools, like bicycles.
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Several Shots of Finca Santa Isabel’s Best
January 17, 2009
This felt like a long week. A lot of meetings. My daughter had her first round of standardized testing at school. Two reporters I rely on the most at work took some days off. Then a plane ditched in the Hudson. We blogged, twittered, stayed up late. It was the rare big story with a happy ending. Way back on Sunday I had bought this bag of beans and, even before the crash landing, I was making myself three fast espresso shots with the Jura to jolt myself awake each morning before rushing out the door. That did not allow much time for contemplation of how these beans compared to the others I’ve sampled and written about.
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A Shot of Poker Face Espresso
December 13, 2008
My quest for the perfect shot of home-made espresso took me to the world of blended concoctions, The name and the white bag with a handy matching clip caught my eye, though on reflection at home the packaging seemed like a waste. It didn’t help that I clumsily tore the bag up, causing beans to fly all over the kitchen.
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A Shot of Novo Decaf Espresso
December 8, 2008
There are some who say that decaf is pointless, decaf espresso even more so. But of course, decaf does contain some caffeine, so it can be a nice way to put a little life back into an evening after a long day at work. That way I don’t drowse off reading monster-sized novels, listening to podcasts or watching the idiot box. My quest for the samadhi shot continues, and this is the decaffeinated edition.
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A Mug of Flor Azul Coffee
November 22, 2008
O.K., I ground the “Heartbreaker” and drank it all up, so I decided to try something different in my quest for the perfect cup of home-brewed coffee. Now I am blogging about this so I will remember the next time. Why are you reading it? That is your business. Oh, Internet. You’re such a mix of exhibitionism, voyeurism, the trivial and the ineffable.
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